While on the Indieheads Podcast we spent most of our 2021 thus far getting our brains destroyed by bad 2010s mainstream alternative, there were a couple of us actually listening to real music. And oh boy, did we have thoughts on it! So, let’s hear from Zach, Rose, AJ, Natalie, Ethan, and DJ Horse Jeans on their favorite albums of this first quarter of 2021, plus some wildcards.
Buck Meek - Two Saviors (January 15, 2021)
Shortly before the release of Two Saviors, Buck Meek shared through his social media channels not the usual pre-release press pieces, but an article he wrote ranking his “top ten swimming holes of 2020.” If you’re looking for a nutshell summary of Meek’s appeal as a solo artist, that might be a good place to start. Like bandmate Adrianne Lenker, Meek’s work apart from Big Thief carries the aura of his band, but puts a spin on it that makes it his own, namely his incorporation of country influences. Two Saviors, much like his self-titled debut three years prior, is earthbound and approachable, but never sloppy. Recorded over the course of a week in an old Victorian home in New Orleans, the album is at times as tossed-off and charming as a campfire sing-along and awe-inspiring as the night sky - “Two Moons,” which appears in two different forms on the album, manages to be both. These songs aren’t too much of a jump away from what you might hear on a Big Thief album, but they’re distinctly his in the same way that Lenker’s songs are distinctly hers; they can work in the main band, but part of you can’t help but feel something might go missing outside of their own environment.
Meek isn’t a writer on the level of Lenker, but his lyrical voice is playful, distinctive, and gently disorienting; take how he opens the second verse of “Second Sight” with the exclamation that someone’s filled his swimming hole with turpentine. It’s an unusual image, but a distinct and memorable one. There’s an appealing continuity to his work (most notably in that “Cannonball!” from his first album receives a sequel here) and his lyricism that I can only describe as “cozy.” And that songs as distinct in tone as “Candle” and “Ham on White,” the most enjoyably goofy lark I’ve heard on an album in years, can comfortably coexist speaks to Meek’s talent and voice as an artist. Two Saviors feels like an album you might stumble upon one day in a corner of your attic, if that metaphor tracks. It’s a small-stakes release, especially when compared to the monumental run Big Thief had in 2019, but it’s no less charming for that fact.
Or, as no less an authority than Alex put it in our Discord chat: “two saviors more like 11 heaters.” —Zach
Wild Pink - A Billion Little Lights (February 19, 2021)
They might not sound like it, but Wild Pink are one of the most exciting bands in this moment of indie rock. Fusing classic americana sensibilities with a modern wit, each of their albums has represented a monumental step forward for the Brooklyn trio’s heartland rock-inspired sound. A Billion Little Lights is the most significant statement to date from the group, who have been working at a steady pace since 2017. The delicate craft on each song captures the sweeping, epic imagery of an endless road trip; and all the emotions that accompany the journey. Steel-pedal guitar and gentle percussion underscore uplifting passages, while the infrequent explosions of sound become the moments most infused with pathos. John Ross’ poetic lyrics aren’t immediate, rather, they reward close attention on repeat listens. Hidden in the weeds of each song’s sprawl are life-affirming anecdotes and wistful memories summoned through a tinted sheet of stained glass. That isn’t to say this album comes across as overtly ‘nice-core’ or cloying, as brevity can be found in quips like “you’re a fucking baby, but your pain is valid too” and a late-run line dedicated to Micheal Mann’s 1995 masterpiece HEAT. As an early investor in this band’s unique take on a genre that was already over-populated before I was born, it’s incredibly gratifying to see Wild Pink fully come into their own on this record. The scenes and soundscapes on A Billion Little Lights are confidently conjured from intense, personal experience as if they weren’t being observed - but conjured for the first time. —AJ
WILDCARD: Todd Snider - Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables (March 6, 2012)
For coming up on 30 years now, Todd Snider has existed as something of a trickster figure in the world of modern country music. Since his first album in 1994, Snider has delighted in taking the piss out of characters of all types, ranging from Kurt-come-lately grunge wannabes and go-nowhere music lifers to fanatics on both ends of the political spectrum. To put it plainly, he’s someone who never seems to take himself or his music too seriously. Which is why it’s surprising that Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables, released in the shadow of the first four years of the Obama administration, mostly plays it straight. Across nine original songs and one cover (a tip of the hat to old label boss Jimmy Buffett; this guy has had a career), Snider focuses on stories of the downtrodden and dispossessed, those “in-between jobs” and victims of circumstances that they never had a chance to control. And from the biblical opener “In the Beginning” onward, capitalism is identified again and again as the original sin that fuels everything else. The most poignant moment on the album may be the ripped-from-the-headlines “New York Banker,” an earnest lament from the perspective of a hoodwinked teacher that you could mistake for a Woody Guthrie song. But while the points to be made about class inequality and life under late-stage capitalism are salient, it just wouldn’t be a Snider record if it were completely dour, and so he keeps the jokes coming in at odd angles: a Hoagy Carmichael style number sung from the perspective of an out-of-touch executive here, a self-reflexive murder ballad where partial writing credit is given to one of its characters there, even a narrator stopping mid-song and wondering, “what’s keeping me from killing this guy and taking his shit?”
