Indie / Alternative

The first new music from the post-emo trio in two decades. Out of the brain of Geoff Farina spills 10 new tales from their unlikely reunion, tracked with long-time Karate collaborator Andy Hong. Make It Fit crams 35 minutes of Wes Montgomery homage, Fugazi dub plate party rocking, Lynott lyricism, and Clash city crooning into a graceful seventh album.

The first new music from the post-emo trio in two decades. Out of the brain of Geoff Farina spills 10 new tales from their unlikely reunion, tracked with long-time Karate collaborator Andy Hong. Make It Fit crams 35 minutes of Wes Montgomery homage, Fugazi dub plate party rocking, Lynott lyricism, and Clash city crooning into a graceful seventh album.

Queer tweemo from the pop fringe of Little Rock, Arkansas’s thriving ’90s DIY scene. Paper Airplanes, Paper Hearts gathers Everyone Asked About You’s complete recorded works, including the Let's Be Enemies LP and their two and a half 7"s released between 1997-2000. Remastered from the original DATs for maximum nostalgic crunch, this deluxe 2xLP is housed in a gatefold tip on sleeve and includes a 20-page book crammed with flyers, photos, lyrics, and an extensive essay on this crucial missing link between midwest emo and the Moog synthesizer.

Step inside the world of Ginger Root. Cameron Lew makes it easy to do so; every considered detail is his own manifestation, written, designed, and executed as an all-encompassing diorama of sound and sight. A multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and visual artist from Southern California, Lew has crafted his project steadily since 2017, inviting a fervent and growing legion of fans into storylines drawn across mediums: captivating albums with accompanying films and globe-spanning tours. The Ginger Root sound — handmade yet immaculately polished synth-pop, alt-disco, boogie, and soul — takes shape through Lew's lens as an Asian-American growing up enamored by 1970s and '80s music, specifically the creative and cultural dialogue between Japanese City Pop and its Western counterparts from French Pop to Philly Soul to Ram-era McCartney. He spins his retro-minded influences and proliferates savvily in the present, synthesizing a songwriter's wit, an editor's eye, and a producer’s resource into something singular and modern. SHINBANGUMI, his long-awaited third LP, and Ghostly International debut set for physical release in 2024 with a visual album component, translates roughly to a new season of a show. It finds Lew more poised, idiosyncratic, and intentional than ever in a new chapter of life, unlocking "exactly what Ginger Root should sound and feel like," he says. "In terms of instrumentation and musicality, it's the first time that I felt very confident and comfortable with what everything should be comprised of. On the more personal side, I'm coming out of the last four years of writing, touring, and living as a different person; SHINBANGUMI is a platform to showcase my new self." In parallel with the songs and his real-life artist story, unfolding across the sequential music video series, Lew resumes the conceptual narrative from his 2022 EP Nisemono, which follows Ginger Root as a newly-fired music supervisor in 1987 starting his own media conglomerate, Ginger Root Productions. "If you watch music videos one through eight, you'll be presented with a story that’s comparable to a traditional movie; something I've always wanted to do.” Splitting sessions between locations in Japan and back in Orange County, Lew paid extra attention to SHINBANGUMI’s track arrangement, tapping his close circle for input, including members of his live band and his longtime video collaborator, David Gutel. He sees the album’s arc in multiple acts, mapping the chronological listen with "just the right amount of like front-end punch and then letting you breathe, then sending you even faster in the middle section, and so on…I wanted to grab you by the collar in a good way and then not let you go until the last song." "No Problems" acts as the opening title sequence and a bridge to new terrain, with its singable basslines, swaggering guitar riffs, and clever keyboard hooks calling back to past fan favorites now with expanded scope. "All the sonic logos of Ginger Root are in this song," Lew says. "Better Than Monday" pokes fun at our universal dread of the week’s reset and plays with expectations, starting in a crunchy lo-fi space before blasting into hi-fi splendor, a super-charged, bass-bending stomp that rides out on his reprise, "It's the waitin' that you do (whatcha doin?)." What makes Ginger Root special is the project's ability to weave influence beyond pastiche into a bigger picture, exploring that rarified pop pleasure center where referential meets refreshing. "There Was A Time" honors the homespun melody-making of his favorite solo Beatle (early ‘70s Paul). Thinking about the song's utility within the overall sequence, like a scene break, Lew sought to write a lighter pop song. It doubles as the sweet wind-up for "All Night," a four-on-the-floor burner, a Ginger Root club cut albeit still with live instrumentation, inspired by his friend's seemingly endless night out in Paris. "This was my one attempt at writing a track that you can bump all night, but being the introvert that I am, I couldn't write it about me." With "Only You," Lew delivers his first straightforward take on the oft-cited genre: "I wanted to sit down and be in the mindset of, if I were to write a true City Pop song, what would I want it to sound like?” The result is an anthem brimming with deep bass disco grooves, shimmering synth glissandos, and a howling outro from the school of Prince and Chaka Khan. Meanwhile, the infectious and uncharacteristically guitar-driven "Giddy Up" stems from Lew’s love for The B-52s and Devo. Unpacking the message, he adds, "It could be a relationship with something, a passion, a project or whatever. If you want to do it, you gotta giddy up, buckle in, pull your boots up, and go for it." For "Kaze," recorded on a dusty drum kit in a karaoke bar in the middle of Tokyo's Asakusa district, he evokes the Tin Pan Alley sound of a hero, Harry Hosono (Yellow Magic Orchestra). Lew considers "Show 10" the spiritual heart of the record, the track that reminded him why he keeps Ginger Root going. Towards the end of his last album season, Lew recalls one night when tour fatigue was setting in, feeling like he didn't want to play the same set again: “I remember walking out into the crowd and seeing all the people who had high hopes for this show. I was like, man, you know, I've got to give it 10. I've got to show people my best." And with SHINBANGUMI, he has.

