by Álvaro Molina, Andy Ciardella, Conor Lochrie, Dan Goldin, David Wilikofsky, Dominic Acito, Elise Barbin, Emma Bauchner, Evan Welsh, Hayden Godfrey, Hugo Reyes, Ian McPhee, Jacob Saxton, James Fast, Jeff Yerger, Jonathan Bannister, Kris Handel, Maria Bobbitt-Chertock, Matthew Gilberto, Mick Reed, Patrick Pilch, Reggie Bender, Sean Fennell, Taylor Ruckle, Taylor Ysteboe, Thrin Vianale, and Aly Muilenburg

We’re all collectively tired of this year. It’s been tough on everyone, in ways that are shared and ways that are unique, but the music remains great. For a lot of people, new releases are just that… a release, an escape, a brief moment of respite. While writing about music began to feel trivial, we kept at it, because for many of us, it’s the discovery of new artists, bands, albums, etc. that keep us going. A lot has changed since last year, but the one thing that never changes is the constant stream of great new music. This year, much like others, was an exceptional one, if you knew where to look. For anyone tired of the bland and monotone, there’s been an influx of bands that bend and shift genre into new forms and new ideas. The familiar becomes experimental. The challenging becomes accessible. Interesting music is being made.

So we present our “Year in Review," a comprehensive guide to our favorite releases of the year, without any pre-determined length or insignificant rankings. If we loved a record, we're including it (unless we just forgot it… which happens, in which case our sincerest of apologies). It's impossible to listen to everything released in a year and everyone has different tastes, but we can’t recommend these particular records enough. Your next favorite band could be out there, it's just a matter of listening to something new. Journey down this rabbit hole with us. Together, we've profiled 100+ of the releases that made Post-Trash’s year survivable, with countless others recommended as "further listening," a section for releases you might have missed, and we might not have spent enough time with. We're not saying these are the best albums, but rather our favorites. Discover something new. Buy some records. Support the music you love. Thank you for reading Post-Trash. - DG

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ALIEN NOSEJOB | "Suddenly Everything Is Twice As Loud"

Anti Fade / Drunken Sailor Records

Alien Nosejob, the ever evolving (and devolving) solo project of Australia’s hyper-prolific Jake Robertson (Ausmuteants, Hierophants, School Damage) is created without limits, without restrictions. Suddenly Everything Is Twice As Loud might be essential Alien Nosejob. Lead single and album opener “Television Sets” is a barn-burning synth punk track that rattles with hypnotic energy and a driving energy that’s heavy without being aggressive. It’s a ripper, bursting straight out the gates, with a dense guitar choogle and quickly snapped vocals that frame a the ghost-town mentality of society as everyone becomes increasingly engrained in the TV. The album twists and turns from there, a smattering of all Alien Nosejob can offer, both old and new. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

CHUBBY & THE GANG | "Speed Kills"

Static Shock Records

I didn’t really like Chubby & The Gang upon first listen, but there was something about their album that kept calling to me, drawing me in to give it another try until it hooked me, and sure enough, it did. Speed Kills is a rapid fire album that feels like the punks decided to party, really really hard. The pacing is relentless but there’s plenty of fun to be had in the blasting drums, short fused riffs, and the gang shouted vocals. Chubby & The Gang are kicking up dust in fast-forward, creating modern street punk fueled on beer and unbridled energy. It’s not the most dynamic album but it rips hard and works exactly as it intends to. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

CLAMM | "Beseech Me"

Self Released

CLAMM emerged like a shattering force on the Melbourne music scene, almost unexpectedly. Band members Jack Summers and Miles Harding were part of other notable local bands - Gamjee and Dragoons - and the CLAMM project was initially meant as a mere exercise to work on a heavier sound than those other outfits afforded. Such was the success of the experimentation, however, that we now have one of the strongest recent records to come from that city in Beseech Me. It’s heavy, certainly, but the righteousness sound is underpinned by a steadfast thoughtfulness; CLAMM belong to that new category of punk, all self-aware and considered. - Conor Lochrie || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

EN ATTENDANT ANA | "Juillet"

Trouble In Mind Records

Paris, France’s En Attendant Ana released their full length debut back in 2018 on the esteemed Trouble In Mind Records, a welcome introduction to the band’s dreamy-pop and swirling indie rock sound. Their sophomore album, Juillet, is a stunning pop record that is fueled by the same sort of fuzzy brilliance as Alvvays, that AM-gold sound that feels ever so surreal but utterly infectious. The quintet, led by Margaux Bouchaudon, create a blanket of keys that fill the space before the sprightly rhythm and bouncing melodies sink in. The band take the sweet and ultra-catchy and slowly unravel it with perfection. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

HELVETIA | "Fantastic Life"

Self Released

The world’s most underrated band Helvetia aka Jason Albertini (also of Duster) released a collection of 4-track cassette recordings called Fantastic Life, and I’ll be damned if two weeks into the year this one won’t remain one of the best come December. Energetic and bursting with bent and distorted pop bliss, Albertini proves that even a skeletal recording set-up lends itself to his impressionistic songwriting, warbling between psych pop sketches and a downer-pop drawl to create something that feels vibrant and heartfelt, like his being working to jump right out of his body. There’s lots of fuzzy guitar noise to feast your ears upon and the warm tape wizardry captures it at the songs’ height of noise pop exuberance. Duster is cool… but Helvetia is the best. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

MR. ELEVATOR | "Goodbye, Blue Sky"

Castle Face Records

Things over at Castle Face Records have been getting progressively more progressive in recent times… from the Oh Sees embrace of prog to bands like Once & Future Band and now Mr. Elevator. Having just released Goodbye, Blue Sky , the album is built on stacked synths and songwriting that feels like the furthest cosmic reaches of the 70’s never left. It’s one of those albums you really need to immerse yourself in, and thankfully, it’s really easy to do it as you’re whisked into another galaxy right from the instrumental opener “Waiting” and placed gently back to Earth just at the close of the reverb soaked “Patterns.” The shapes and structures of the songs feel surreal, bending with a liquid like retention, steadily flowing but never sitting back to reflect, instead pushing deeper into new realms of outer consciousness. It’s a great listen whether you’re zoning out or intensely dissecting it. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

OSTRAALY | "Misery Guests"

Tenth Court Records

Ostraaly’s latest album Misery Guests was released back at the start of the year but we didn’t hear it until December, and that’s okay, because despite what some would you to believe, music doesn’t go away a month after being released. Their album makes me wish I had been listening for the past twelve months, because it’s easy to love. The Melbourne based band have combined an Australian version of dusty country, folk, and twangy art rock into something blissfully calming, but willing to get noisy when the opportunity presents itself. It’s pretty damn incredible and Katharine Daly’s accented vocals are the icing on the home baked cake. Her voice wavers and trills with beautiful control over precision layered front porch melodies, setting like the most exquisite of sunsets. (h/t to RSTB for brining this one to our attention) - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

THA GOD FAHIM | "Lost Kingz"

Nature Sounds

In this strange year, 2020, my most listened to artist was the ever prolific Tha God Fahim, who released two exceptional solo records, as well as a slew of collaborative releases. The Atlanta based MC makes his home in the South, but his delivery definitely has a kinship to the East Coast rappers of the 90s. On Lost Kingz, easily my favorite hip-hop album of the year, Fahim burns over atmospheric beats with a casual stroll, keeping his words crisp to the point where each bar feels as though it could snap at any moment. There’s almost a hypnotic quality to the record, but it’s the ever consistent delivery of TGF that keeps lines like “eating rappers food, I treat this game like a picnic” or “ it’s not about the canvas more like how you paint it, stay out the way so many people tainted” feeling like he’s ascended above the competition, or if TGF is playing in another league altogether. Tha God Fahim is able to drop knowledge, street music, and inspiration at a whim, a diverse threat that moves far beyond meaningless boasts and endless lyrical violence. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

YOUBET | "Compare & Despair"

Ba Da Bing Records

The more you listen to Youbet, the more you love their music. Nick Llobet’s project makes pop music for an alien planet, one we should all hope to voyage to some day. The record wriggles through consciousness with a focused center and blurred edges, a melancholic swirl that spirals out at the seams. As vivid and glistening as the album’s album cover, the bent chord progressions and whimsical lyrics work together in surrealist fashion, snaking in out and of pop structure with an optimistic glow, leaving the wake of eruption behind for the desire to feel good. Compare and Despair is one of the year’s early essential releases. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

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ARBOR LABOR UNION | "New Petal Instants"

Arrowhawk Records

After a stint with ol’ Sub Pop Records, Atlanta’s Arbor Labor Union are back home with Arrowhawk Records for the release of their first new album in four years, New Petal Instants. The record embraces damn near everything that makes this band so special, their cosmic Americana boogie meets post-hardcore structures and general barn-burning hippie disposition. This time around however, Arbor Labor Union up the twang and lean in with a classic rock stomp that choogles in a Crazy Horse or Howlin’ Rain way. There’s a big muscular jangle that feels like its been frying in the sun for eternity, dashed together with the type of dusty country living and well-placed dissonance that make Arbor Labor Union such a unique band. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

BAMBARA | "Stray"

Wharf Cat Records

With Brooklyn post-punk trio Bambara’s last album, Shadow On Everything, still fresh on our minds, the band released their follow-up, Stray. The heavily toured band remain in fine form, cranking out the finest gothic-tinged story-telling this side of Nick Cave and Iceage with a caustic darkness. Songs are constructed with serrating guitars and quick tempos, the band’s ever pulsating rhythm section leading the way for the drifting storm clouds of noise that pepper in the atmosphere. Reid Bateh’s vocals paint tragic and ominous portraits of the characters on-hand, the type that feel destined to unseemly acquaintances and inevitable doom. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

BOLDY JAMES & THE ALCHEMIST | "The Price of Tea in China"

ALC Records

If this year was slowing down productivity, no one told Boldy James. The Detroit rapper released no less than four great records. It’s an achievement to release four records in a year, and it’s another level altogether when each one is great. From The Versace Tape (his Griselda debut), to Real Bad Boldy, and Manger on McNichols (his jazz rap odyssey with Sterling Toles), Boldy was constantly in the limelight, offering cold bars over focused beats, each record with it’s own vibe and mentality, shaped by hard unflinching lyricism. The highlight of the four comes in The Price Of Tea In China, Boldy James’ latest full album collaboration with The Alchemist. The pairing is perfect, with beats that slowly bang and grind soul samples into the pavement, Boldy James flexes his bars with street wisdom (“the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat”) and mafioso boasts (“my witness ain't show up to court, the judge, he had to weigh the trial, they say I got a morbid sense of humor, but that made me smile”). - DG || LISTEN: Spotify

CINDY LEE | "What's Tonight To Eternity"

Superior Viaduct Records

Ever since Calgary’s ultra-influential band Women broke up, the band’s mastermind Patrick Flegel has been making music under their drag guise Cindy Lee. The project’s fifth album, What’s Tonight To Eternity, welcomes us once again to the thick and surreal dreamworld of Flegel’s music, rooted in 60’s girl group pop and R&B but filtered through a foggy lo-fi lens that contorts the would-be-pop sound into something far more experimental. This album is on the accessible end of Cindy Lee’s ethereal nature, twinkling under blankets of whirring guitar noise like a lost soul nugget rescued from tape warped to time. It’s a gorgeous record, built on a juxtaposition of swooning progressions and the hazy recording giving it that special kind of glimmer. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DRAGOONS | "Horrorscope"

Tiny Town Records

Australia’s Dragoons (who share members with CLAMM) have made a record that defies all expectations. If you’ve heard any of their previous releases, you might expect something in the lo-fi psych realm of post-punk and indie rock. Horrorscope however is instead a primarily instrumental affair (though the rare inclusion of lyrics hits all the better), with each song offering it’s own meditative rumination from free jazz and space odyssey punk to skin tight post-hardcore and cosmic psych. It is a low key release with nothing to lose and yet it feels refreshing, a reflective recording that creates its own space and time. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

FRIED E/M | "Modern World"

Lumpy Records / La Vida Es Un Mus

Missouri punks Fried e/M have released their full length debut, Modern World, a raw and brash record that takes mid-paced elements of greasy hardcore, basement punk, and noise rock and it makes it as ugly as they can. It finds a perfect home at Lumpy Records (as their sound is reminiscent of Lumpy & The Dumpers), built on a blistering collection of sandpaper riffs and heavy rhythms that oscillate between dense thuds and breakneck d-beat pounding. The agitation runs deep throughout Modern World, and that feeling of disgust and disapproval is exactly where the brilliance of these filthy barn-burners lies. Fried e/M don’t necessarily want to change the world around them, but they’ve come to revel in the forever erupting chaos, adding their own sordid ferocity toward all that cross their path. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

HOLIDAY MUSIC | "Certified Ailments"

Super Wimpy Punch Records

We simply can’t get enough of Holiday Music’s new album Certified Ailments. It’s full of woozy indie rock that feels bent in time and manipulated in space with memorable lyrics, warped atmospheres, and just the perfect touch of experimental slowcore and shoegaze influences. It’s always subverting expectations, taking what is otherwise simple fuzzy rock music, and tweaking the formula ever so slightly. The album closer “No Return” is a prime example, an immediate song with layered hooks and “slacker” charm that bleeds into the night sky and bursts with a syrupy pop sludge. This one has flown under the radar, but could be one of the year’s best. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

RATBOYS | "Printer's Devil"

Topshelf Records

What does home mean? Vocalist/guitarist Julia Steiner contemplates this question and the broader theme of growing up and evolving throughout Ratboys’ third record, Printer’s Devil. Formerly a duo comprised of Steiner and guitarist Dave Sagan, the Chicago-based band has expanded to a four-piece that also includes bassist Sean Neumann and drummer Marcus Nuccio. Steiner’s smart songwriting focuses on small, concrete details as a way to touch on these bigger concepts of alienation and wanderlust. The band never loses its momentum with its thoughtful storytelling and melodies that are at once heart pounding and heart wrenching. In these ten songs, Ratboys are sifting through the past like one would open dusty, nearly forgotten boxes in an attic. - Taylor Ysteboe || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SHELL OF A SHELL | "Away Team"

