Without giving consideration to the future or lack-there-of, it’s safe to say that Squitch have made their best record to date with Tumbledown Mountain, a collection of songs both personal and inherently complex. It’s an album that deals with the finality of things but as the band know, “it’s not the end.”
Ain’t shit pretty about Currency // Castration and that’s the beauty of it. The band’s third album is ensnared in filth and dissonance, at home amid the depravity, for better or worse, this is where we’re at and Geld aren’t delusional. Rather than collapse under the weight of it all, they chose to decimate, creating something that feels relevant and timeless.
The world of Squid Ink Sky lives in the moon’s glow, it fills the space at the end of the day reserved for late night sentiment. It’s the feeling of being alone with your thoughts, watching as your mind wanders from what could be to what is, and how it could have gone a million different ways between. It’s also astonishingly beautiful.
The band’s sixth full length album is drawn from life’s very real low points, both personal and general, namely the death of Joe Casey’s mother and the worldwide misfortune of the pandemic. In what could have been a collection of songs buried in doom and gloom, Protomartyr return with a new resolve.
Stuck’s expertise lies in making deeply entertaining post-punk and art rock by means of leading the listener into unknown and unpredictable directions. Each song metaphorically tears into the listener with the canines and incisors and slowly but surely moves them into the morals in the back of the mouth, ruminating on its themes.
Gracie Jackson’s journeyed voice reflects the years of entropy and moil but spins that into songs of self-determination, confidence, and humor. Whether eating fried chicken in a hazmat suit, breaking up fights, or dancing with a stranger in a white stetson, her narrative lyrics are almost cinematic in their oddly specific detail.
BRICK HEAD is the Melbourne based solo project of Sarah Hardiman, a prolific guitarist/vocalist best known for Deaf Wish, Nightclub, Moon Rituals, and LOU. The production credits, and brief ones at that, are about all we know about Bricks For Brains, that… and the fact that we can’t stop listening to it, which is really all you need to know.
It seems hard to believe woods had time to reflect upon his life on the road, but it’s clearly been on his mind, as visions of “home” fade and he’s left sleepless on planes, in hotels, and at soundchecks. The grind of it all brought him back to Kenny Segal, the pair resuming their chemistry for Maps, yet another record that feels destined for hip-hop infamy.
Are things that we’ve decided to give importance to actually important? For some of us, it’s best not to think about, but it’s an exploration that Washer takes on headfirst with their third album, Improved Means To Deteriorated Ends, a record that matches thoughts of decomposition with a slow burning rage-infused drive.
Coast 2 Coast, the band’s fourth album and first for Stones Throw, documents the band’s journey from their former home in Florida to their current in LA, building a surrealistic odyssey of video games, ocean front beaches, and fantastical bliss. Pearl & The Oysters use their daydream psych to bring a sense of the majestic to the mundane.
Härvest, Poison Ruïn’s second album overall (depending how you look at it) and first record together with their new label, retains the band’s flair for the medieval, distilled in the toil and struggle of the era’s poor and working class, a sentiment that hasn’t changed all that much in modern times.
While Meyhem Lauren will forever represent Queens, Champagne For Breakfast, comes as a historical West Coast moment, the first collaboration between Madlib and DJ Muggs. A meeting of undeniable giants, the legendary producers work in unison together to design the wavy elegance and the minimalist psych-laced blueprint.
Deerhoof are sparked by the power of imagination, picturing a better world and doing their part to bring the rest of us along. This is what Miracle-Level, their nineteenth album is about, focusing on the daily miracles of life, the small details, attempting to see the beauty of human life that operates in resistance to corporate control, war, and hatred.
After five long years, the trio return with Neither The One Nor The Other, But A Mockery of Both, a new EP, surprise released without fanfare via 12XU. The title, a reference to the fact that the record was re-recorded several times over the past few years, is a gift of their debased sense of humor, a sign that the years haven’t left them embittered.
Shana Cleveland described her third solo record, Manzanita, as “a supernatural love album set in the California wilderness,” a succinct description that sets both scene and mystifying tonality. The natural essence of the woods, mountains, rolling hills, and open skies, are apparent not from setting but from sound.
Best experienced in full, Compact Trauma is an evolution for the band, warping and weaving through loungy psych and fragmented art rock to create something glowing and evergreen. It’s detailed in inner struggle, fighting demons of self-doubt and addiction, wrestling with defeatist mental issues and finding its place in the world.
Mach-Hommy released his first new record of the year in the form of Notorious Dump Legends: Volume 2, a collaborative album together with Tha God Fahim. They are a great duo, whose voices fit together with aural perfection, melodic, focused, slick, raw, with their stream-of-conscious rhymes capturing a spark in each other.
Pile have never quite released the same album twice, yet remain almost impossibly consistent. The ability to constantly change and progress their sound while still remaining unequivocally true to themselves is a testament to the strength of their songwriting and their collective performances. All Fiction is their biggest leap into new territory thus far, and yet it feels like the Pile we’ve always loved.