Listening to Fashion Club’s self-produced second album A Love You Cannot Shake feels like being caught in the crossfire of a profound beam of light. You can’t help but feel both enlivened and exposed as its aberrant synth lines, artful strings and disfigured guitars swell into larger-than-life crescendos, which evoke a divine yet probing spotlight. You can bask in the glow of a towering light with self-assured poise, but there’s also something inherently uncomfortable about an imposing light source—revealing yourself to onlookers (and oneself) comes with varying levels of anxiety and self-doubt. This is the tension at the heart of A Love You Cannot Shake, a record of lush radiance and otherworldly scope, with each track functioning as its own twinkling, transportive realm. Pascal Stevenson, the Los Angeles-based musician behind Fashion Club, likens the experience of hearing A Love You Cannot Shake to staring into the sun, and though the record wasn’t written with religion in mind, its heavenly sonics and emotional sagacity also make it feel like a prophetic encounter. The album was shaped by Stevenson’s gender transition and sobriety journey and parses her fluid emotions surrounding these events and other personal trials and tribulations. But as much as it's a dialogue between Stevenson’s current and former selves, it’s also an invitation for listeners to join her in the work of discarding bitterness and recentering hope, especially when such efforts feel futile. Musically, A Love You Cannot Shake is an unshackling of expectations, as Stevenson’s previous stint as bassist in the L.A. post-punk outfit Moaning and her first record as Fashion Club, 2022’s Scrutiny, didn’t necessarily reflect the full range of her taste, which includes ambient, pop, classical and dance music, or embody her sensitive tenderness and femininity. “By the time Scrutiny came out, I had transitioned, and I was making different music and caring about different things,” Stevenson says. “I felt less held back by ‘Oh I’m this kind of person, I have to make this kind of music,’ and I reached a point where I was like, ‘Let me just try to write a bunch of songs on acoustic guitar and piano, where I think the songs are good and have a solid core and then start producing them and see what happens if I don’t put any limitations in place.’” Though A Love You Cannot Shake is the first album that explicitly addresses her transness, it’s not so much a “coming out” record or a confessional, straightforward tell-all as it is a tastefully abstract distillation of her personal experiences and identities into stirring vignettes that anyone can relate to. Whether it’s the search for self-worth in a society that only values humanity in its relation to capital (“Confusion”), the uncomfortably circular nature of self-growth (“Forget”) or the self-destructive urge to make up for “lost time” (“Ghost”), this LP is rooted in the universal truth that self-actualization is always worth pursuing. Tracks often begin from a place of discomfort and shame, but by the end, they tend to arrive at a more patient, hopeful frame of mind, as Stevenson cherishes the authenticity of a more amorphous emotionality. A Love You Cannot Shake also thrives on a fluid sonic palette. The throttling balladry of “Faith” falls somewhere between gentle pop, glitchy industrial and epic classical music. “Ghost” has a bubbly garage-y techno thrust, and “One Day” soars with its electronic take on anthemic heartland rock. The album’s magnetic immersiveness hinges on its strange dynamic shifts, jagged production and ambitious song structures with parts that don’t repeat—choices influenced by her love of left-field electro-pop and her classical music background. Stevenson was inspired by the movements and storytelling of classical music, and she even picked up the upright bass again for this record, despite not touching the instrument for years. While Stevenson handled most of the instrumentals on Scrutiny, this LP is much more collaborative, featuring an array of contributors who lent strings, piano, pedal steel and more. Plus, this album boasts country harmonies from Perfume Genius (“Forget”), high-pitched coos from Jay Som (“Ghost”) and gauzy whispers from Julie Byrne (“Rotten Mind”). Stevenson’s vocal evolution is also on display with this record, embracing a softer delivery that’s more reflective of her personality and identity. With this album, Stevenson masterfully executes a daring vision and chronicles how far she’s come in several facets. Sonically, she says, “It feels like the album I’ve wanted to make for the past 10 years, but didn’t have the musical vocabulary to or was scared to,” and personally, she says, “I am, for once in my life, finally feeling something I’ve been reaching for forever, and I want to live in that feeling for the rest of my life.” A Love You Cannot Shake vehemently encourages a walk towards the edge and into the sultry glow—after all, it’s cold out here in the cynical abyss of our minds.