EIS Records

Nashville’s Shell of a Shell is releasing their demons on their latest offering, Away Team. At just under 45 minutes, this album weaves its way through a repertoire of hard-hitting emotions, catchy and tumultuous riffs, and lyrics that get to the root of what it is to be a person, more specifically, to be on your own. On first listen, I was struck by the group’s ability to vacillate between harsh dynamics throughout songs in a seemingly effortless way, and yet maintain one common mood that characterizes the album as a whole. Away Team gives you moments of quiet reflection, a relatable voice of one’s inner monologue that’s rife with anxiety, confusion, a sense of impending doom, perhaps. - Thrin Vianale || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SOAKIE | "Soakie"

La Vida Es Un Mus

Soakie is here with their debut self-titled EP and it is an unrelenting, powerful fist coming straight for your face. In true hardcore punk fashion, Soakie rips through seven songs in under fifteen minutes and never once gives you a second to catch your breath. This group, with members originally from New Zealand and the US, formed in Melbourne in 2018, and we should all be grateful that they managed to cross paths from such far stretched roots. Tracks like “Or You Or You” and “Ditch the Rich” are perfect representations of how to describe this band to others. It’s snotty, it’s fast, it’s mean, and it’s telling you to get out of the way because Soakie is here to fuck shit up. For example, “Hey, hello, how are you, I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to talk to you, or you.” Piercingly strained screams on top of crazy fast drums, and ripping overdriven guitar make their message perfectly clear. Soakie has more on their mind than just telling you to get lost. - Jacob Saxton || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SOUR WIDOWS | "Sour Widows"

Self Released

At first glance you could consider Sour Widows to be on the easier, laid back, end of the spectrum, with elements of twangy folk and singer/songwriter grace. The further you dig however, Sour Widows is a heavy album, both mentally and musically, the noise of their anxieties only perpetuated by the beauty it unfolds from. All ease is fleeting and moments of calm are usually shattered, but the band are never tipping off the rails. Sour Widows have placed these moments of crushing clean-toned catharsis into the tapestry, the outbursts natural and organic, the result of life’s bumpy roads. Their emphatic shifts in tonality are used beyond breaking up verse and chorus, interjected just when things become saccharine, shaking the shit out of a sense of familiarity. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

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CABLE TIES | "Far Enough"

Merge Records

Cable Ties’ Far Enough contains rallying cries against power, gatekeepers, cynicism, greed, and all the other obstacles that attempt to wear and beat people down till they’re too exhausted to fight back. It’s all housed in thick, driving bass lines, quick, steady drums, and stabbing guitar work. It’s punk rock music that is still incredibly catchy and hook laden. Seriousness in the message doesn’t always have to be abrasive in the music. It provides the outlet to move and dance and release all that tension and energy in healthy constructive ways. Shauna Boyle and Nick Brown do impressive work as the rhythm section, providing a strong foundation for Jenny McKechnie’s guitar work and lyrics. - Jonathan Bannister || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

COLD MEAT | "Hot and Flustered"

Static Shock Records

At a time where we where all quarantined in our homes, Cold Meat released their first full length, Hot and Flustered, an early contender for “punk album of the year.” It’s a whirlwind twenty three minutes from the Perth, Australia band, blistering with agitated guitars and an ever brilliant vocal performance. With lyrics that are biting and sarcastic, revolting against big money, big egos, sexism, and the privileged, Cold Meat sound fired up and anthemic, creating scathing punk songs you’ll be shouting along with in no time. The band dig and grind into sharp corners and ferocious riffs, paired together with the harsh but charismatic vocals that add nuance to the otherwise straight-forward crack of their energetic mayhem and pissed off aura. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DAMP | "Damp"

Self Released

DAMP is the Brooklyn based duo of Rebecca Ryskalczyk (Bethlehem Steel) and Nick Dooley (ex-Flagland), joined on their self-titled debut by friends Alex Molini (Philary, Pile), Mike Quigley (Washer), Karna Ray (The Kominas), and Christina Puerto (Bethlehem Steel). Set for a proper release and accompanying tour at some point in the future, the band decided to share their EP out of necessity during the COVID-19 crisis as tours have been cancelled as well as service industry jobs put on hold while the city is shut down. Their record shares similarities with Ryskalczyk’s main project but DAMP goes for a sludgier atmosphere, darker and heavier in its brooding and its destructive nature. The strength of Ryskalczyk’s voice and sentiments is as powerful as ever, combining crushing emotional heft with a ringing sense of honesty. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

EYE FLYS | "Tub of Lard"

Thrill Jockey Records

There is a special kind of density and disgust to every one of Eye Flys’ earthshaking riffs and head splitting drum cracks. While the band (who feature members of Full of Hell) may be named after a classic Melvins track, the Philadelphia quartet tend to stray closer to the classic Helmet sound, with that harsh thwack of every hit landing like a ton of bricks in a way that hasn’t been heard too often since Meantime and Betty. Their full length debut, Tub Of Lard, is vicious enough to wake the dead and full of brute intelligence. With lurching starts that would make their namesake proud, the band heave into crushing riffs and harshly barked vocals. The compressed primal aggression partners up with a landslide of guitar distortion that trickles at rapid speed, sounding something like a carefully constructed aural infestation. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

FACS | "Void Moments"

Trouble In Mind Records

Chicago’s FACS have been releasing records with a great deal of urgency since coming together from the ashes of Disappears. Void Moments is their third LP in as many years, each one building on the framework of the last but offering something new and expansive. They trio aren’t afraid to shift outward, to build on their experimental sounds, and see what may come, but they’re constructing with purpose and direction. On their latest album that’s a heavy driving feeling that can’t be shaken, these songs are “songs” at their core, and there’s more of a focus on relative post-punk accessibility as overall minimalist sonic assault. The band still bend and contort repetitive structures into hypnotic shadows, but there’s something memorable wavering in the din, something that hooks you in without the use of traditional frameworks. It’s challenging yet mysteriously inviting. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

HORSE LORDS | "The Common Task"

Northern Spy Records

The almighty Horse Lords returned and it’s reason for celebration. It’s been four long years since their last official record and the experimental Baltimore quartet are still creating music at its most inventive and hypnotic. The Common Task is a wild voyage between disjointed and jagged post-punk filtered through experimental jazz and Saharan modalities. It’s freeform in the way that Horse Lords thrive, moving from one section to the next, following the path where it leads rather than trying to wrangle everything neatly together. The band dig into the rhythms and soar far beyond them, always locked in but forever progressing the structures to new realms. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

STEVE HARTLETT | "Solitude For Dummies"

Self Released

As the creative force behind Ovlov and Stove, Steve Hartlett has been responsible for so much of our favorite music over the past decade, and in 2020, he’s shared his first official solo album, Solitude for Dummies. From the big pop dance groove of the intro to “156 Dance Song” to the contemplative calm of “Instrumental Breakdown (Rusty Chain),” the album runs many moods and temperaments, a quick but nuanced flip through Hartlett’s warm and familiar songs. The feelings are relatable and open, with an earnest charm to their self-doubt and sense of cracked hope. Songs like “Helen’s Hand” takes a dreamy approach to creating a world of its own, one where all is what you make it, as notes delicately skitter across the acoustic strumming. “Favorite Friends” has a steady pulse and fluid progression that feels something like watching water run down stream. There’s hooks everywhere you look, delivered with an ever subtle touch. Solitude For Dummies has room to breath, evolving at its own gorgeous pace. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

VIAGRA BOYS | "Common Sense"

Year0001

Sweden’s Viagra Boys returned with a surprise new EP, Common Sense, a new collection of songs that promises a record to come, and new directions explored. Known for a sordid sense of humor and a depravity that still feels like it comes from a good place, their full length debut Street Worms is one of those records you can’t help but love, both dumb and increasingly brilliant. While the lead single and title track of their latest hints that maybe Viagra Boys are taking themselves slightly more serious, the very next track “Lick The Bag” proves they’re still the drug-addled knuckleheads we’ve grown to cherish. “Sentinel Island” could be the half-way point between aesthetics, a song that strides with the best of Street Worms; their tongue in cheek post-punk lyricism colliding head first with their agitated skronk and motorik boogie. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify

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BAD HISTORY MONTH | "Old Blues"

EIS Records

Bold, profound, and stunning, Bad History Month’s Sean Sprecher has proven once more as to why he is considered by many to be one of DIY’s all time great songwriters. On his latest album, Old Blues, the Boston musician confronts lessons learned at an early age and the way those have constructed the person he is today, and he tells these tales with both grim determination, philosophical introspection, and a shinning sense of humor that keeps the effort from feeling like a ton of bricks placed directly on your chest. Old Blues is an album that rewards (and possibly requires) repeat listens, with plenty to unpack, rethink, and to lose oneself within. It is a world of thought and contemplation with a smirk, turning self-seriousness into lighthearted yet mind-blowing profundity and Sprecher’s signature guitar style giving emphasis to his lyrics. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

BLACK CURSE | "Endless Wound"

Sepulchral Voice Records

Hold on to your butts. Black Curse’s debut album, Endless Wound, it’s a rampant barrage of death metal, doom, grind, and black metal, and it crushes in an apocalyptic kind of way. The Denver based trio (which features members of Spectral Voice and Primitive Man) have painstakingly layered riff after riff with stampeding rhythms and enough disgust to last a lifetime. Maybe its “the times” but I’ve been listening to a lot of death metal recently and Black Curse is a great addition to the genre’s finer moments, just utterly relentless, like a herd of elephants running (and running fast) over scorched earth, as riffs just keep shifting and shifting and shifting. For anyone that likes the forward thinking heaviness of Blood Incantation or Oranssi Pazuzu, check this one out. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

C.H.E.W. | "In Due Time"

Iron Lung Records

Step out of your skin and into In Due Time from Chicago hardcore punk band C.H.E.W. Back in 2018 these face mulchers released the phenomenal Feeding Frenzy, a raw, exposed swath of human nervous system, infected with all manner of hungry psychic vermin. It's been entirely too long. C.H.E.W.'s style is at once both familiar and alien. An interstitial plane of eye-brow whitening fury and fountainous vomiting angst, spilling out from your speakers and corroding the linoleum. There is a tendency to want to slot them into traditions of wiry bandsaw punk pioneered by Negative Approach, Ill Repute, and the like. To an extent, this is right on the money,but such a comparison does not capture the free-fall rush of C.H.E.W.'s obstreperous commitment to delivering a full dose of mind unwinding venom with each song. With each greasy, untamed lick, they drag you further into the sub-basement of the human mind, to confront memories and feelings long forgotten and cemented into the earth. - Mick Reed || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

ES | "Less of Everything"

Upset The Rhythm

London synth punk band Es has arrived with Less of Everything, their full length debut, out via Upset The Rhythm (Primo!, Handle, Kaputt), and it’s a bold statement in our age of constant overexposure. Regardless if the title deals with minimalism within our reality or within their skeletal punk songs, there’s no distractions within their debut, just primal focused post-punk that’s tense, commanding, and eager to disrupt any sense of complacency. The band - Maria Cecilia Tedemalm (vocals), Katy Cotterell (bass), Tamsin M. Leach (drums) and Flora Watters (keyboards) - keep a close focus, opting to create a claustrophobic aura with thick as bricks bass and ominous synths that underline Tedemalm’s sharp lyricism, pointed against systematic oppression, self-serving individuals, and destructive personalities. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

FIONA APPLE | "Fetch The Bolt Cutters"

Epic Records

Odds are you’re already aware Fiona Apple has released her new album Fetch The Bolt Cutters. Odds are you already know it’s great. The release hardly needs our support, but that doesn’t change the fact that is without a doubt one of the year’s best albums thus far, which shouldn’t come as a surprise as Ms. Apple has released absolutely nothing but classics since her debut album. On Fetch The Bolt Cutters, the record builds on an expansion of her last two records, throwing out the meticulous for a sense of casual production (stomping, dog barks, lack of post-song editing) to counterbalance the not so casual lyricism. Fiona Apple’s lyrics are pointed and critical, pushing nerves with brilliant thought and clear comprehension. Fiona Apple is a unique artist that stands in a class her own, and every album only adds to her timeless legacy. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify

MELKBELLY | "PITH"

Wax Nine / Carpark Records

Pith is the third full length from Chicago-based noise punk quartet Melkbelly, and within it is a barrage of hook filled knottiness with a bit more development and breadth. On previous recordings Melkbelly took full advantage of their raging power and created moments of visceral release that was full of energy and utter abandon that took no prisoners. Those characteristics are still readily apparent here but there is a sort of cautious sweetness on Pith to temper the causticism without stripping it entirely. The production on this record is a bit brighter which lends to a more alive and in your face record while allowing the songs to fully blossom and reach maximum impact. - Kris Handel || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

NNAMDÏ | "BRAT"

Sooper Records

The phrase “I need you, need something new,” is interwoven through the entirety of BRAT, the latest album from Chicago multi-instrumentalist NNAMDÏ (aka Nnamdi Ogbonnaya). It is a mantra that signifies the central tension explored through the album’s colorful 42 minutes—the question of what was and what will be and the difficult decision of accepting change and growth. NNAMDÏ’s exploration of this push and pull within himself and in his relationships to others expands and contracts from track to track as he wanders through different musical styles, paces, and tones. It would be a disservice to solely look at the wonderful depth of BRAT without acknowledging just how fun, exhilarating the experience of the album is. In a year that has felt increasingly depressing and grey, BRAT shines through the malaise. - Evan Welsh || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