Like most latter-day Snider albums, Hymns is a proudly ramshackle affair from the cover art on down. It wasn’t recorded in the midst of a weekend-long bender like its successor Eastside Bulldog, but the seams show in intriguing ways; the rhythm section sometimes feels like it’s being beamed in from another song entirely, Snider’s lead guitar is jangly and jagged, the vocals swing from spoken word to sung at the drop of a hat, and in one instance are almost entirely out of focus. And while Snider is the ringleader, this album is as much his as it is Amanda Shires’. In perhaps a conscious nod to Scarlet Rivera’s work on Bob Dylan’s Desire, Shires’ fiddle and vocals appear on almost every track, but hers is a presence that enhances and adds texture to Snider’s storytelling. To put it simply, she fucking shreds on this album, whether she’s goading Snider on in “In-Between Jobs” or injecting some high drama into, say, “In the Beginning” or “Big Finish.” The latter song, by the way, lives up to its name, a slow-burning closer which features a summation of modern life that’s as true today as it was almost ten years ago: “it ain’t the despair that gets ya, it’s the hope.” —Zach
Home Is Where - i became birds (March 5, 2021)
Twitter is a bad website. Its primary focus is and always has been centered around people either yelling about things they enjoy or yelling about the most despicably awful people on the planet. On very rare occasions, you see the first type of yelling, and it’s about something that’s totally worth that sort of feverish excitement. In this case, the usual emo twitter staple names were all freaking out about something called “fifth-wave emo”, a term I still can’t explain despite being an overzealous fan of several bands that are apparently under this genre. In particular, Home is Where, the band that seemed to start this conversation, have brought forward a very thrilling take on the genre, landing somewhere between traditional hardcore adjacent screamo and Neutral Milk Hotel-inspired folk oddities. Frontperson Brandon Macdonald’s writing plays with loose, minimal abstractions in service of songs about gender identity, wringing real pathos out of bizarre imagery with similarly ranging vocal performances throughout the record, pushing from a typical kind of shouting to a full-blooded shriek which can perfectly match the musical tone at any time. Most important to this record’s success (at least in my opinion) is that it’s only 19 minutes, allowing the listener to indulge in it again and again without ever feeling exhausted by the time they’ve spent with it. It’s a record with an admittedly strange allure, but it’s just charming more than anything. And surely listening to this once is better than browsing Twitter for another 19 minutes. —Rose
Smerz - Believer (February 26, 2021)
After a few years of trying every once and a while to fully get into Smerz at the behest of my friends with good taste who have recommended them to me, in 2021 I have finally taken the Smerz pill. I enjoyed songs from their two EPs Okey and Have Fun and was definitely intrigued by their sound, but it wasn’t until hearing their full length debut album, Believer, that I became fully recruited into the Smerz army. The music of Smerz is admittedly an acquired taste, a Norweigan experimental music duo known for their unique brand of minimalist, strange pop music that soundslike a haunted, deconstructed version of the genre music that is commonly known today as hyperpop. The way this album uses negative space and stripped-back arrangements around these really intense individual sounds to create a sense of tension and unease can only be compared to albums like Government Plates by Death Grips or R+7 by Oneohtrix Point Never. Like those albums, Believer seems to exist in some airless, otherworldly unreality that is off-putting in how pristine and bare it is, like it was recorded inside the infinite white space where you talk to Morpheus in the Matrix.