Am I ever gonna be the one? Do I ever wanna be with someone? Am I ever gonna be the one? Will I ever end up being someone?

“I could not be alive alone,” a longtime family friend said to Merce with a smile. “None of us could be alive alone.” Within the quiet, cascading corners of Pittsburgh lies a community – nothing short of one large family – that spans zip codes, histories, occupations, and generations, always tumbling into itself, propped up by steadfast pillars of conviction toward spiritual and emotional mutual aid. The kind of earnest community scaffolding that gets bandied about, wielded as conjecture, particularly in an age of increasing fracture through digital sublimation, is alive and quite well within the universe surrounding Merce Lemon. When asked how the city has inspired her creative practice, she responds with a characteristic joke wrapped in an earthen warmth – “There are big hills, three rivers, and more bridges than anywhere in the whole world.” Growing up in a family of art and music in a city with a small, but vigorously supportive scene, Merce has been going to shows here her whole life, even playing them with the “grown up” friends of her parents – as recently as a few years ago, her band was comprised of her own father and his peers in the Pittsburgh music community. Merce took a step back in 2020, after releasing her last album 'Moonth', to reassess during an era of anxiety and lockdown – even the reliably nourishing exercise of sharing and playing music felt precarious. “I was grappling with what kind of relationship I wanted with music in my life. It was just something I’d always done, and I didn't want to lose the magic of that – but I was just having less fun.” In this time of restless non-direction, she turned her gaze inwardly, down to the roots – figuratively and literally. “I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer. I learned a lot about plants and farming, just writing for myself, and in that time I just slowly accumulated songs.” A never-ending creative hunger, supported by the community framework she’d always been able to depend on, had been newly fertilized by the wide-eyed inspiration that came from plunging her hands into both the earth’s soil and her own. Rooting around for an answer, finding and turning in her palms what had been buried there all along – from this rediscovery, imbued with the vitality of earth’s green magic, 'Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild' sprouted forth. The album emerges, enveloped in propulsive guitars and saccharine-sweet songs of blackbirds and blueberries, from the dead-calm center of a pastoral frenzy in a manner that one could argue as erratic, reckless — a grave misconception, as Merce is just as aware of where she’s being pulled from as she is curious about where to go next. Her sound is built upon a reverence and gratitude for the natural world, how paying respect to it charts a more confident path through the choppy waters of the heart. On the soft and confessional “Rain,” she maps memory onto the stillness of the landscape around her, panning for clarity in an endlessly blue sky: “I can see your relentlessness / in the muddy puddles where retting is / shattering the splintered stalks / where golden braids pour into drops." In her music, romantic and familial love rips into and out of itself, barely registering as disparate feelings in the flurry of reckoning. Lead single “Backyard Lover” is an honest and incisive exploration of this confused, raw intimacy. In it, a warm memory gently meanders alongside warbling steel and guitars, tinged with a classic outlaw haze, before it suddenly erupts with the frustration of a broken promise, making way for a cathartic sonic fury – “what dying felt like / a wooden spoon tossed in the fire / cause nothings good enough / you fucking liar.