ONCE & FUTURE BAND | "Deleted Scenes"

Castle Face Records

We’ve been utterly floored by Once & Future Band since first hearing them back in 2017 (their self-titled album was one of our absolute favorites that year) and we’re thrilled they’re back. On their sophomore album, Deleted Scenes, via Castle Face Records, the Oakland quartet are once again making pitch perfect prog rock with touches of psych and power-pop that feel downright blissful. With sweeping orchestral movements and a kaleidoscopic core, the record is essentially stadium pop from a bygone era. There are just enough structural shifts to keep the framework forever wobbling between complex rhythmic wonderment and an epic nature, but Once & Future Band manage to keep their cool with a graceful brilliance, everything falling perfectly in place for a band who can count both Tool and Oh Sees as former tour mates. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

ORANSSI PAZUZU | "Mestarin Kynsi"

Nuclear Blast Records

There was a lot of talk about masterpieces in April and, well, Oranssi Pazazu have certainly released one of them. Its been four years since the astounding, Värähtelijä (a masterpiece in its own right), and the Finnish experimental metal band have unleashed Mestarin Kynsi, another mind-blowing space odyssey from the depths of darkness. There is truly nothing that sounds quite like Oranssi Pazuzu’s sordid and forward thinking metal, built on black metal but influenced by psych, krautrock, prog, and avant-garde electronics. From the ominous black hole warp of “Ilmestys” to the massive stampede of “Taivaan Portti,” the band’s croaky visions of the cosmos shift between orchestral assaults and glitched terror; everything cohesively working together to transport listeners to a galaxy dark and heavy. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

PEEL DREAM MAGAZINE | "Agitprop Alterna"

Slumberland Records

New York City composer and multi-instrumentalist Joe Stevens founded his DIY outlet Peel Dream Magazine in 2017. He’s been releasing exquisite shoegaze music both familiar and unfamiliar since then. His sound carries the trademark swirling noise of the genre (escapist music in the time of quarantine) that makes one feel at once connected and disconnected, involved and dissolved, but there is more to consider here than other shoegaze contemporary companions. While Stereolab, Ride, and obviously, My Bloody Valentine, are ingrained in all such bands, it's rare to find one with Stevens’ level of intelligent lyricism which is so in evidence on new album Agitprop Alterna. This is esoteric and cerebral rock. - Conor Lochrie || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

PRIMO! | "Sogni"

Anti Fade / Upset The Rhythm Records

Sogni Is the third release from Primo!, a quartet from Melbourne, Australia who follow a nervy yet very groovable path laid down by impressively flexible musicianship. The follow up to highly acclaimed debut full length Amici, Sogni shows off some new tricks learned in the interim. Where the debut was full of brittle and fairly acerbic post-punk influenced garage punk, Sogni shows a little more flexibility and space for bouncy and constantly shifting rhythms for their guitars to slice through. There is also a little bit of a brighter experimental approach that plays well with the solid foundations that the band has laid down. - Kris Handel || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

STUCK | "Change Is Bad"

Born Yesterday Records

If change is bad, Stuck makes the best of it. The record, front to back, is solid. It’s as dense as it is brief - the band wastes zero time plunging to exceptional depths in both arrangement and lyricism. Stuck’s debut contains the kind of post-punk precision and detail begging for repeated listens. Nothing’s overthought, but it’s all thought out. Everything is deliberate with Change is Bad, yet it still feels natural. This is one of those records where you’re always anticipating the next track. There’s this unforced momentum. Stuck’s members work on a string. Their movements are like clockwork, calculated with aptitude and flair. Each motif is hardly presented the same way twice. - Patrick Pilch || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

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BEAUTY PILL | "Please Advise"

Northern Spy Records

Describing Beauty Pill’s sound has become near impossible, but it doesn’t mean we won’t try, as Chad Clark and company continue to be one of this generation’s most important voices. Following 2017’s pure masterpiece, Describes Things As They Are, the DC based project returns with Please Advise, a new EP that shares different tracks with each format. Take the album’s second single, “The Damnedest Thing,” led by Clark (while the first single was led by Erin Nelson), it is quintessential Beauty Pill, which is to say it’s high art and high concept, with an experimental touch, brilliant orchestration, and a calming demeanor. With manipulated marimbas, rhodes, and duel guitar tracks, Chad Clark waxes poetic about “what if the thing that helps you live, is also the thing that will get you killed.” The band branch out throughout the EP into realms of discordant pop in a way that is informed by jazz, electronic pop, and art rock. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

BRIGID DAWSON & THE MOTHERS NETWORK | "Ballet Of Apes"

Castle Face Records

The Brigid Dawson years of Thee Oh Sees were some of the finest the long running band has had to offer. While still a frequent collaborator (but no longer a core member), it stands to mention that her presence has always made the band better, offering vocals and keys and a slightly more refined touch to the ever shifting garage punk freakshow (this is meant as a compliment). Now, after all these years, Dawson has released her solo debut, Ballet of Apes, billed under the great name of Brigid Dawson & The Mothers Network. While intrigue had this record among our most anticipated, the album is utterly brilliant, a timeless gem of a debut that gets better with every listen. Recorded with contributions from Mike Donovan (Peacers, Sic Alps), Mikey Young (Eddy Current, Total Control), and Sunwatchers, there’s an old soul to Ballet of Apes, but a sound that refuses to sit still, channeling floral psych, acid folk, reverberating soul, and caustic balladry. Each song moves within its own unique space and time, with Dawson’s gorgeous voice and contemplative songwriting the thread that ties it all together. This is one of the year’s best records. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

CONWAY THE MACHINE | "No One Mourns The Wicked"

Big Ghost LTD. Music

On his second independent release of the year (following the Alchemist produced LULU), Buffalo’s Conway The Machine teams up with producer Big Ghost LTD for No One Mourns The Wicked, a release that cements the Griselda rapper as one of the best without high profile features or any elaborate roll-out. Over menacing boom-bap beats that feel near tailored for horror-core rap, Conway sounds entirely focused, going in with hard street lyrics that take aim at both the industry and fake MCs that talk hard about lives not lives. For better or worse, Conway speaks of violent streets and gun fire as a product of his environment, something he’s both experienced and grown from. There are less ad-libs than other releases, instead Conway stays on-track and it sounds utterly ruthless. For anyone that misses the early days of 90’s rap, the members of Griselda are consistently delivering at the highest of levels. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DEERHOOF | "Future Teenage Cave Artists"

Joyful Noise Recordings

It seems almost impossible to say after all these years, but Deerhoof’s latest album, Future Teenage Cave Artists might be their best. The record is full of noisy brilliance, avant-garde pop, and all the mutant funk, soul, and punk that trickles its way into a Deerhoof record and comes out as something entirely their own. There’s a vibrancy to it that radiants from songs both overblown and those that feel more subtle. The record’s on the surreal end of the spectrum, but still glistening with signature Deerhoof unpredictability. The tranquility is rather gorgeous, the hooks rhythmically making an impression before unraveling with spectacular warmth and an undeniable glow. The legendary band have spent decades proving their creativity over and over again, and rather impossibly, they are still getting better. Their new record a genuine cacophony of sounds, significantly experimental and disfigured, but constructed in an alien way that somehow still sounds like accessible pop in the end. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DUMMY | "Dummy EP"

Pop Wig

The Los Angeles quintet has created a lush mix of shoegaze, krautrock, noise pop, and everything else that is both hazy and dreamy. Led by former members of Wildhoney, the band take an almost meditative drift toward motorik composition, easing their way into swells of minimalist layering, vocals that blend together, and grandiose blankets of noise. It’s a very strong debut that knows exactly what it wants to be, and is all the more confident for it. While a lot of bands toy with the dynamics of shoegaze and dream pop, trying to find that perfect balance of tranquility with muscular heft of loud as hell guitars, Dummy are operating at a scientific level from the start. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

FREDDIE GIBBS & THE ALCHEMIST | "Alfredo"

ESGN / ALC / Empire Records

Following last year’s Bandana LP with Madlib, Freddie Gibbs returned with a new full length, Alfredo, entirely produced by The Alchemist, their second album length collaboration (following the Curren$y assisted Fetti). Surprise released in the wake of the latest reminder of never-ending police brutality and systemic racism, Freddie Gibbs keeps it in the streets with his latest, including stand-out “Frank Lucas,” with boasts of “boosting the crime rate” without concern, while proving his knack for grimy lyricism never flinches. Freddie Gibbs is one of this generation’s best MCs go in over haunting minimalist beats with extended verses that speak violently against the feds and authorities in the name of the hustle, with more than a little braggadocios flair to keep up appearances. This isn’t exactly hip-hop for social justice or conscious though, but it’s hard-nosed rap that makes no apologies. -DG || LISTEN: Spotify

MAL DEVISA | "Vicious Nonbeliever"

Self Released

Whenever Mal Devisa aka Deja Carr releases something it’s always reason to get excited. While somewhat reclusive, Carr is without a doubt one of most incredible musicians releasing music these days. Her album Kiid is a genuine masterpiece, and the sporadic releases that have followed always feature that same visionary spark. From minimalist ballads with just bass and Carr’s soulful vocals to booming rap tunes where she absolutely bodies the beat with intelligent lyricism, the past five years or so has proven Mal Devisa is one of the best across all genres explored. Vicious Nonbeliever is a collaborative with producer DJ Lucas, and while the songs aren’t all new, they’ve been missing from the internet for quite sometime. The songs all favor Mal Devisa’s hip-hop side, with a selection of beats that only Carr’s chameleonic delivery can possibly wrangle into a set of complex smash hits. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

MAXSHH | "Half A Loaf"

Sad Cactus Records

While the future of Tundrastomper is uncertain, the members have found themselves busy with new projects. Last year Skyler Lloyd released the beautiful Lrrr album and last month Max Goldstein released a new album with his instrumental freak-prog band Fred Cracklin. Less than a month later, Goldstein returns with Maxshh’s full length debut, Half A Loaf, an incredible new record that is quickly proving to be one the year’s best surprises. Hell, I can’t stop listening. We already know that he’s one of the best drummers of the DIY world (and proves it all over this record), but his songwriting is really radiant as well, landing an array of orchestral prog, free jazz, dreamy and disjointed indie, tangled bedroom punk, and knotted experimental pop over shifting polyrhythms that sound like they’ve come hurtling down a mountain. You probably won’t hear anything quite like this again this year, but Half A Loaf is a masterclass in scattered ideas strung into a cohesive statement of intent. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

MELENAS | "Dias Raros"

Trouble In Mind Records

Melenas hail from Pamplona, Spain, a city known more for the running of the bulls than its music scene. After multiple releases on local labels, they have signed with US based label Trouble in Mind to release Dias Raros. If there is any justice, the band has created an album that should put their local scene on the map. The elements of these songs are familiar, but the way Melenas combine them creates something unique. You can hear driving motorik beats and washes of shoegaze fuzz mixed with jangle pop hooks and girl group harmonies. Tracks like “Primer Tiempo” or “Tres Segundos” display the alchemy of these elements perfectly. Both of these songs are instantly catchy, yet a closer listen reveals many layers. The music here is effervescent and full of an energy that transcends linguistic boundaries, taking us on a trip through indie pop history; because of all the references you can pick out, it feels like both an old favorite and a new discovery. - David Wilikofsky || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

OLD MAN GLOOM | "Light of Meaning" + "Darkness of Being"

Profound Lore

The legendary Old Man Gloom announced a new record, Seminar VIII: Lightness of Meaning for release in May and then the band decided to “Reverse Gloom” us all and surprise release that record’s previously unannounced companion, Seminar IX: Darkness of Being just a week later. For those unfamiliar with the band, Old Man Gloom is the long-running project of Aaron Turner (Sumac, ISIS), the late Caleb Scofield (Cave In, Zozobra), Nate Newton (Converge), and Santos Montano (Zozobra), joined this time around by Stephen Brodsky (Cave In). Since 1999, they have been releasing the most incredible of art metal records, built on booming ferocity, experimental dissonance, passages of ambient noise, and elements of hardcore, punk, and end of the world primal aggression. These albums are an amalgamation of their sound, everything congealed together to create something impossibly dynamic and unbelievably cohesive at the same time. Old Man Gloom have created a monstrously personal album, built to exercise demons and crush skulls all the same. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

POWERPLANT | "A Spine / Evidence"

Static Shock Records

Back in May, London’s “egg punk” extraordinaries Powerplant followed up their great debut, People in the Sun, with the equally great EP, A Spine / Evidence on Static Shock Records. While Powerplant began as Theo Zhykharyev’s one-man band, they project has since grown into a full line-up and that added power is felt throughout the weird and wonderful new set. “Good Time” is our choice for a stand-out, though the entire record rips in a series of unusual ways. With it’s slurred attack that feels equivalent to an avalanche hurtling downhill, “Good Time” mixes hard barked punk with psych croons and a haunting bridge that feels almost sarcastic if it didn’t bounce back with its own sleazy garage punk bliss. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

THA GOD FAHIM | "After Every Dark Day Comes Sunshine"

Self Released

As the months continued and my obsession with Tha God Fahim continued to grow, along came his second album of the year, After Every Dark Day Comes Sunshine, a hip-hop record like no other released this year. For everyone that’s had a tough time (and I think that’s near everyone) this year, this album is for you, as the Dump God blesses every single track with an unwavering positivity. It’s not something that happens in hip-hop (at least not non-corny hip-hop), but TGF goes in on the uplifting messages, and at a time when the world really needed it most. Sometimes it feels the dark clouds may never dissipate but Fahim reminds us, “People will celebrate your victories, but laugh when you fall, but it’s triumph over tragedy, be happy that’s all.” - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

V.V. LIGHTBODY | "Make A Shrine Or Burn It"