But despite the antiseptic coldness and harshness to some of the production, this is a beautiful record, with stunning, RnB-inspired pop vocals and searingly bright synthesizer tones that should appeal immensely to fans of artists like Kelela, Sophie, and Arca, only with a multiple instrumental layers carefully removed from the mix. It’s like the Coco Chanel rule of always removing one accessory but for mixing: every song feels like it should be missing something on paper, but it all totally works in execution. Believer is incredibly hard to nail down or predict where it’s going next, but the different stylistic left turns are incredibly well thought-out, and sequenced perfectly to keep it from becoming a confusing or off-putting mess. Even the weird, ASMR whisper raps present in previous Smerz releases have totally grown on me in the context of Believer, because that understated delivery allows the album’s few moments with heavy percussion to hit harder; the exact inverse of the way that the complete lack of drums on tracks like “Max” and “Flashing” allows those vocals and synths to completely be the star of the show. There are multiple song stretches of this album that go without a single drum and almost no other low end, which makes it all the more satisfying when the hard-hitting beats of tracks like “Glassbord” and the title track “Believer” suddenly lurch to life like ancient machines being powered on for the first time in years. It can be a difficult album to wrap your mind around initially, but even from my first listen where I didnt have it entirely figured out, I never felt like the strange choices Smerz were making were pushing me away. Believer always had me leaning in closer, trying to solve it’s mysteries while also being floored by how emotionally involving and epic it managed to feel while being so bare-bones in its construction. And the more time I spent with it and adjusted to its particular frequency, it quickly became one of my favorite debut records of the last few years. Join the Smerz army! There are dozens of us! Dozens!!!—DJ Horse Jeans
WILDCARD: The Armed - Only Love (April 27, 2018)
There’s a neat little subsection of my brain that slowly has grown to love loud music of all sorts. Just give me a good scream or a nice bit of shredding that releases serotonin in my brain, and I’ll probably be in the corner for your album on some level. Admittedly my interest is more founded in the realm of traditional punk, but occasionally a good hardcore or metal record will pique my interest through the right combination of my ideas. The last few months, in anticipation of their followup, I’ve been revisiting one of the first records in this genre to do it for me, that being Only Love. Only Love is the kind of hardcore record that can excite both loyalists to the genre like some of my friends to the podcast, or scared newcomers like myself as I first came to it two years ago, and have them all bowing down at the altar of The Armed.
Simply put, Only Love operates by never allowing you to get comfy with conventional ideas of the genre for too long. Yes, you can have a good screamed chorus in a song, but that’s going to be accompanied with Crying-esque chiptune synth leads buzzsawing right alongside it. Sure, you can have a dramatic seven minute closer, but about a good third of it is going to sound more like a lowkey synthwave piece before kicking into the nastiest sounding drums you’ve ever heard. The structure of the record lends itself well to acclimating you to the chaos by throwing you in headfirst with Witness, which can seem almost structureless as an introduction initially, but slowly reveals its melodic prowess as it goes on. Following this with songs that manage to be gradually more inviting to the listener throughout, the record eventually peaks with the back-to-back madness of “Fortune’s Daughter” and “Luxury Themes”, two tracks that show the band under full control of the chaos within their music, wielding it to make genuine earworms out of the noise. On revisits, the listener later realizes that nearly every song on the record has that same potential of memorability and genuine thrills, a rush of what can be done when breaking out of the conventions of genre. Only Love is absurd work that I’m still trying to make sense of even now with two years listening to it, and I can only imagine what The Armed could do going on from this point. —Rose
Black Dresses - Forever In Your Heart (February 14, 2021)
There’s an unspoken expectation that seems to exist with art inspired by pain that the art made should be a means of making sense of that pain. After all, one has to dig into their memories and feelings surrounding that hurt in order to make art that captures it. But should that necessarily be the case when the pain in question is irrational, or senseless, or too complex to make sense within the limits of what something as short as an album can express?