“ The song’s climax deftly uncovers the formidable heartbeat hidden underneath the floorboards of her creative expulsion: loss. “So many of my songs are touched by and explore death, specifically in relation to the loss I experienced of my best friend when I was fifteen years old” says Merce. “That loss has forever changed me and who I am in my relationships to lovers, friends, family." In reconciling the quiet conflict of a desire for closeness and a solitude cultivated by distrust, there is a fierceness, a persistence in her vulnerability, matched in droves by the wildness of her band. These songs range, often within the structure of a single track, from ballads to blown out electric riffs combating feedback, harmonies concealed behind wailing guitars, both dependent on each other as they careen towards new meaning. They build slowly, synthesizing a naturalist’s penchant for romance and nihilism to create the warring, triumphantly escalating nature of Merce’s lyrics and her band’s heavy entropy. For Merce, the only certainty is the endlessly shifting nature of a river, roaring straight past a dogwood, never missing the opportunity to watch a petal fluttering to the ground in the rear view. They are songs of belonging just as much as they are songs of longing – ”Say I was a lonely gust of wind / could I redirect them,” she muses in “Crow”, one of the more hopeful tracks on the record. Its structure is simple, gentle acoustics pushed forward by an ever-present and fluid percussion that guides the song as naturally as Merce hopes to guide the “murderous flock,” forgoing the voyeur in all of our hearts and comfortably settling in the supportive role of a shepherd – “I’d make a city of this ghost town / even let the crows come / rest their necks / and nest their young.” There is an oaken strength in 'Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild' that makes it easy to love – once wild, still free, honest and familiar. Its genesis is timeless, its restlessness eternal – it is one cohesive yet unanswered question built around, and dependent upon, the life-giving force of nature that came before Merce. The album’s closing track also inspires its title – a lonely ballad of forlorn projection into an unknown future, forever protected by the comforting green of Pittsburgh’s hills, rivers, bridges, and homes: “Old man howling / laughing his teeth out / with the dogs down the hill. And a tree fell / I smell the wood / and the bark is coming off in sheets / I write my words down on it. And honestly / the thoughts of a husband / weighing on me.”

“I've been thinking a lot about Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. That was a really important touchstone in my mind,” says ANOHNI of her sixth studio album, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross. “A couple of these songs are almost a response to the call of What's Going On, from 2023. They are a kind of an echo from the future to that album from 50 years ago.”

As the British-born, New York-based artist’s first full album since 2016’s HOPELESSNESS, ANOHNI explains that the creative process was painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it.

A record its creator acknowledges is inextricably both personal and political, and one that is full of heartfelt music that also questions its own right to be heard, My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross demonstrates music’s unique capacity to bring harmony to competing, sometimes contradictory, elements.

“For me, there's no heavenly respite; creation is a spectral and feminine continuum, and our souls are an inalienable part of nature.”

In 2022, having sought producer recommendations from Rough Trade Records’ Jeannette Lee and Geoff Travis, ANOHNI began working with Jimmy Hogarth (Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Tina Turner) noting his sensitivity towards soul music. Having always helmed and written her previous records – bar HOPELESSNESS, for some of which, producers were invited to submit instrumentals – this kind of collaboration was a first for ANOHNI. “There was a great ease to this songwriting process,” she says of her writing and recording sessions with Hogarth. “I loved making this record in a way that I've never done before.”