Acrophase Records

The gorgeous folk of V.V. Lightbody’s sophomore album, Make A Shrine Or Burn It, is a comfort in minimalism. The Chicago “nap rock” (their words, not ours) project of Vivian McConnell beams with a warm energy, the songs take an ethereal approach but Lightbody’s words aren’t lost in the clouds, her lyrics are grounded in reality, with songs about mutual feminine support (“If It’s Not Me”), isolation, and self-empowerment (“BYOB”). While the record is soft and generally gentle, there’s nothing sleepy about it, each song unfolds with it’s own vibrancy from the artful dissonance of “Horse of Fire” to the immediacy of “Car Alarm”. All of V.V. Lightbody’s song are immaculately and intimately composed, each blossoming to its full potential. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

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ARMAND HAMMER | "Shrines"

Backwoodz Studioz

The duo of Billy Woods and Elucid have been doing there thing together as Armand Hammer for the better part of a decade, and we’re real late to the party, but happy to be here. The New York rappers are two of the best and most versatile lyricists in modern hip-hop and they push boundaries all over their work together. Shrines is a gift of out-of-the-box hip-hop, with production that dips between funky, psychedelic, bossa nova, and beyond, the picture constantly changing shape while Woods and Elucid remain laser focused, their rhymes hard-nosed and pointed, their deliveries raw and chaotic. It’s hip-hop with a great amount of attention to detail but without the unpolished glow of the underground in tact. The duo keep it tough on the exterior, but it’s the brains of their message that radiates the loudest. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

CORIKY | "Coriky"

Dischord Records

Odds are you’ve already heard about Coriky, but then again, odds are you’re still excited about it, even with the record out in the world. The new band from Ian MacKaye, Joe Lally, and Amy Farina (which you can look at as half of Fugazi plus Farina… or as The Evens plus Lally) released their self-titled debut album via Dischord after some Covid related delays that felt extra long, and as far as anticipation went, this album delivered on every bit of it. The general sound of the album resides somewhere between later-era Fugazi and The Evens, which is to say it’s brilliant, thought provoking, and dynamically constructed with interlocked rhythms and urgent melodic force. This album is far from just a retread of their collective pasts, Coriky is a record that is very much of this era, driven by wise songwriting and a calming demeanor that still feels immediate. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DISHEVELED CUSS | "Disheveled Cuss"

Sargent House Records

Tera Melos mastermind Nick Reinhart released his self-titled solo debut as Disheveled Cuss in June on his long running home via Sargent House. Flexing his muscle at early 90’s alternative rock bliss with a touch of mathy power-pop (imagine Weezer meets Pinback), the record is a display of syrupy melodies so thick, they’ve been rattling in our heads all this time since the release. There’s plenty of joyous shredding throughout, but it’s the inescapably colossal melodies that really cement Reinhart’s latest project. Combining the larger than life hooks with fractured rhythms and jagged riffs creates some both accessible and avant-garde, a balance that leaves something for both the casual listener and the diehards alike. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

GALORE | "Galore"

Rocks In Your Head Records

Following a demo from 2018, San Francisco’s Galore released their self-titled debut album, a record we anxiously waited to hear in full as the release date was pushed back. It’s an earworm mix of punk, post-punk, jangly psych, and a hint of garage twee, and everything works to complement their songwriting throughout the album’s ten catchy songs. The band have earned comparisons to Melbourne’s Parsnip, and it’s not a bad fit, but Galore’s sound is a bit heavier and less whimsical. The quartet are never quite aggressive, but there’s a definitive drive to most of their songs, whether it’s pedal to the floor or a dreamy drift, Galore have made a promising debut of dynamic and easily enjoyable punk songs. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

GUM COUNTRY | "Somewhere"

Self Released

On Somewhere, Gum Country collects pieces of everyday minutiae and collages them into a portrait of a young life lived. From abstract, micro, innocuous, important, the record runs the gamut on scope, while treating each of these details as if it were no more important than the last. Focusing on textural and tone control, the duo’s sound mimics their lyrical attention to the small stuff. The California-via-Canada transplants build upon the sunny guitar pop Courtney Garvin cut her teeth on with her project The Courtneys, adding in elements associated with cerebral 90s rock: swirling interplay between instruments, cascades of synth lines, even some vocoder use here and there. Connor Meyer’s metronomic drumming grounds these layers, in the same way Tim Gane’s rhythm guitar guides stray discordance into order with Stereolab. - Elise Barbin || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

HUM | "Inlet"

Earth Analog / Polyvinyl

The almighty Hum returned with their fourth album, Inlet, dropped out of nowhere and it feels like the small miracle we’ve all been waiting for. Having reformed to play shows sporadically throughout the past decade, the Champaign, IL based quartet have always kept it humble, playing fuzzy “space rock” while remaining grounded with the spectacle of it all (hell, I went to Chicago to catch them play a pizza shop for PRF BBQ in 2014). The band’s first album in 23 years is nothing short of incredible, a new benchmark for bands that have taken the extended hiatus. Inlet sounds as though it was recorded in the months that followed the eternally classic Downward Is Heavenward, capturing the same muscular shoegaze and laid back post-hardcore the band made their signature in the 90’s. Everything is well conceived and natural, without a forced idea in the bunch, and the band exude patience to let the record evolve at a lumbering pace. It’s everything we’ve ever loved about Hum, done to perfection, just as one may expect. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

LITHICS | "Tower of Age"

Trouble In Mind Records

As one of the ongoing (and going and going) post-punk revival’s absolute best, Portland’s Lithics work with a steely resolve, one that sparkles with personality by offering a blank facade. It’s not drab experimentalism or overly hip posturing, but a musical (and vocal) deadpan that feels robotic and yet radiant in its repetitive melodic ideas and unshakable rhythmic excitement. The quartet released Tower of Age via the venerable Trouble In Mind Records in June, built on their hypnotic punk charm while really letting the guitars wander off track with disjointed and distorted leads that add a corrosive texture to the otherwise regimented sound. Loose and buoyant, the band’s guitars bounce back and forth between ears, darting around circular motorik beats, and shredding their way into the hooks. The whole thing bounces and Aubrey Hornor’s light vocal melody is the thread that holds everything together, though only at the seems. For a band that has mastered the snapped in mechanical sound of post-punk, this is what it feels like when things begin to skitter off the rails, a welcome turn in their evolving discography. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

MEYHEM LAUREN | "Glass 2.0"

SRFSCHL

One of our favorite rappers of the past decade, Meyhem Lauren has been on a never-ending hot streak since he first caught our ear on Action Bronson’s classic Dr. Lecter. This month he’s returned with Glass 2.0, a new full length collaboration from producer Harry Fraud, the companion to 2018’s Glass. While many of the tracks were previously featured on Extra Glass, the record comes together to sound cohesive, with Meyhem Lauren offering both mafioso gangster rap and enough wavy and fly lyricism to keep his Queens swagger celebrating through the toughest of times. This isn’t really a reflection of current events, as most of the songs come from sessions that began several years ago, but Laurenovich rides each beat with crime boss status, his low-profile delivery offset by his high-profile lifestyle. “Brunch at the Breakers” in next level hip-hop and Meyhem Lauren absolutely bodies Fraud’s beat. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify

NNAMDÏ | "Black Plight"

Self Released

If you didn’t already know, NNAMDÏ can do it all. While he’s gained national notoriety over the past few years for creating his own brand of spaced out R&B and experimental hip-hop, he’s also proven over and over again to be one of Chicago DIY’s best musicians, from post-hardcore to prog and math rock, playing all instruments with expert intricacy. Black Plight (which incredibly raised over $10,000 on a single Bandcamp Friday) is a heavy effort, both lyrically and musically, a blistering set of post-hardcore songs that are focused on the recent tragedies of police violence against the black community. NNAMDÏ addresses it head on, tearing against those that want to keep black voices silent and the police that perpetrate the murders of innocent black men and women again and again. It’s all a call to arms and one that can’t be made in vain. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

OBNOX | "Savage Raygun"

Ever/Never Records

Cleveland’s Obnox remains an inspiration, an artist who has worked tirelessly over the last decade to create a dense catalog of concept albums that draw no lines between hip-hop, punk, soul, garage rock, psych, and experimental music. From freak jazz to militant rap and fried punk, Lamont “Bim” Thomas has been using his voice to create music with expressive freedom, using his words to often convey his experience as a black man in America and the injustices that result. He’s been doing this since the beginning, but his latest double album, Savage Raygun, has an immediate impact now more than ever. Released via Ever/Never Records, the album seamlessly blends together everything that makes up Obnox’s swirling lo-fi world in a way that no one else could. Combining hip-hop and punk with psych and soul rarely works, but Obnox makes it feel effortless, just a slew of ideas that came together naturally to share his message. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

OHMME | "Fantasize Your Ghost"

Joyful Noise Recordings

I was late to the Ohmme party, and I do apologize for that. Since the released of the first Fantasize Your Ghost single, “3 2 4 3,” from the Chicago duo’s sophomore album, I’ve been utterly enamored. The record takes the band’s art-rock aesthetic in a raw and primal direction, working with a determinedly dense rhythmic framework and vocal harmonies that weave both together and apart as the tension permits. Every song unwraps its own unique way, some with blissful resolve and others without any resolution at all, instead opening to fits of artful noise. There are motorik grooves and a kinetic energy often rendering what comes beyond irrelevant as you’ve already been sucked into their reimagined world of post-punk minimalism and swirling noise pop. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

PYRRHON | "Abscess Time"

Willowtip Records

New York’s Pyrrhon are easily one of the most exciting bands making technical death metal these days, and they’ve been steadily pumping out great records for near ten years. While we’re pretty new to their music (don’t worry, we’re making up for lost time), their albums offer maximalist impact on first impression, a whirlwind of knotted technicality, carnage, and forward thinking structures that are as dark and dismal as they are intelligent and destructive. The band’s latest album, Abscess Time is out via Willowtip Records, and it is relentless, built on dexterity that bounces around pulling influences from noise rock, prog, grindcore, and black metal into their sound. Pyrrhon reshape those influences under a death metal fury, void of subtleties, but erupting with a depraved brilliance. There’s so much to unpack with this record. Just keep listening. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

ROY AYERS (with ADRIAN YOUNGE & ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD) | "JID002"

Jazz Is Dead

Back in the 70’s Roy Ayers earned himself a place among the jazz-fusion, funk, and soul legends as a profound vibraphonist and composer, whose classics include the timeless Coffy soundtrack among others. He hasn’t released a proper album in nearly two decades, and while JID002 isn’t exactly a proper solo effort, it is still a remarkable record that pairs together the old and the new to create something that’s both tried and true but fresh and interesting. While some sites harped on the presence of collaborators Adriane Younge and Ali Shadeed Muhammad, this album is exactly that, a collaborative record, with each artist adding their own weight and style to make something that sounds different from their previous output. JID002 is space-age jazz and celestial soul, offering a sleek ride through the cosmos with a retro touch but a modernist delivery. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

TENCI | "My Heart Is An Open Field"

Keeled Scales

The natural outpour of Tenci’s warbling twang throughout My Heart Is An Open Field is worn in. It feels at home. It is personal and expressive, each syllable that is shaken and swooned feels welcoming, like a respite for the weary and wounded. Chicago’s Jess Shoman makes music that feels that feels like its been strewn from memories of longing and reflection, but digested in full and built into a sort of folk wisdom, one that’s accented with minimal back-up and heartfelt vocals. There’s much to be felt and much to dissolve, pulling your own meaning from Tenci’s quietly beautiful world and poetic lyrics, at times direct and others more abstract but no less stunning. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

ULTHAR | "Providence"

20 Buck Spin

Ulthar’s brand of earth collapsing death metal is as heavy as a night’s sleep on a bed of nails. The Oakland based juggernaut is released their sophomore album, Providence, via 20 Buck Spin (Tomb Mold, Immortal Bird, Ossuarium) an album that looks to continue the onslaught they began on Cosmovore. Leaning on the crusty and blackened end of the death metal sound, the band tear through riffs, stampeding rhythms, and demonic croaks that seem to summon all that is evil. The record is cleverly brutal and dirty, a primal dose of dread that comes growling from the start with duel shrieks of ungodly terror and disgust. The band grind and twist riffs into corkscrew patterns and monolithic pounded drums, a moving force that demolishes at all tempos. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

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BORIS | "NO"

Self Released

Boris’ latest effort in their ever prolific catalogue stands out as one of their best. NO mostly features thrashing and exhilarating hardcore, all soaked with their signature heavy, fuzzed-out guitars, but it’s not just fast-paced face melters on this album. There’s an assortment of other sounds on here. For example, the opening track “Genesis” feels like a sludgy instrumental warm up, complete with roaring guitars and drums that feel like they’re about to fall through the ground. There’s also “Zerlako” which takes a similarly slow-paced but equally scorching approach, and the album closer “Interlude” which is the most mellow and ambient recording here. Even in the more high octane tunes there’s different approaches taken to the sound and production. - Andy Ciardella || LISTEN: Bandcamp

DAN FRANCIA | "Dust"

Shea Stadium Records

Dust is a very ambitious project, a once in a lifetime composition brought to life by mastermind Dan Francia together with Devin McKnight (Maneka), Adam Reich, and The House of Oranges. The entire record is completely improvised, with only the slightest of guidelines for the twelve members that make up the House of Oranges (in addition to the three architects of the music’s shape). Recorded in one night, the gathering of friends and peers (mainly musicians, but not entirely) created something majestic and surprisingly listenable, a gorgeous set of freeform music that holds weight beyond the experimental ideals of its creation. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DEERHOOF & WADADA LEO SMITH | "To Be Surrounded By Beautiful, Curious, Breathing, Laughing Flesh Is Enough"