This subversion is central to much of Black Dresses’ exceptional album Forever In Your Heart. For the four years that Devi McCallion and Ada Rook have been releasing music together under this name, one of the strongest aspects of their collaboration has been how nuanced and multifaceted they’ve allowed each release to be, never simply being about one particular thing or offering any easy solutions when their songwriting deals with pain. On Forever In Your Heart, the duo’s first release after breaking up in 2020 and deciding to “no longer [be] a band,” that aspect of their songwriting becomes all the more complex, and consequently all the more compelling and affecting. Gnarled chugging metal guitars and bursts of noise nestle alongside bubbly synths as on opener “PEACESIGN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,” and heartfelt quieter vocal melodies sit in close proximity to throat-shredding screams on “Heaven” and “Gone In An Instant,” each song often naturally modulating to create tracks densely layered with multiple hooks. This much of the album’s knotty thematic approach shows through in the album’s varied sonic arc as well: starting anguished and visceral and loud, before scaling back toward introspection in its middle stretches, and then quickly scaling the bite and terror back up to new searingly raw highs as the lyricism ramps up in intensity. If Forever In Your Heart can be summarized in brief, it’s in how no one person can be simply summed up by reductive keywords, and how personhood is an inherently intricate web of overlapping elements. Just as pain, personhood, trauma, anxieties about global decay, online parasocial relationships, and the fraught nature of hope and gentleness in a cruel world all exist in the same lyrical space on the album (and often recur several times across the album in different contexts), so too do they exist concurrently in people, never becoming the sole governing force in what makes a person. In the end, it’s fitting that what might be called the album’s central thesis is its greatest argument in favor for a more complex understanding of oft-reductive modes of expression: “There's not a lot of pain in the world that makes any sense / Maybe people need to be understood instead.” —Natalie
Arab Strap - As Days Get Dark (March 5, 2021)
Arab Strap’s second record, Philiophobia features one of the most immediate and iconic opening lyrics in indie rock history. On “Packs of Three” singer Aidan Moffat bemoans “It was the biggest cock you'd ever seen.” So how does the lyricist introduce their first album in sixteen years? Over Malcolm Middleton’s “[o]minous guitar music builds, with disco beats” (to quote Genius.com’s decently accurate description of all of the band’s instrumentals), Moffat claims he doesn’t ”give a fuck about the past.”
To some extent this is true. As Days Get Dark feels like the natural progression of a band that has been releasing records regularly since The Last Romance. The fact that both band members have collectively released around twenty solo albums since 2006 probably helps (I was particularly fond of Moffat’s collaboration with RM Hubbert from 2018 called Here Lies the Body). The album often reflects the current moment with Moffat questioning why porn is “all stepmoms and stepsisters now” and features a story about trying to find a unicorn for a threesome.
Despite these changes, Arab Strap continues to be sentimental as ever. Middleton’s unique combination of drum machines, synths, and guitars evokes nostalgia for a period outside of time. While the specifics of the stories he tells might have changed, Moffat is still talk-singing about sex and death. On the song “Tears On Tour”, he gives a personal mission statement of sorts, sharing how he wanted to be “the opposite of a comedian” so he and the audience can “all weep together as one”. As Days Get Dark is a beautiful continuation of that dream, even as he cynically jokes about the commercialization of his pain at the end of the song.