Bringing in with her several years of texts, ANOHNI and Hogarth shared musical ideas and sketched out a series of demos with Hogarth playing guitar. Hogarth then assembled a studio band – including guitarist Leo Abrahams and string arranger/instrumentalist Rob Moose – to record the full album.

“Many of the recordings on this record – like“It Must Change”and “Can't” – capture the first and only time I have sung those songs through. There's a magic when you suddenly place words you have been thinking about for a long time into melody. A neural system awakens. It isn't personal and yet is so personal. Things connect and come alive.”

Hogarth’s intuitive guitar leads the listener across ten songs, touching on elements of American soul, British folk and experimental music. ANOHNI places her heart on the line and in a groove in the opening track “It Must Change,”describing systems in collapse with a note of compassion for humanity: “The truth is I always thought you were beautiful in your own way / That’s why this is so sad.”“Scapegoat” waivers between tenderness and instrumental brutality, “Take all of my hate into your body / It doesn’t matter what you’ve got to give / or why you want to live / You’re my scapegoat / It’s not personal.” The primordial, Kali-esque curse “Rest” positions the record at moments in conversation with experimental rock of the 1970s: “Rest like the enemy of all that sees / Rest like the enemy of all that breathes / In the poison ocean blue / She’ll come home to you.” “Go Ahead” presses melody through dissonance. “You are determined to take me down / Go ahead kill your friends / I can’t stop you.” My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross shape shifts through its subject matter: the loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, privilege, denial, ecocide and the tidal power of Earth, isolation, Future Feminism, and the intention that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our religious ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature.

“You know how they always said that light was the opposite of darkness? / It’s just fire in darkness, creating life / So those opposites, they don’t exist / It’s just an idea that someone told you” (“It Must Change”)

ANOHNI’s voice is sensual and smoothed, selectively reaching to the edges of what it can contain. “I don’t want you to be dead, I can’t accept it,” she cries out at the climax of “Can’t.” “We’re not getting out of here / No one’s getting out of here / This is our world,” she murmurs on “It Must Change.” “How sweet the vista, the portal view / On my way to black and blue,” she grieves on “Sliver of Ice,” a remembering of some of the last words Lou Reed shared with her.

A portrait of gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson taken by Alvin Baltrop features on the cover of My Back Was a Bridge For You To Cross, reflecting a 25-year relationship with the memory of Johnson that ANOHNI has held space for in the presentation of her own work. Paintings by Sylvester Hustito, a Zuni Two Spirit artist from New Mexico, depict another crucial vision of America, from a queer, indigenous historical point of view. On “You Be Free,” ANOHNI sings from with heartbreak about the passing of trans intergenerational knowledge: “Done my work / My back was broke / My back was a bridge for you to cross / Then I wished in the aftermath / That the Earth would take my life / Like she took the lives of my Mother and my Sister.”

“I'm careful with the emotional pathways I am drawing. The stories we tell ourselves are the basis of our cultural mythologies, and often a foreshadowing of our destinies. We live in a world where story-telling has become another abuse of power, a threat, fake news, anti-female, anti-nature,” ANOHNI says of her intentions as lyricist. The album artwork states simply ”IT’S TIME TO FEEL WHAT’S REALLY HAPPENING”. In some ways it feels as if she is reaching across her life’s expression, and has found a moment of unique composure, wearing her long exploration of disarming intensity, but with the maturity of a painter choosing colors.

On listening to My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, one is reminded of music’s power and ability to articulate the political and the personal concurrently. “As much as I was British or American, I was identified as a non-viable part of family, community, church, society. At moments I was deemed not worth protecting, as being expendable, on account of my femininity. Ultimately that was a gift for me because it brought me unique insight into the societies I found myself having to navigate. It forced me to be more willing to look at who and where I really was.”

With “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology),” Marvin Gaye made a visionary plea for the environment in 1971, a gesture that ANOHNI has echoed across her own output, from “Rapture” in 1992 and “Another World” in 2009, to “4 Degrees” and “Why Did You Separate Me From The Earth?” from her last record HOPELESSNESS in 2016.