Joyful Noise Recordings

Beyond Deerhoof’s raw, energetic live sound, one of the things that’s most apparent when listening to To Be Surrounded By Beautiful, Curious, Breathing, Laughing Flesh Is Enough is how fresh and unique they have sounded at every point in their career. Song selections range from tracks off of 1997’s The Man, The King, The Girl to 2009’s Offend Maggie to 2017’s Mountain Moves, all demonstrating why Deerhoof has been such an enduring band. Over their twenty-plus years of existence, they’ve honed their winning combination of Greg Saunier’s innovative drumming, John Dieterich’s and Ed Rodriguez’s clamorous guitars, and Satomi Matsuzaki’s idiosyncratic vocals; the resulting sound varies from noise-pop brilliance to joyfully frenetic chaos, often in the same song. What makes this album different from all other Deerhoof albums is the presence of Wadada Leo Smith, a master trumpeter, composer, and improviser. Their set with Smith on the album’s second half opens up their catalogue as a band in new ways, creating something truly special. - Emma Bauchner || LISTEN: Bandcamp

DISCO DOOM / ORUÃ | "Esmeralda Destiny Analysis"

Defer / Transfusao Noise Records

Last year, when bands were still touring around the world and we were all oblivious to this crazy 2020, indie rock legends Built to Spill headed to Europe for an early spring tour. His touring band included João Luiz, João Casaes, and Lê Almeida, three prominent figures from the lo-fi indie pop community of Rio de Janeiro. Almeida is a well-known character in Brazil’s freaky indie scene. Oruã is Almeida’s most recent brainchild, a three-piece ensemble that flirts with 90s-informed weird-psych, raw indie rock, and pastel riffs. At some point in the middle leg of the tour, the opening bands swapped and Swiss iconoclasts Disco Doom entered the bill. Led by the core duo of Gabriele de Mario and Anita Rufer, DD’s reinterpretation of old school indie rock eschews the label of “nineties revivalists”. Sure, the guitar-driven sound owes a lot to many Gen-X bands, but Disco Doom’s game is tilted towards crazy experimentations through a unique sound that blends punk, wacky art rock, and flat-out noise. This split EP is a brief, yet precise combination of two (very) complementary worlds, despite being continents and languages apart. These are two songs that elude the trivialities of experimental pop and some of the looping, pedal-addicted boredoms of current neo-psychedelia. - Álvaro Molina || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

GANSER | "Just Look At That Sky"

Felte Records

With its scrambled noise guitar licks, delirious, driving beats, and lyrics built on a grim sense of irony, Just Look At That Sky --the sophomore full-length from Chicago quartet Ganser-- is the sound of summer. Maybe not in the traditional sense of friendly fun in the sun, but as it builds on their penchant for dark, pulsing atmospherics and razor-sharp attitude, it captures the feel of a summer under lockdown and a post-punk band at their most dialed-in. The album isn’t about overcoming the hopelessness as much as it’s about those moments of waking up in flames and going on with a smirk, or a sigh, or a scream. It happens internally, as in “Emergency Equipment and Exits,” with its sky-high keys and desperate, sprinting drums, where Alicia Gaines reaches for the fire alarm at a party in her own honor. It happens on a grander scale, as in the brassy, swaggering groove of “Bags For Life,” where, yes, the world is plenty disappointing too. Yet the music goes on, taking sometimes-gruesome stock of those moments. - Taylor Ruckle || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

GELD | "Beyond The Floor"

Iron Lung / Static Shock Records

Relentless, ugly, and violently abrasive, Geld’s sophomore album Beyond The Floor, is a masterclass is filthy hardcore. The Melbourne band play fast and heavy, tearing the paint from the walls with blistering riffs (that have more of a groove than you may at first imagine), stampeding drums, and shrieked vocals, everything pushed delightfully into the red and then dragged through the mud. There’s nothing subtle about it, but there’s definitely something special at play in the chaos that sets it apart from your standard hardcore release. This one is mangled in bad trip psychedelics and an experimental edge, assaulting your ears and mind in equal measure as they pound and convulse over feed-backing distortion and an inescapable density, built on terror and reckless abandon. This is not your grandma’s hardcore album. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

ILLUMINATI HOTTIES | "FREE I.H: This Is Not the One You've Been Waiting For"

Self Released

While Illuminati Hotties’ sophomore album was billed as a “mixtape” released to free Sarah Tudzin from her recording contract, it’s a testament to their charm and wit that this set of rippers is among the best albums released this year. With songs that jab against contractual injustice as well as industry sleaze and bad moral conduct at large, Tudzin does it all with a smirk and an innate ability to shred sludgy pop. Built on sarcasm but also very thinly veiled bite, the album rips from one impeccably catchy moment to the next. No scum invited. This might be not the one you’ve been waiting for, but it might be exactly the one we were waiting for. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

MISTER GOBLIN | "I Used To Play In A Punk Band"

Self Released

Following hot on the heels of Mister Goblin’s exceptional Is Path Warm? album, the project returns with the short, sweet, and essential, I Used To Play In A Punk Band EP. The collaborative solo project of Sam Woodring (Two Inch Astronaut) has become a showcase for his songwriting capabilities and his ability to effortlessly combine elements of swooning pop, post-hardcore, and earnest singer-songwriter tropes, bending everything to his whim. This EP features band members old and new (Two Inch’s Matt Gatwood, Mister Goblin’s live members Leah Gage and Kjell Hansen), offering added support to a cliff’s notes glimpse into the many facets of Woodring’s songs. From the energetic “Punk Band” and it’s look into the not so great and not so welcoming time spent playing punk as a teenager, to the bubbling emotive escape of “The Only Thing” and the explored themes of aging and deterioration on “Senescence,” it’s clear this isn’t an EP built on youthfulness, but more a reflection of what was and what comes next. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

MOTH | "Machine Nation"

Marthouse Records

Moth is the creative project of Darcy Berry, known for his punchy drumming in Melbourne’s strikingly different but equally excellent Gonzo and U-Bahn. Moth became known for their chaotic live performances around Melbourne, Berry fleshing out the bare bones of the project with talent from bands such as Alien Nosejob and Body Maintenance, but enough of the pull and dynamism remains on this new record. Where Sonic Youth imagined us as a ‘Daydream Nation’ on the cusp of the ‘90s, Moth sees the Machine Nation now: we’re still disillusioned. Four tracks, barely reaching ten minutes. It’s a quick but haywire ride, with Moth creating music that strives for and stays on the edge. Moth know we’re living in a digital dystopia, or are at least on our way to one; the dissonance and motorik drone they conjure is merely a reflection of this. One constantly feels a pervading paranoia when listening to Machine Nation, as each track thrusts swiftly past our awareness. - Conor Lochrie || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

PROTOMARTYR | "Ultimate Success Today"

Domino Records

Protomartyr sounds absolutely massive throughout Ultimate Success Today. The instrumentals hit with precision; look no further than the guitar attack of “Processed By The Boys” and “I Am You Now,” or the push and pull of “Modern Business Hymns”. Joe Casey sounds like vintage Nick Cave, delivering fire and brimstone truths over the din. It’s stadium rock for the era of quarantine. Although the album was written and recorded before the Coronavirus pandemic really picked up steam, it feels like the band anticipated the chaos of 2020. Lyrics talk about “foreign disease washed upon the beach” and “riots in the streets”. The spectre of the cops lingers in the background of “June 21,” which refers to police sirens piercing through the summer night. Death and capitalism and technology hover at the edges of other tracks. It’s an album that has encapsulated much of the uncertainty that permeates our lives. - David Wilikofsky || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SUMAC | "St Vitus 09/07/2018"

Sige Records

It’s no small accomplishment to land a live record on a year end list, but there’s nothing small about this colossal SUMAC performance. Captured in the fall of 2018 at St. Vitus in Brooklyn, this recording transports us back to a time when we could feel actual catharsis in a live setting, where volume, brutality, and beauty all combine to create something whole, the physical embodiment of power, emotion, and tension snapping into a million pieces. SUMAC are one of experimental metal’s great mood shifting bands, working between the poles of meditative drone and monstrous fury with a balance that tips and topples under brilliant control. Having been lucky enough to actually attend this show (one of the best I’ve ever seen), it’s a gift that keeps on giving being able to relive each quaking moment from one of heavy music’s most forward thinking bands. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

THANYA IYER | "Kind"

Topshelf Records

There’s enough beauty to last a life time on Thanya Iyer’s sophomore album, KIND. The multi-talented singer/violinist has created a piece of astounding depth, with plucked strings, personal reflections, and sweeping atmosphere. There’s an unwavering feeling of soul and humanity in Iyer’s words and structures, even when dipping into other realms of existence. KIND is that type of album you can live inside, where the rest of your concerns melt away, because everything finally makes sense, every tangled emotion becomes fluid, and a sense of calm is welcomed. Reminiscent to the wonderful Renata Zeiguer, its the flourishes of psychedelic groove (“My Mind Keeps Running”) and experimental pop (“Into The Water”) that really transport us into a better existence. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

further listening:

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Featured

ANGEL OLSEN | "Whole New Mess"

Jagjaguwar Records

Whole New Mess is Angel Olsen’s fifth full length release, and the majority is made up of re-interpretations of songs from her most recent album All Mirrors. On this release Olsen is solely by herself which hearkens back to her earlier days and is a departure from her recent albums which contain lusher production values. As Olsen’s career has progressed, she has trodden many paths with her inquisitive songwriting and powerful vocals always at the fore, no matter how elaborate the production has grown or how varied the stylistic shifts. Whole New Mess allows Olsen to show off how versatile she is as a musician and vocalist in the barest of settings and how the strength of her songwriting and melodic prowess never wavers. - Kris Handle || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

BLACKLISTERS | "Fantastic Man"

Learning Curve / Buzzhowl Records

Take our word for it, Leeds’ Blacklisters are the best noise rock band on the planet. Hell, they may just be one of the best bands of any genre, but near anything I say about them will sound like hyperbole (it isn’t), so perhaps just have yourself a listen. Their third full length album, Fantastic Man, is their first new LP in five years (with a great stop gap EP in 2017). The band continue their masterful approach at remaining willingly off the rails, but they do it with menace void of machismo, aiming just about all their efforts at showing just how dumb being tough looks. The album is a heavily nuanced version of everything we’ve come to expect from the quartet - disarmingly slurred and blood curdling vocals that stumble between deadpan hilarity and a sardonic look at society, impenetrably dense rhythms, and guitars that feel both discordant and violently melodic. It’s primal and yet brilliant. Corrosive but lacking self-seriousness. The band have a sense of humor and it’s a great one. The album opens with “Sports Drinks” and ends with “Mambo No. 5” (which is… not a cover). Nearly every line drips in sarcasm, a constant needling of self-important people. Dare I say, it’s another biting classic. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

THE CRADLE | "Laughing In My Sleep"

NNA Tapes

There is something so purely free and unfettered about The Cradle’s latest LP for NNA Tapes, Laughing In My Sleep. Drawing from various worlds of music, Laughing is an eclectic listen made up of medieval melodies and Éthiopiques-inspired polyrhythms. Paco Cathcart equally embraces olden folk tunes as much as he does avant-garde / post-punk experiments. This album is a weirdo’s wet dream — if Arthur Russell and Gary Wilson made a record together I think it would sound something like this. Laughing boasts an impressive 21 tracks, and as mentioned before the record is quite eclectic (i.e., Cathcart jumps around a lot, stylistically speaking). The real ‘meat’ of the album, however, is comprised of hi-fi(ish) bluesy folk songs. - James Fast || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DOUBLE GRAVE | "Goodbye, Nowhere!"

Forged Artifacts

On Goodbye, Nowhere!, the sophomore record from Minneapolis’ Double Grave, emptiness faces a reckoning. The trio – Jeremy Warden (guitars/vocals), Bree Meyer (bass), and Seth Tracy (drums/production) – has been working towards Goodbye, Nowhere! for nearly half a decade, starting as Ego Death and evolving into Double Grave. Each subsequent release has brought them closer to perfecting their form of existential shoegaze. Their goal is to swallow you in reverb and bury you in feedback. Warden’s lyrics have always depicted the different ways in which we become untethered – from ourselves, from our loved ones, from time itself. There aren’t answers to be found on Goodbye, Nowhere! Rather than misleading with false solutions, Double Grave demonstrates the necessity of questioning, of facing that uncertainty head-on. - Wes Muilenburg || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

FACELESS BURIAL | "Speciation"

Dark Descent Records

There’s been a resurgence of bands committed to classic 90’s death metal and perhaps no one is doing quite on the level of Faceless Burial. The Melbourne based band released their third album, Speciation, via Dark Descent Records (Spectral Voice, Blood Incantation) and the record is a relentless barrage of shifting riffs and primal intensity. With an unflinching focus and direction, the trio claw and shred with unholy strength, blasting through their own death metal perfection of garbled vocals, complex drum fills, and some of the best damn guitar playing I’ve heard from a metal release this year. There’s a touch of psych thrown in every now and then, but Faceless Burial keep it relatively classic, digging into the primordial ooze and spewing out a dexterous filth. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

HELVETIA | "This Devastating Map"

Joyful Noise Recordings

Jason Albertini may be a member of Duster, and he may have played in Built to Spill, but all his finest work has come via the ever inspirational Helvetia, a project that has stayed as delightfully askew yet brilliant since it’s earliest days. From it’s lo-fi beginning to it’s slightly less lo-fi current state, Albertini has been on an incredible run where it has truly seen each and every record is getting impossibly better, with the last few full lengths earning classic status as far as we are concerned. This Devastating Map follows in that tradition, arguably Albertini’s best work yet, a record that takes the bleak yet kaleidoscopic world of Helvetia’s many textures and careful tonality shifts and collages them into deconstructed pop. There’s something new to appreciate with every single listen, from the transportive lyrics to the bent melodies and warm tape hum. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

KNOT | "Knot"