The vivid vulnerability of Moffat’s lyrics and Middleton’s gorgeous instrumentals shine as much here as they did on their earliest releases. The small upgrades and tweaks on this new record keep their classic formula up to date without losing any of its potency. As Days Get Dark feels like it came from a band that never left and I’m so glad they’re back. —Ethan
WILDCARD: Twinkle Park - touched, or been touched by (January 28, 2021) / “glass beach (ornamental ver)” (March 5, 2021)
I’m ready for 2021 to be the year of Twinkle Park. Quickly following up last year’s underrated gem of searingly introspective twinkly vocaloid pop-punk/emo that was As Much As I Forget, Hazel kicked off 2021 by dropping the eight-minute-long EP touched, or been touched by, a stellar gem in her already-exceptional discography. Part of this release’s significance stems from its pivot from previous Twinkle Park records — where As Much As I Forget felt like the compositional endpoint for Hazel’s prior EPs of lyrically-driven self-examination, this EP feels like a bold new space for Twinkle Park’s future. Taking a more all-consuming shoegaze-inspired noise pop approach, this release buries the vocaloid so prominent in earlier records, merging all vocals (including, for the first time on a Twinkle Park release, Hazel’s own) into the EP’s turbulent instrumental haze. It’s this new style, laden with frenetic breakbeats and seamlessly stringing five extra-short songs into a singular cohesive piece (not unlike the title track that closes As Much As I Forget), that makes touched, or been touched by wonderfully compelling, a bingeworthy EP whose brevity makes it easy to be thrown on repeat to pick up on new sonic or lyrical details. Lyrically, what can be picked out (as Hazel deliberately excludes all but one line from each song from the album’s official lyrics) acts as a natural continuation of As Much As I Forget: the restlessness of one’s own thoughts, finding comfort in others, and a self-assured outlook on living through tumult. All these elements combined create a wonderfully natural extension of where Twinkle Park has gone up until this point, and offer an exciting look into where her releases may go from here.
But, like a number of prolific Bandcamp trans musicians, Hazel’s output in the last three months alone has been multifarious, and arguably her best release to date came shortly after this EP. Right in the middle of the recent remix album for glass beach’s exhilarating debut from 2019 is Hazel tackling a cover of the band’s titular song. And the result is nothing short of flooring. The track — already a wrenching expression of trans solidarity and a desperate cry out against transphobic parents — feels even more immediate and piercing with Hazel’s cutting screams and densely layered twinkly emo instrumentation. It’s the kind of cut that makes for an especially great cover: reconfiguring the song structure into a wholly new compelling experience, loaded with small additions meant to grab a passive listener, and recontextualizing the original version’s lyrics by virtue of how the artist covering the track identifies. All I know is that, whenever I listen to the Twinkle Park version of “glass beach” and reach the bridge where Hazel painfully screams out, “You’re fucking hurting her!” at the parents in-song, a part of me feels the sting of that line even deeper, hearing the slightest bit more venom in her voice, knowing the added personal investment in a trans woman delivering that line in defense of another trans woman. That’s the power of Twinkle Park. —Natalie
Black Country, New Road - For the first time (February 5, 2021)
Here at the Indieheads Podcast, we’ve already extensively espoused the value of the Gremlin Mindset for years. But 2021 seems to denote a tipping point for the bubbling subgenre as it reaches a fulcrum, threatening to ooze over and overtake the stagnant post-punk movement and synthesize into something more sinister and expressive. A long time coming, the debut album from the London collective known as Black Country, New Road is the sound of this future. Tracks like ‘Sunglasses’ and ‘Athens, France’ have existed in the ether for a long time, but it’s still thrilling to hear them in sequence with a stronger statement from the band. Each song is a staggering composition, navigating through fast-paced storytelling and seamless narration of drug-addled adolescence. Born from the same jam band sensibilities that gave us Black Midi; For the first time captures lightning in a bottle, with each performance crystalized in sharp detail across the forty-minute runtime. While this album might not be the revelation that Schlagenheim was, there’s no doubt that it will serve as an important artifact in this specific movement’s upward arc as the sound coalesces further. —AJ
Katy Kirby - Cool Dry Place (February 19, 2021)