EIS Records

Sometimes out of the ashes rises something even more astonishing and beautiful than that was once before it, Knot prove that axiom to be wholly true. With their self-titled debut, Knot, the quartet of Jonah Furman, Aaron Ratoff, Ian Becker, and Joe Demanuelle-Hall have made an album full of intense questioning, rising anger and reveling in a universal interconnectedness. Furman and Demanuelle-Hall’s guitars weave in and out of each other through slithering and tension laden leads and chunking chording behind a steadfast and pounding rhythm section. This record reckons with how people interact and treat each other in a society that always seems to be on the edge of collapse/change and examines how structures in life need prodding and cajoling to progress. - Kris Handel || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

MACH-HOMMY | "Mach's Hard Lemonade"

Self Released

The myth and mystery around Mach-Hommy looms large, from his outspoken interviews to the way he values his releases ($222.22 for an LP… yet people are buying), but it should never overshadow his gift as an MC. This year he released the willfully underground Mach’s Hard Lemonade, an album only available to his “investors” (aka those who bought it) and folks with a Tidal account. The album, a concise 22 minutes, finds the NJ rapper in top form, delivering darts over dusty piano loops and disorienting backdrops that feel as much a part of his painting as his words, the tapestry of the album revolving around it’s own beat, effortlessly proving why his stock is only rising as Mach-Hommy never wastes a moment, lacing each tracking high concept and stream of consciousness narratives. - DG || LISTEN: Tidal

MARLOWE | "Marlowe 2"

Mello Music Group

Back in 2018, the duo of Solemn Brigham and L’Orange came together to form Marlowe, releasing their self-titled debut via Mello Music Group, which proved to be one of that year’s best hip-hop records. Brigham, a relatively unknown MC at the time proved to be one of the best lyricists coming out the South, with his NC drawl working an array of dynamic flows, capable of shifting his delivery to any of L’Orange’s dusty sampled beats while keeping his words forever pointed. The two are back with Marlowe 2, another treat from a pair that should be making mainstream headlines. The songs take the producer’s patch work samples and creates something funky and soulful for Brigham to run wild over, his flow bouncing around and spitting with dexterity. it’s an ever shifting playground for Brigham to flex the diversity of his lyricism and the elastic nature of his delivery. His words, often poetic and acerbic, dart around the dusty L’Orange samples. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

NECROT | "Mortal"

Tankcrimes Records

Mortal is a record that could only be made nine years into Necrot’s existence. Their progression has been one of increments, dating back to the 2016 release The Labyrinth … By the time Blood Offerings came in 2017, the band had already made the next crucial step of adding a guitarist, creating a new dynamic and adding an interplay to keep things interesting. Now, three years later, the band came ready to pulverize the listeners in new ways. They had spent several years touring, becoming even tighter as a band. “Your Hell” sets the precedent for the listener and is a lesson in how to riff without bludgeoning the listener so much that it becomes boring. Necrot earns every second though. If you choose to only listen to one death metal record this year, this should be the one. - Hugo Reyes || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

NO JOY | "Motherhood"

Joyful Noise Recordings

Motherhood, the first full-length LP from the project in five years, is genre-mixing ear candy. Still here are the shoegaze influences, but they are sweetly complimented by everything from nu-metal to chamber pop. Now appearing as a solo endeavor, Jasamine White-Gluz seems to expand the project's horizons. 2015’s More Faithful was, dare I say, a more faithful adherence to dream pop and post punk and doesn’t appear nearly as open-minded as Motherhood stylistically. As stated before, we’re presented with various experimentations of genre, dynamics, and structure. Take the track “Four” for example. The third single off the album, it’s a glorious trip hop fever dream. Through pitched vocal samples, baby laughs, and an epic nu-metal breakdown, we hear an artist who loves embracing sounds that are loud and luscious. - Andy Ciardella || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

OCEANATOR | "Things I Never Said"

Plastic Miracles

On Things I Never Said, her full length debut album as Oceanator, Elise Okusami creates the kind of music that would have played best in DIY venues. It’s scrappy, melodic rock music that wears its heart on its sleeve. What really makes these songs stand out is the writing. Okusami juxtaposes deeply personal, confessional songwriting against apocalyptic imagery. There’s a crack in the world that everyone falls through, fires that burn everything to the ground, and suns that will never come up again. Amidst all the chaos real life plays out, often marred by sadness and uncertainty. The plainspoken quality of the writing makes it hit even harder; there isn’t any mincing of words or beating around the bush, even in the face of catastrophic upheaval. - David Wilikofsky || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SWEEPING PROMISES | "Hunger For a Way Out"

Feel It Records

Hunger for a Way Out, the debut album by Boston post-punk duo Sweeping Promises, is idiosyncratic in the (brilliant) extreme; recorded, as the Bandcamp description notes, in an unused concrete laboratory using a proprietary “single-mic technique,” it’s set in a sonic world all its own. All it takes to get you there is that first cymbal crash and a half-strangled guitar lick, but it spends ten solid tracks drawing you further in, as they boil new-wave neuroticism down to a science--and they make it so much fun. Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug have a long history of suddenly setting up shop in new aesthetic niches, and they know what they’re doing here. Their unique recording setup gives Hunger for a Way Out a singularly cloudy, vintage feeling, driven by punchy bass with swipes of synth and six-string. The guitar has a crushed, Dave Davies kind of distortion to it, like it was flattened under a cartoon anvil. The vocals are pure post-punk, with Mondal channeling strained nerves on the deviously catchy title track, and a more exaggerated, comical affectation on “Falling Forward,” with shades of Devo. - Taylor Ruckle || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

WIDOWSPEAK | "Plum"

Captured Tracks

It should be said that we consider Widowspeak’s self-titled album a classic at this point. Their 2011 debut was stunning upon release and it remains just as pivotal nine years later. In the years since, the band have been rearranging their sound, never content to create the same album twice, but they’ve kept the essence of what made that album special in tact, primarily Molly Hamilton’s forever dreamy vocals and their slow-drop cosmic Americana vibe that channels everything from Mazzy Star to Sam Evian, who actually produced the band’s latest album Plum. The record is a gorgeous reflection on both capitalism, the economy, and our environment, and it just may be the duo’s second classic effort. The band create a lush backdrop for mesmerizing arpeggiated guitar progressions, surfy reflection, and woodsy folk that’s never quiet as it seems. Everything is layered to great effect under Hamilton’s soft yet unmistakable voice, questioning the ideals of our capitalist society. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

Further Listening:

S E P T E M B E R :

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COREY FLOOD | "Hanging Garden"

Fire Talk Records

Corey Flood’s first full length album Hanging Garden is nine songs of off kilter yet stunning guitar pop from this Philadelphia based trio that hits touchstones of power-pop, hazy Flying Nun psych-pop and at times haunting post-punk. This LP follows a promising EP that showed a band that had some highly creative songwriting that was ready to truly grow into something remarkable with a little more nurturing. On these recordings Ivy Gray-Klein’s bass bops and slopes around Em Boltz’s jangling, wiry, and flexible at will guitar work that make it hard to do anything else but focus on their glory. Gray-Klein’s vocals are often somewhat laid-back in their approach but there is a melancholy in them that is striking and honest which adds a fascinating tone to the ear catching melodies in these songs. - Kris Handel || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DEERHOOF | "Love-Lore"

Joyful Noise Recordings

It hardly needs to be said that Deerhoof are one of music’s greatest living treasures and yet the band never stop reminding us. The band are always looking to recreate and reshape their sound through compositional shifts and an experimental streak that always proves rewarding. This is never more obvious than Love-Lore, an album of covers that truly is like no “covers album” that has ever existed before. Throughout 35 minutes of music, the band weave together interpolations of 43 different songs, works that build on their framework from Ornette Coleman to The B-52’s. Rather than a straightforward approach to paying homage to their influences, Deerhoof blend them seamlessly together like a DJ mash-up brought to life, as only they can. It’s wild, progressive, and infinitely joyous, picking and choosing the best moments becomes an impossible task (though The Jetsons theme is rather jaw dropping), as the fusion of songs becomes something so quintessential that they feel like they’ve been awaiting Deerhoof all along. “Cover albums” can usually be tossed aside but Love-Lore is a genuine masterpiece. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DEFTONES | "Ohms"

Reprise Records

Deftones hardly need our help in promotion. The legendary band returned with Ohms, their ninth overall album and their first in four years. This record felt like a triumphant return to form for the band, their best and most focused record in the decade since Diamond Eyes. While their last two efforts weren’t necessarily bad, they tended to float in a shoegazey fog that failed to deliver the immediacy of the band at their most visceral. That aggression and brute strength returns on Ohms, an album that is as heavy as it is sonically adventurous, the band sounding cohesive and pulled together to create menacing shifts in texture, pulling their spacier tendencies back through the mud. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify

DERADOORIAN | "Find The Sun"

Anti- Records

Releasing her third solo album as Deradoorian (and first for Anti- Records), Angel Deradoorian decided to look toward Can and Damo Suzuki for influence this time around. The former Dirty Projectors member released Find The Sun in September, after a prolonged rollout that began in March, thanks to pandemic related delays. Consider it a slight blessing in disguise that we got to spend extra time with this one. The first single mined that Can inspiration to perfection. “Saturnine Night” is a tightly wound krautrock song, chugging along with a hypnotic rhythm and vocals that color between the lines. Deradoorian’s voice does gymnastics as the pulse beats ever onward, with tension mounting in the build up that keeps a steely demeanor as it all starts to boil over. It’s a great example of extended repetition working to create substance, driving deeper and taking the controls, one highlight of many on a record that feels like transcending this astral plane for the next. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DIG NITTY | "Reverse of Mastery"

EIS Records

Reverse of Mastery is the first full length release from NYC garage-psych trio Dig Nitty, and it is one that shows a band willing to wholeheartedly explore sonic and melodic territories with extraordinarily little apprehension. The exploratory feeling the music imbues allows for a wide-ranging aural trip from loping folk blues to the occasional psych-punk freak outs. Erin McGrath’s vocals swoop and flow over everything switching from a laid-back cool to pensive and dripping with emotions. Dig Nitty are a band that is hard to get a true grip on, but also thrive in alternating playfulness with despair and whatever else their moods allow for. Dig Nitty have crafted a record that treads its own path and plays with pacing and melodies that lead to a unique and intriguing listen. - Kris Handel || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

EXHALANTS | "Atonement"

Hex Records

If nothing else, let this year go down as the one where the underground (you know, the people in the know) crowned Austin’s Exhalants as one of noise rock’s undeniable best bands. The trio released their sophomore album, Atonement, via Hex Records, another flawless example of the genre’s dense and primal characteristics done right, with a touch of art punk, post-hardcore, and brawn that’s always balanced with brain. From their sense of tonality to the dynamic approach to their songwriting (something that can otherwise plague noise rock), Exhalants are forever changing shape, but keep things consistent with volume, force, and intense tension. They are a national treasure and it’s about time they get recognized as such. The record is a furious take on their post-hardcore inclinations, calling to mind heavyweights like Unwound and Tar, as they wrap themselves in complex structures that ripple their framework and rebuild it anew. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

LAWN | "Johnny"

Community Records / Muscle Beach

Johnny, the second full length effort from the New Orleans group Lawn, is a sprawling album with continuous shifts in dynamics that surprise the listener as the two main songwriters trade turns showcasing their distinctive but harmonious styles of songwriting. It’s an album of contrasting styles, at once pop and post-punk influenced. The result is an innovative amalgam of the most appealing elements of both genres. The second track, “Honest to God/Paper” is the perfect example of those dynamics. It begins as a haunting piece with the repeated phrase “honest to god” over a simple but driving bass line as music continues to build. Its infectious mantra is difficult to lose even after you’ve finished listening. The song then song erupts into its post-punk, Mission of Burma style second act that jerks the listener from hypnosis and urges them to dance. Johnny is a fitting tapestry used to knit their influences out into a bigger expression. - Dominic Acito || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

LOMELDA | "Hannah"

Double Double Whammy

The whole of Lomelda’s new record, Hannah, is not all so immediately inviting as “Hannah Sun,” some even preferring to keep you at a distance, but, like “Hannah Sun',' it all feels so naturalistic, so full of fluid spontaneous contradictions, that you become a willing victim the to push and pull … There are production quirks, layered, expert musicianship, and even some playful asides, but this is a record of feeling as much as performance. Look no further than the “Hannah” triptych that weaves throughout the album, beginning with the aforementioned “Hannah Sun” and continuing with “Hannah Happiest” and “Hannah Please”. The obvious narrative is well, obvious. Lomelda is Hannah Read and this is Hannah asserting herself beyond the pseudonymous character she has created, but it’s not that simple. Many of the best records find a way to show rather than tell, but Hannah finds a way to feel without explanation and in turn, pass that feeling onto us, in all its disjointed, nonsensical, and wonderful complexities, and that’s about as revelatory as you can get. - Sean Fennell || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

OSEES | "Protean Threat"

Castle Face Records

If the Osees ever decided to sit back and rest on a proven formula for an album or two, no one would blame them, but that’s just not who they are and how John Dwyer does things. They’ve been at it for nearly two decades (under one spelling or another) and for the most part they’ve yet to recreate a previous release. Their latest, Protean Threat, is a bugged out ripper, and a welcome shift following the jammier elements and longform wandering of last year’s Face Stabber. The band don’t waste a second of their new album, an all crushing and convulsing release of propulsive energy. Take album opener “Scramble Suit II” which pretty much kicks down the door with a double drum blast beat and a swarming guitar that’s so saturated in fuzz and static that it feels like the demolition of space and time itself. The song continues to jittery and spasm in the verses, peeling back the attack momentarily, but retaining the same sense of cataclysmic force and the album follows suit. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SAD13 |"Haunted Painting"