Cool Dry Place is a brisk record - nine songs, 28 minutes and change - but you shouldn’t mistake it for a breezy one. Among the key influences of Katy Kirby’s terrific debut album was a serious struggle with her religion, which is most apparent on the stunning “Secret Language.” It takes a songwriter with serious chutzpah to quote “Hallelujah” and not have it turn into an instance of reach overextending grasp, which is a serious testament to Kirby’s ability as a songwriter. That it goes on to paint a striking picture of her crisis of faith is another, spectacular thing in itself. While the album is brief, it’s packed tight with ideas and differing structures, and Kirby has a knack for figuring out which song deserves which treatment. Some songs end abruptly, others build to big conclusions; some digitize Kirby’s vocals and bring in a full band, and others are left unadorned. Likewise, Kirby plays with tone throughout, with heartfelt numbers like “Portals” and the title track coexisting comfortably with the tongue-in-cheek “Traffic!” and the “lyrical experiment” of the closing “Fireman.” While its runtime is slight, Cool Dry Place is a strong opening statement from a songwriter who seems like she’s just getting warmed up. Keep your eyes on her down the road. —Zach
WILDCARD: Arcade Fire and Owen Pallet - Her (Original Score) (March 19, 2021)
Those crazy sons of bitches, they finally did it. Arcade Fire fans have been clamoring for years to see the official release of Spike Jonze’s Her score on streaming, after trading around bootlegged YouTube rips and cobbled-together compilations, but after almost eight years we finally have the 2013 instrumentals released in high quality. Coming from the same creative high that produced Reflektor, this soundtrack is moody, sunny and perfectly deployed in the film it accompanies. However, taken now on its own, this album showcases a quiet, meditative side of Arcade Fire that was absent on Everything Now (come on y’all, had to mention it). I’ve had a download of this sitting on my hard drive since I first saw the film, but I couldn’t be happier that the band was willing to revisit these songs and give them the proper release they always deserved. —AJ
Madlib - Sound Ancestors (January 29, 2021)
There’s a moment in The Kingdom Of Dreams And Madness, a 2013 documentary that follows Hayao Miyazaki as he and his studio work to complete the film The Wind Rises, where the Studio Ghibli team arrives at a problem: somebody has to drawn the famous “Zero” plane that inspired Miyazaki’s love of aviation and is one of the visual centerpieces of the film, but Miyazaki himself refuses to do it. His admiration for the craftsmanship of this particular plane and the person who designed it is so intense, that he would rather pass the task off to someone else than deal with the pressure of getting it right, yet no one else he assigns this task to can capture this elusive ideal of how Miyazki thinks the plane should look. As one animator puts it: “He asks for the impossible. It’s not really about how Zeroes flew. He has a picture in his head of how he wishes Zeroes flew. How could another person ever hope to draw that?”
I bring this up only because I was thinking about that moment over and over again while listening to Sound Ancestors, an instrumental album crafted in collaboration by the legendary producer and DJ Madlib and his friend, the equally legendary electronic musician Kieran Hebdan aka Four Tet. Sound Ancestors isn’t a traditional kind of collaboration where two artists got together in the studio, co-wrote an album, and share co-billing as the artists behind it. Rather, after years of pestering Madlib to release a solo instrumental LP that would show off his one-of-a-kind talents as a producer, Four Tet realized that the only way this idealized Madlib solo album could happen was if he made it himself. So Kieran asked Madlib to send him over material for what would eventually be cobbled together become Sound Ancestors: a Madlib album as imagined by Four Tet. Kieran contributed no original sounds of his own, solely working on tinkering with and sharing to listeners his personal vision of what he thinks is so great about Madlib, made by arranging the massive folder of sounds, and samples provided and constructing them into an album that essentially pays tribute to the one of a kind gifts of Madlib.
And now that hypothetical, idealized Madlib album exists, and the results are both exactly what we’ve come to expect from Madlib at this stage in his iconic career, but also a beautiful new interpretation of that classic Madlib sound, with Four Tet mixing his beats to sound a little bit louder and cleaner than we’ve heard madlib before, while still maintaining Madlib’s signature stumbling, almost drunken quality. As Kieran said in an interview, he “didn’t want to water anything down or make it too polite”, but he strikes an incredible balance between maintaining the sense of surprise and chaotic playfulness that defines Madlib’s music while also trying to make it a little easier to digest and appreciate universally. I could go track by track and gush over every one of them, but the album’s contents speak for themselves: every one of the 16 tracks is completely alive with incredible samples, unique sonic textures, and some head-knocking beats that sound crisp and punchy without being too tidy or polished.
Much like the way Miyazaki’s drawings capture the way a plane flies in a expressionistic, ecstatic way, or the way Four Tet’s arrangements subjectively capture his own vision of what he admires about Madlib’s music, Madlib’s own sampling from his record collection on this album is a similar act of one artist dutifully and lovingly presenting the work of another to the audience. He’s called the “Loop Digga” for a reason: Madlib is an unparalleled collector and appreciator of jazz, funk, soul, and any other samples he can get his hands on, and he can make those samples sing like no one else on earth. The way Madlib chops up and drops these samples into a new musical ecosystem gives them new life and energy, allowing audiences to experience the exact moment of the sample material that grabbed madlib’s imagination, hearing the song that he loves through the prism of his own interpretation.
The alchemy that is happening on every track of Sound Ancestors is a symphony of technical craftsmanship, artistic passion, and mutual admiration, all coming together to form something greater than the sum of its parts. It is two artists with singular gifts and abilities using their talents in the service of uplifting and preserving the work of others. It is an incredibly gracious, unselfish creative undertaking that also happens to be one of the best albums I’ve heard in ages. I feel genuinely moved simply thinking about the fact that it exists. —DJ Horse Jeans
Anarchy 99 - Rockstar Super Heat (January 20, 2021)
The traditional myth of the rockstar is built on a particular strain of excess, one centered mainly in the realm of cisheteronormative masculinity. This isn’t to say that only those inside of that categorization can be rockstars, but rather that it’s the model on which most expectations of rock stardom are built upon. Devi McCallion does not give a shit about these expectations. She simply chooses to be a rockstar, and then acts like it. Anarchy 99, her latest collaborative project with fellow producer So Drove, is built on the attitude of pushing rock music’s signifiers to their most literalized form while also rejecting the idea of tradition within the genre itself. You don’t have to know what AC/DC does, you can just say you’re “so AC/DC”, and wield that comparison like it’s totally earned. You can have stadium-sized guitar leads, but on the same tracks you can slather all the vocal melodies you want in Autotune. There are no rules, “rock and roll” is dead.
Similarly, McCallion’s lyrics vamp on the typical imagery of rock stardom, while also managing to tie it into the traditional focuses of her lyrical writing, such as on “Sorry”, where she wields a sort of braggadocio claiming she “isn’t a pussy like other rockstars”, while using the song to discuss the aftereffects of trauma. All throughout, she plays a difficult balance of managing vulnerability while constantly pushing for excess, similar to her most recent record as Girls Rituals, crap shit. Rockstar Super Heat is likely a tougher sell to anybody who’s not as acquainted with McCallion’s work, at least compared to the other album of hers recommended in this newsletter, Forever in Your Heart. However, I’ve found it to be an equally rewarding listen over time, being a great meditation on projecting yourself as something bigger in the name of stardom, even when you don’t necessarily want to be that which you’re symbolizing, or what you really want for yourself. The important thing is to rock on. —Rose
WILDCARD: The Weeknd - House of Balloons (March 21, 2011)
I’ll keep it brief since I wasn’t planning on writing anything for this piece, but this is such a brilliant album that really represents the younger generations still reeling from the effects of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. House of Balloons doesn’t really make any grand political statements, but you do truly feel something when the Weeknd sings about how much he hates drugs and sex, but yet can’t pull himself away from this world he’s been drawn into because what the fuck else is there to do? On House of Balloons, The Weeknd has given up on trying to find an escape because the world outside this “happy house” he’s found himself in ain’t much better.
If it hurts to breathe, open a window. —Matty
Cheekface - Empathetically No. (January 11, 2021)
Comedy in music is usually relegated to novelty songs that are listened to outside of normal music consumption. As much as I enjoy the music of legends like Weird Al and The Lonely Island along with lesser known acts like The Sloppy Boys, Don’t Stop or We’ll Die, and Allie Goertz, I only put their songs on in very specific scenarios. However, Cheekface made me laugh out loud with a record that I could put on any time.