Wax Nine / Carpark Records

For the most part, Haunted Painting sees a return to Slugger’s accessible hooks and abundant instrumentation but with much more focus, refinement and filled space. Written and recorded in various places during 2019, the record finds Sadie Dupuis chewing on some bitter pills of that year, both political and personal, and it unknowingly resonates very strongly amidst 2020’s glum backdrop. Take for example the now highly relevant single, “Ghost (Of a Good Time),” self-described as a “glossy party song about wanting to stay in”. Dupuis gives her case for the introvert over sparkling synths, mood-swinging time changes and cheery ad-libs provided by tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus. On the catchy chorus progression of “WTD,” which is perhaps the album’s highpoint, she calls out the ignorant culprits of climate gentrification, singing “And if I've had enough of flora and fauna / then what is the drama?” Dupuis explores even deeper emotions on tracks such as “Good Grief” and “The Crow” written respectively in response to the untimely deaths of her father and the late musician, David Berman. The latter, with its odd signature, hard hitting digital drums and detuned distortion is Haunted Painting’s most ‘haunting’ moment. - Matthew Gilberto || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SLEEPER & SNAKE | "Fresco Shed"

Upset The Rhythm / Lulu’s Sonic Disc Club

Melbourne’s Sleeper & Snake released their second album, Fresco Shed, a record that stands among the fall’s best and most underrated releases. The duo of Amy Hill and Al Montfort (who between them play in Terry, Lower Plenty, Constant Mongrel, and Primo!) have created a creaky psych folk record that is built as much on no-wave as anything traditionally song-based… and yet folk music it is at its core. It’s in this unwieldy approach that Sleeper & Snake sound distinct, taking discordant cello, keys, and horns to create a back drop for acoustics and their voices. The lo-fi recordings are reminiscent White Fence and Monfort’s Lower Plenty, opting for something that feels surreal yet grounded. There are unexpected twists to be heard at every turn, but no matter the noise that permeates throughout, their songs land with well crafted lyrics and folk tradition set in reverse. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SPRAIN | "As Lost Through Collision"

The Flenser

Sprain’s eclectic blend of slowcore, art rock, and wall-of-sound feedback is refreshingly new, and the five songs are focused and deliberate. As Lost Through Collision is a cathartic release from a band creating relentless and inventive music. Accurately describing the music of Sprain is tough, but it’s roughly comparable to the melancholy of Duster and the brutality of Swans. The music is just as melodic as it is piercing, and the emotional intensity of each song is almost tangible. It sounds as though the band put everything on the table while recording, determined to explore all sonic directions. While much heavier than their four song EP, As Lost Through Collision finds the band digging deeper into their sound, and the resulting songs are an amazing introduction to a group that’s unafraid to test musical boundaries. - Ian McPhee || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

Further Listening:

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ALIEN NOSEJOB | "Once Again The Past Becomes The Present"

Anti Fade / Iron Lung Records

Alien Nosejob, the anything goes solo project of Jake Robertson (Ausmuteants, Hierophants, School Damage), returns with a new full length, Once Again The Present Becomes The Past, via Anti Fade and Iron Lung Records. While January’s Suddenly Everything Is Twice As Loud stretched out the garage elements of the project with hooks galore and ramshackle catchiness, Robertson’s second full length of the year returns to the agitated hardcore of last year’s HC45. This general vibe and sound may just be our favorite of Robertson’s many sides, somewhat like the punk fury of Ausmuteants but without the charming artsiness. Which isn’t meant as negative, this is primal, it’s crusty, and yet it’s full of character that is instantly recognizable. The album is built on lo-fi hardcore at breakneck speed, oozing with corrosive riffs and depraved howling that isn’t so much heavy as it is rattled and jittery. Alien Nosejob is making hardcore music fun, and there aren’t a lot of bands you can say that about. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

BARTEES STRANGE | "Live Forever"

Memory Music

Bartees Strange, real name Bartees Cox Jr, mastermind behind Live Forever, has presumably lived what has felt like numerous lifetimes already. Born to an opera singer mom and military dad in Ipswich, England 1989, his family moved around constantly in his early years, living in Germany, Greenland, and a number of states across America before settling down in Mustang, Oklahoma, where he found himself surrounded by Christianity and racial tension. Strange has talked about how he learned over the years not to pigeon-hole himself into any expectations set by society. It’s this non-conforming spirit that makes Live Forever so great ... To wit, Live Forever has a little bit of everything. There are traces of Kid A/Amnesiac-era Radiohead, early 2000s R&B, soft-spoken Bon Iver, 90s house, and even grungy Death Grips-type shit. The lines between genres are blurred from track to track and sometimes within the songs themselves. - Jeff Yerger || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

BENNY THE BUTCHER | "Burden of Proof"

Griselda Records / Empire

Last year Benny The Butcher released The Plugs I Met, which ended up being our favorite hip-hop record of the year. This year Griselda pretty much took over, with a constant stream of street releases from Westside Gunn, and Conway The Machine. The Butcher kept us waiting until the fall to drop his first album, Burden of Proof (aside from his BSF crew release). The record, which is entirely produced by Hit-Boy is definitely a push into the mainstream, and while we’d rather hear Benny rhyming over grimy Daringer beats with the Griselda crew than high profile “hit making” beats with Lil Wayne and Big Sean, we understand the crossover at hand. Lucky for everyone, Benny The Butcher still remains among the best lyricists, spitting gangster rap from a life lived in the streets and the rise to fame. I have a lot of thoughts about this record, but Benny’s raw talent is never an issue. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify

CHUCK STRANGERS | "Too Afraid to Dance"

Sounds of Beverly

Following the supremely underrated Consumers Park back in 2018, Brooklyn’s Chuck Strangers (of PRO ERA) returns with the impeccable (but all too short) Too Afraid to Dance, out via his own newly established label. In those two years it seems that Chuck Strangers’ approach has taken a turn. He’s still a great lyricist, but less dependent on boom-bop 90’s hip-hop, instead pushing into the lo-fi and surreal rap of peers like Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blue, and Mach-Hommy. There’s a very experimental nature to the beats on this record, many without much drums at all, and Chuck Strangers leaves his mark on all of them, with bars that ride the beat even as it simply floats into the abyss. Nothing is off limits, with tracks that crackle like a DIY basement recording, to rhymes that sound coated in codeine, everything a dynamic mix of dreamy psychedelic art rap and hard-bodied rhymes. - DG || LISTEN: Spotify

FLOATING ROOM | "Tired And True"

Self Released

A lot has happened for Maya Stoner and Floating Room since the release of their last album, False Baptism, back in the summer of 2018. That album crept up as a personal favorite, but change can be a good thing and sometimes shedding the excess weight of people that offer more harm than good can be just the breath of fresh air that’s needed. For Stoner, that came while writing and recording the band’slatest effort, Tired and True, as the project became Stoner’s alone, void of previous bandmates and her participation with her former label. The new record is Floating Room distilled to it’s core, picking up the same magic as before but with a clearer vision, one less buried in the shoegaze fog. The jagged instrumentation works without being too rattled, leaving the pop essence in place while dazzling with shifted tempos, truly great guitar leads, and dynamic songwriting that is so good you immediately want to start the record over again. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

GEN POP | "PPM66"

Post Present Medium

Olympia punk band Gen Pop released their full length debut, PPM66, which is also convientantly the catalog number for the album, due out on Post Present Medium, the revived label run by No Age’s Dean Spunt. While they’ve released records with Lumpy, Upset The Rhythm, and Feel it Records, the band have upped the fidelity a bit for this one, sounding better than they ever have before but staying true to form. Look no further than lead single and album opener “Bell Book Candle,” opening with a bouncing bass line and a corrosive dose of guitar distortion, before the reverb sets in on the blunt vocals. With the band’s duel vocals placed directly on top on another it creates an added layer of chaos, the entire song weaving toward an impossible tension that doesn’t quite resolve. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

HOLY MOTORS | "Horse"

Wharf Cat Records

Estonia’s finest, Holy Motors, returned with their sophomore full length album, Horse, via the always intriguing Wharf Cat Records (Palberta, Public Practice, Macula Dog). Channeling the dark and dreamy atmospheres of Mazzy Star before them, the band play a mixture of lulling, haunting, and expansive slowcore, built on twang and Lauri Raus’ beautiful voice. The entire album is brilliant, a continuation of what they began on Slow Sundown, but with a finer attention to detail and ambiance. The songs are both meditative and surreal, a hard cracked dreamscape of country fried shoegaze that would make David Lynch proud. The glory is in the details, from the ever so slight vocal melody shifts to the surfed out guitar warbles. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

MAGIK MARKERS | "2020"

Drag City Records

Back in July, Magik Markers returned after a seven year absence with a surprise EP, Isolated From Exterior Time: 2020 released via their long time home at Drag City Records. When we wrote about the single “Machine” we ended the blurb saying that we hoped the band were truly back and that the EP wasn’t a one off release tossed out into the world. The Western Mass band didn’t keep us waiting too long to find out and, great news, they’ve released a triumphant full length, titled 2020. The record is a brilliant return to form, built on songs that sprawl out for extended freak outs and no-wave meets psych delights. The trick to Magik Markers however is that the chaos is all wrapped hand in hand with beautiful songs that otherwise feel gentle or even at times lulling. It’s hypnotic, unnerving, and compelling all at once, shifting from strength to strength of each member, from sonic assault to dreamy ballads and the result of mashing the two together. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

MIRANDA WINTERS | "All-Purpose"

EIS Records

Miranda Winters – a veteran of Chicago DIY, best known for her work with Melkbelly – makes surprising, knotty music. She’s a smart guitarist with an affinity for tricky rhythms and phrases. With two Melkbelly LPs and one solo LP under her belt, she’s a master of the kind of idiosyncratic alt-rock we might associate with Lily Konigsberg, Sadie Dupuis, or Emily Yacina. Her impressive new single All-Purpose’s twin tracks celebrate awe. Awe in daily life, awe in the act of writing. Awe in the strange pleasure of free-association. Miranda wanders from one thought to the next, refusing clear-cut beginnings and ends. Her lyrics stick to disparate objects and impressions like scattered flour. At first, the trail is hard to follow. There’s no obvious direction, especially since there are no drums in Miranda’s solo work. She meanders intentionally, of course, and she does it well. - Maria Bobbitt-Chertock || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

OPTIONS | "Window's Open"

Self Released

Seth Engel, the ever prolific musician and producer, released his second Options album of the year, the magnificent Window’s Open. It’s another brilliantly somber record that blends intricate songwriting with a lo-fi warble that washes over Engel’s technicality like a blanket of accessibility. Case in point, “Warm,” the first single and album opener. It’s a fantastic first impression for the album and to the dynamics that make Options one of the Chicago underground’s best bands. Opening with a molasses tempo and a hazy melody that recalls the slow dripped beauty of Horse Jumper of Love, Engel swoons with a lulling performance, one that feels fragile, as though it could crumble without warning. As the track ebbs and flows amid layers of sustained drift, the song makes a break for it in the second half, toppling forward and back again with detached fills and a unique pacing that is cause for repeat listens. The rest of the loop heavy record follows in this wake, drifting and exploding, but always in fine form. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SMALL BILLS | "Don't Play It Straight"

Mello Music Group

New York rapper ELUCID works at a very prolific pace, between solo releases and as one-half of Armand Hammer (whose Shrines is also among the year’s best hip-hop albums), and now as the MC behind his latest duo, Small Bills. Together with Detroit based producer The Lasso, the two released their collaborative debut, Don’t Play It Straight, via the ever reliable Mello Music Group (Marlowe, Homeboy Sandman, Che’ Noir). It’s a refreshingly weird hip-hop album, with the kitchen sink of influences coming together on The Lasso’s production. He incorporates everything from stubbed toe jazz, funk, and dust-bin psych to create something reminiscent to Organized Noize meets Dilla, but always standing unique in it’s mutant fusion. ELUCID uses the beats as a playground for his raw delivery, as he floats in and out of focus, delivering lyrics in both guttural punchlines and spaced out exploration. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SMARTS | "Who Needs Smarts, Anyway?"