At the forefront of Empathetically No. is singer Greg Katz’s witty lyrics. His vocal style is definitely monotonous and deadpan, but the lines wouldn’t work any other way. Have you ever tried to tell a Mitch Hedberg joke and failed miserably? That’s because the comedy comes mostly from his impeccable delivery. Similarly, much of what Katz “sings” is hilarious because of the way he says it and the music backing him. None of the instrumentals are “silly” in a way that's distracting, they just compliment the joke in the same way it does on Bill Hick’s last two records.
From the ironic detachment of the lyrics to the catchy guitar riffs, it’s hard not to reference 90’s indie rock, but this is an album that could only be released during this era. It’s about the overwhelming nature of the world where there’s a new main character every day and your goal is to not be it. Caustic couplets are thrown out like knives and then forgotten moments later. Some might consider this to be disjointed, but it really just reflects spending five minutes wading through The Discourse™ online. Empathetically No. might at moments sound like it was recorded thirty years ago, but it captures the “now” in a way that few others albums can. —Ethan
Dreamwell - Modern Grotesque (February 26, 2021)
Modern Grotesque hits like a band providing the most visceral, anguished accompanying soundtrack imaginable to a short story collection that doesn’t exist. Or, arguably, one could call Modern Grotesque itself an exceptional short story collection in its own right, citing how strikingly vivid and poignant vocalist Keziah “KZ” Staska’s lyricism is. That claim isn’t much of a stretch, given Staska’s strong inspiration from the writings of Flannery O’Connor and their desire to give the album a cohesive throughline of characters going through similar struggles. But key to the power of those lyrics and how crushingly they’re deployed on the Providence band’s stellar sophomore record is how tremendously the group’s instrumentation complements the sentiments behind them. Tracks like album highlight “Sayaka” wouldn’t be nearly as much of a soul-shattering skramz left hook if guitarists Aki McCullough and Ryan Couitt weren’t backing Staska’s crushing words on emotional detachment with their heavy post-hardcore riffs and clean emo tones. Nor would the complexity and descriptive devastation of the album’s sprawling title track land nearly as hard without the dimensionality of Justin Soares’ bass work or the varied drumbeats and fills Anthony Montalbano provides. On Modern Grotesque, Dreamwell have crafted the ideal kind of symbiosis that results in such an instantly remarkable post-hardcore release, one where it’s difficult to imagine any singular element being stripped or changed and having the same resounding effect. By the album’s closing track “Sisyphean Happiness,” where Staska sings about the album’s characters getting the chance to find peace even through their greatest difficulties or demises, it’s hard not to feel the tangible catharsis infused in each member of the band’s contributions given the album’s overarching emotional build. Like any great short story collection, Modern Grotesque seeps with a richness and heft that will linger with you long after listening. —Natalie
WILDCARD: Crack Cloud - Pain Olympics (July 17, 2020)
I didn’t listen to much music in the hell that was 2020. I needed more all-encompassing escapes than music could provide my ADD-raddled brain. However, there was one album I kept coming back to; Crack Cloud’s masterful Pain Olympics. The collective’s first true full-length album (after a self-titled debut that compiled two EPs) is nominally reminiscent of legendary post-punk releases like Remain in Light, but is truly its own beautiful beast.
At the core of the album is the gorgeous two-track run of “Somethings Gotta Give” and “The Next Fix”. The former features a devilishly catchy guitar line and the latter has some of the most emotive horns I’ve heard outside of British Sea Power’s soundtrack work. It’s a cliche to say that there’s beauty in pain, but you’d be damn pressed to not be convinced of the fact after listening to just these two songs. Pain Olympics is ostensibly about addiction, but it’s really about the comradery and solidarity that emerges out of a shared struggle.
Each of the eight tracks on this album is unique and stunning in their own way, but the album still manages to be a cohesive whole. “Favour Your Fortune” is minimalist noise-rap and the final track, “Angel Dust” (Eternal Peace), is an expansive post-rock soundscape. However, every song is still recognizably from the same group, which is even more impressive when you consider how many people contributed to this album. Clocking in at less than thirty minutes, you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not listening to this album on repeat like I have been doing since I first heard it. —Ethan