Anti Fade / Feel It Records

The Australian punk invasion continues, proving over and over again that they do it better down under. With Anti Fade Records at the heart of the never ending flood of exceptional bands popping up, it is only fitting that Smarts, the latest and greatest Melbourne based, “egg punk” tinged, post-punk band comes from none other than the label’s founder, Billy Gardner. Together with members of label favorites Parsnip and Ausmuteants/Alien Nosejob, the band are released Who Needs Smarts, Anyway?, the follow up their 2018 demo, a kinetic fusion of jerky and tangled post-punk that’s brimming with bite but balanced by unbridled joy. It’s sarcastic and biting, drawing from bands and labels like Uranium Club, Lumpy Records, and their own rattled punk catalogs. Each song is hyper pressurized and exploding at the seems with tight rhythms, buzzing riffs, and anthemic shouted vocals that stick with you everywhere you go. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

SUMAC | "May You Be Held"

Thrill Jockey

SUMAC, our favorite three headed behemoth have once again blurred all lines with May You Be Held, their latest in a line of growing masterpieces. The band’s take on art metal, sludge, hardcore, drone, and noise is reconstructed with spacial complexities as well as a combination of improvised and developed movements. After a handful of albums together (and a pair with Keiji Haino), the band share a synchronized wave length, able to reflect and react upon the most delicate of drifts to the absolute heaviest collisions, merging the two together. The record is lumbering and corrosive, unpredictable in shape and intensity, and it feels like another spiritual awakening from metal’s most brilliant band. May You Be Held is a record built on positivity, from family to the earth itself, it’s a colossal record with the intention of healing, and I know that I’ve been feeling better since listening to it with regularity. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

USA NAILS | "Character Stop"

Hex Records

London noise rock luminaries USA Nails released their latest full length, Character Stop, via Hex Records and Bigout Records. The band’s fifth full length album in six years (among a never ending parade of EPs and singles) keeps their prolific pace up while continuing to evolve the band’s sound ever so slightly into new ever more dense territory. The record was announced with lead single “Revolution Worker” and followed with “I Don’t Own Anything,” a pair of songs that show a political focus to the album, even if it is bled through biting sarcasm and buzzsaw riffs that scrape like rust. Over deviant grooves, the band punch against consumerism and modern life as a product. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

WENDY EISENBERG | "Auto"

Ba Da Bing Records

The virtuosic Wendy Eisenberg has released a lot of music since their band Birthing Hips dissolved. The albums have ranged from avant-garde guitar compositions (that have earned Eisenberg a position among the intellectual elite), to lo-fi bedroom pop, and Editrix’s tangled post-hardcore (which has earned them a position among our slightly less intellectual elite). Auto, released via Ba Da Bing Records (Katie Von Schleicher, Youbet, She Keeps Bees), is Eisenberg’s first studio recorded set of “song” based music (rather than improvised), and the entire set is utterly stunning and impressively realized. Eisenberg shows why they are considered such an incredible guitarist, swerving between movements and sections with complex arrangements that manage to sound fluid and natural. The softly spoken vocals rage into an explosive and menacing tornado at times, before surging back into tranquility and wrapping itself further into a knot. It’s a wild ride that demands to be listened to over and over again. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

ZOOMDWEEBY | "Traffic EP"

Self Released

Back in August, Steakhouse Records released the You’re Gonna Be Great compilation and from it’s 51 tracks, ZOOMDWEEBY’s “Beasts (demo)” really stood out to me. The solo project of Victor Artesona (who previously played drums in Pupppy) has since release their debut EP, Traffic, a real gem of psych tinged bedroom pop. The record features some familiar collaborators including Julian Fader (Ava Luna), Nick Llobet (Youbet), Lucie Murphy (Poise), and more, but it’s Artesona’s lo-fi bent-pop songs that bring it to life. The lead single, “Money God,” is the perfect example - bright and fuzzy, with a gentle sort of chaos that begins with a twangy charm and bursts to life with a reserved jangle and textures that pop in and out, reflecting the song’s lyrical sentiment of “going insane” that we can all relate to. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

Further Listening:

N O V E M B E R :

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ALPHA HOPPER | "Alpha Hex Index"

Hex Records

If nothing else, this year has at least introduced me to a lot of new bands (much like every year before it). While Alpha Hopper have been releasing great records since 2014, this was the year that I first heard them, and there’s no turning back. Their latest full length album, Alpha Hex Index, is another crushing addition to the band’s stellar catalog of noise punk records that simultaneously disgust and delight. It’s loud, aggressive, and willingly irritating, and it just melts our hearts with joy in the process. The Buffalo quartet - Irene Rekhviashvili (vocals), John Toohill (guitar) Ryan McMullen (guitar), and Douglas Scheider (drums) have boiled down the finer elements of noise rock, no wave. and art-punk to create something so distinctly their own, while paying homage to the sordid style of early 90’s AmRep and Touch & Go favorites. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

ANNA MCCLELLAN | "I Saw First Light"

Father/Daughter Records

In 2020, Anna McClellan invites us back into her world, cool removal thrown to the wind once again. Welcome to I Saw First Light, where the heat has broken and the air has thinned. McClellan and friends kick around touching piano confessionals, capturing two somewhat contrasting ideas: one’s smallness in the world, and one’s largeness in the minutiae of daily life. The record begins with McClellan at the helm. She yields a purposefully more relaxed sound, the spunk of community theater. The informality directly combats the constant pressure to suppress oneself, as seems to be a frequent concern on First Light … The real substance of the record, however, mostly comes in smaller pangs. Rather than fantasize about large-scale impact, McClellan humbles herself against the immensity of her surroundings. Instead, she begs to hold weight in day to day interactions and personal relationships. Pondering her place in the world only amplifies her desire for connection, her motivation to dive all in. - Reggie Bender || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

CHRONOPHAGE | "Th'Pig'Kiss'd Album"

Cleta Patra Records

If Richard Linklater’s seminal 1990 film Slacker - which flitted between the hopeful artists and youthful misfits that made up Austin, Texas - had been made two decades later, Chronophage would have been one of the groups of people the camera focused upon. Th’Pig’Kiss’d Album is their second full-length, following 2018’s Prolog for Tomorrow, and the chaotic lo-fi spirit remains intact … Chronophage’s music may be ramshackle but it’s all carried out with skill and charm. Their potent blend of left-field jangle pop and post-punk deserves a wider appreciative audience, the slackers who miss the haziness and laziness of college summer days or the late-aged musos who want to be reminded that quality guitar music still exists. - Conor Lochrie || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

DAVID NANCE | "Staunch Honey"

Trouble In Mind Records

Omaha legend David Nance is back with the follow up to the burly brilliance of 2018’s Peaced and Slightly Pulverized, an album that sat among that year’s absolute best releases. Staunch Honey finds Nance once again solo (while his last record was credited to David Nance Group), shifting away from the cosmic Americana sludge glory and back toward a dusty front-porch aura, one of open landscapes and bruised, bittersweet folk. Released once again via Trouble In Mind Records, the album is a call back to Nance’s self-recorded early days, laid to tape, with a skeletal structure that highlights the country twang in Nance’s home-cooked rumble. It’s a simplistic album (one that Nance said is the best representation of the music in his head) and all the better because of it, a well worn collection of melodies that bind together with stomped rhythms and tangled acoustics to blur Americana and outlaw country into something warm and endearing. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp } Spotify

HORSEGIRL | "Ballroom Dance Scene et cetera (Best of Horsegirl)"

Self Released

Three songs into being a band and Chicago’s Horsegirl have shared their “Best of Horsegirl,” conveniently collecting those three songs in place. A trio of teens combining post-punk and shoegaze in their own design, the band formed a little over a year ago and have slowly been releasing singles, each one building on the promise of what came before (one is amazingly named “Sea Life Sandwich Boy”). They’re off to an incredible start, with fully realized songwriting that is dense and alluring, falling away from pop structures but remaining infinitely accessible. They play with many nuanced ideas, counterpoint vocals, tight jangle, low sung melodies, stuttering rhythms, and intricate harmonies, and it looks like they are set up for buzz band acclaim. At least it will be well deserved. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

LAUNDROMAT | "Green EP"

Brace Yourself Records

Brighton, UK’s Laundromat released their second record of the year Green EP, which comes seven months after the infectious Blue EP (both of which are down to their last few copies on vinyl). The latest project of Toby Hayes (Eugene Quell, Shoes & Sock Off, Meet Me In St Louis), the band take retro-futurist post-punk influences in a mesmerizing direction, colored by motorik grooves and Hayes’ knack for perfectly layered guitars. “Bureau de Fatigue,” the record’s stand out track, is built on a dance beat, warped and filtered through Laundromat’s stylistic churn, soaring and bubbling under Hayes’ signature vocal arrangements. The song blips and skronks to perfection and we’re immediately transfixed by Hayes’ sharpened and up-beat lyrics that seemingly stem from shattered relationships. It’s the sound of moving forward, momentum at its best. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

LISA/LIZA | "Shelter of a Song"

Orindal Records

Like many whispery folk records of the last decade, Lisa/Liza’s Shelter should be understood in the context within which it was conceived and captured: it was recorded entirely live in the kitchen of a studio apartment in Central Maine. Featuring only Liza Victoria’s vocals and accompanied guitar, it’s almost as instrumentally scarce as a record can be. In the best way possible, it feels and sounds exactly like the conditions under which it was recorded; it’s stupidly intimate and strikingly nuanced. If there’s one thing about the album that sets it apart from its contemporaries, it’s Victoria’s willingness to be real and genuine in the recording process. On some occasions, like the majority of the verses on “From This Shelter“ and the outro to “I Am Handed Roses,“ the frets on her acoustic guitar buzz intermittently and slight vocal blemishes squeak through the mix. The record clearly wasn’t created in a pristinely controlled studio environment, but it doesn’t try to pretend that it was. As a result, Shelter is creaky, raw, and near-silent in all the right places. - Hayden Godfrey || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

MAMALARKY | "Mamalarky"

Fire Talk Records

After a slew of singles and EPs, Atlanta via Los Angeles’ Mamalarky released their self-titled full length debut via Fire Talk Records. The album picks up where the promise of their recent singles left off, matching the band’s twee jangle with heavier sludge pop and wonky lo-fi distortion that has their sound always wavering in the best of ways. Similar at times to bands ranging from Helvetia to Cherry Glazerr, the record is shrouded in echo and tape-y goodness one moment and crushing the next, all built on skittering drums and deeply infectious vocals melodies from the band’s mastermind Livvy Bennett. It’s kaleidoscopic pop music bent into discordant rock shape, full of hooks at every turn and sweetness matched with just a touch of sour. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

PINK SIIFU & FLY ANAKIN | "FlySiifu's"

Lex Records

In case anyone hasn’t noticed, a new renaissance of hip-hop has been building these last few years. Case in point, the emergence of Birmingham’s Pink Siifu and Richmond’s Fly Anakin, two shape shifting MCs that are capable of folding their style into any space needed. The two have come together to share their collaborative debut (though they both have prolific solo outputs), FlySiifu’s, an album that revolves around a conceptual theme of a record store, with our hosts flipping through the dustiest of bins to bring life to chilled out, psych influenced hip-hop, that is both boastful and thoughtful, offering perspective to the dreamy beats that crackle beneath them. The two MCs complement each other well, with flows that take their time, because they’re not in any rush to get anywhere anyway. FlySiifu’s packs in 22 tracks (with conceptual interludes included) that blend together for a seamless experience, like a Curren$y record with a bit more conscious thought and intelligent construction. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

Further Listening:

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ASTUTE PALATE | "Astute Palate"

Petty Bunco Records

Leave it to one of the last releases of the year to shred harder than all that has come before it. Astute Palate is a “supergroup” without the glitz and the subsequent bullshit. The band, comprised of David Nance, Emily Robb (Lantern), Daniel Provenzano (Writhing Squares), and Richie Charles (Watery Love, Clockcleaner) came together one fateful weekend in Philadelphia to write and record their self-titled debut (they played a show too). The result is one massively sprawling dose of endlessly ripping guitars, muscular blues, psych, and blown out punk. Everything is pushed to capacity, but it’s not just a free for all. The songs are there, well developed, and full of heft, with Nance and Robb trading off vocal duties throughout. An explosive record that pulls the best from everyone involved, we’d really love to see this live someday, though chances seem slim. At least we’ll forever have the record in which we can all collectively lose our minds to in a heap of barn burning enjoyment. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

STEVE HARTLETT | "Molting"

Self Released

Molting is the second solo effort of the year from Steve Hartlett, best known as the singer/guitarist for Ovlov and Stove. A collection of all the songs he’s written since heavy quarantine began back in April, it’s a brilliantly lo-fi glimpse into the intimate works of a great songwriter. These song’s are fairly skeletal but never simplistic. Hartlett experiments with programmed drums and some fun manipulated tape goodness to create something that sounds personal. Guitars still ring out with distortion, but it’s a cleaner, more streamlined approach to Hartlett’s songs than we’re used to, and the heart of them consistently shines through, with the lyrics the heavy focus on a record that feels airy and lightly centered. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

SQUITCH | "Learn To Be Alone"

Disposable America

Boston’s Squitch are one of the East Coast’s best kept secrets. If you already know them, you already love them. If you haven’t heard them yet, you will soon (and should). Learn To Be Alone is the trio’s sophomore full length, following a few scattered singles and a split EP. The record is a bold statement that deals with major life transitions and feeling dissociated from public definitions. Their words are important as they break down barriers with those closest to them and the world around them, doing so over a tangled and blistering blend of post-hardcore, mathy indie rock, and just a touch of noise pop that’s constantly hitting on sharp hooks and fractured rhythms. It’s a brilliant album from a band who deserves your attention, and while it isn’t out until New Year’s Eve, it certainly qualifies as a highlight of this year, sending us off with a knotted grace. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp

WREN KITZ | "Early Worm"

Sophomore Lounge / Feeding Tube Records

Vermont’s Wren Kitz released his latest album, Early Worm, this December via Sophomore Lounge (Frank & The Hurricanes, Huevos II, State Champion) and Feeding Tube Records (Big Blood, Banny Grove, Village of Spaces). Having released a collection of home recordings in 2018, the new record is the official follow up to 2017’s meditative Dancing On Soda Lake. Early Worm seems to bridge the gap between the two, combining Kitz’s knack for contemplative folk with a tape hiss warble and fuzzy psych leaning noise that wouldn’t be out of place on a Neil Young & Crazy Horse or even a Helvetia record. With effected vocals, the album feels awash in a haze, the textures ever floating, collapsing and contorting with an Americana grace at its core. There’s segments of noise, plenty of guitar shredding, and a down home feel that makes you want to instantly start the record over again. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

YOUR OLD DROOG | "Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition"

Mongoloid Banks

Your Old Droog and his frequent collaborators, Tha God Fahim and Mach-Hommy, have become three of the most consistently astounding MCs for the past few years. They take it back to the golden age of Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep, MF DOOM and Nas, a time where lyricism and rawness was celebrated over flashy presentation and R&B hooks. Following three albums in 2019, Your Old Droog returned with Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition, an album that embraces his Eastern European heritage (similar to way that Jewelry embraced his Jewish heritage). YOD really doesn’t give a shit about rap’s rigid rule book of what is and is not acceptable, and he proves throughout the album that he’s on another level altogether, with high concept rhymes and a thread of conscious thought that runs from the start to finish. The beat selection is great and not a moment is wasted as Droog embraces a culture foreign to hip-hop, releasing what is undeniably one of the year’s best hip-hop records in the process. - DG || LISTEN: Bandcamp | Spotify

Further Listening:

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Further Listening:

N O V E M B E R :

Further Listening:

D E C E M B E R :

Further Listening:

by: post-trash staff