ANOHNI’s approach since her last record has shifted from someone tasked with challenging global denial, to an artist seeking to support others on the front lines. “I want the record to be useful. I learned with HOPELESSNESS that I can provide a soundtrack that might fortify people in their work, in their activism, in their dreaming and decision-making. I can sing of an awareness that makes others feel less alone, people for whom the frank articulation of these frightening times is not a source of discomfort but a cause for identification and relief.”

“I see myself as a part of a process. I know that I'm not there, but I feel that someone in the future might know how to get there. An innovation in our way of dreaming or thinking might help us get back home. I hope that this record is another step in that direction. As problematic and broken as it might be, maybe there's an element in this music that's going to be useful to a future iteration of us. They're going to be able to distill what's right about it and make something better out of it. So I do my work hoping that someone's going to be able to pick it up and take it further, that it can be a source of something positive at some later point in our evolution – if we're lucky to continue to have an evolution.”

“We are each moving through massive impersonal systems that we feel powerless to change. And yet we're being asked in this moment to pull back the curtain and recognize these systems for what they are - not the preordained will of a god, but something we created over centuries. If we can’t do this collectively, we will forfeit our remaining ability to influence our trajectory. We have to dismantle systems that are destructive, and yet upon which many of us are dependent. Whether it’s because of malevolence, or fear, or addiction… ultimately it’s been one big survival strategy. We've never been faced with a challenge this consequential before as a species. Because of their structural hatred of Femaleness, Abrahamic religions and capitalism can only realize an apocalyptic future, rather than facilitate the emergence of a life-sustaining sensibility that might allow us to continue to exist as a part of Nature. So that's a challenge that we're facing now.” 

Bélver Yin's soul mining odysseys have been unjustly overlooked for three decades. An anomaly in the Spanish alt-pop scene, their forlorn instrumentals and ethereal romanticism would have struck a chord in the British league of Felt, The Chameleons, Cocteau Twins and Dif Juz, leaving their 1991 debut Luz Bel deserving of reappraisal. While coining their band name from a Jesús Ferrero novel and quoting Laozi philosophy on album sleeves, Bélver Yin create illuminating textures that unlock a wordless language of memory and adolescent emotion. Formed in Salamanca by self-taught musicians Pedro Ortega Sánchez and José María Martín, the guitar-bass duo spent two years crafting their divine interplay with interim drummers before submitting a demo to Noisex Music, their only attempt at label courting. The phone rang mere days later with owner and producer Bernar Marks (Dust Sessions) offering to cut an album and the band ventured to Valencia with cloud-touching optimism soon after. Championed by local press, the release fell short of expectation, fueling the mythology of a vanished band known only to the initiated. Varying lineups would, however, continue to work in the shadows under Pedro's direction, recording two spatially arranged follow-ups at their own pace in 1996 and 2005.

The follow up to their well received debut album ‘Moot!’, the record draws influences from alternative guitar music in its many forms, using electronic manipulations and sampling techniques to redefine it's context, not settling on any one style but moving through them in search of new connections. By exploring these relationships, Moin delivers another collage of the known and unknown, punctuated by words that are just out of reach.

A serendipitous conversation brought the project to life. Moot! allowed the group to re-appreciate the recording process, using a combination of live recording and studio techniques. The album spans psych, alternative rock and post-punk mixed with their signature electronics and sampling practice. The record was made as an experiment, to be enjoyed, not as spectacle.

Originally released in 1996 as a limited fan-club pressing for Rockathon, Guided By Voices' Tonics And Twisted Chasers has always existed as an anomaly in Robert Pollard's vast discography. In many ways, the album serves as the tail of a creative comet that in just two years included the "classic line-up" trilogy of Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, Under the Bushes, Under the Stars and countless singles that crammed endless hooks in their grooves. In the intervening space, Tonics And Twisted Chasers has taken on a mythic status. It's arguably Pollard's strangest, gnarliest, most enlightened record and also the fans first chance to see the stitches that bind his galaxy of songs. It's like peering at the caliber inside a watch, responsible for making the whole enterprise tick. This nineteen-song collaboration with guitarist Tobin Sprout could be interpreted as spontaneous sketches, late-night improvisations, ideas that blossomed later in the timeline ("Knock 'Em Flying" and "Key Losers"), but as with anything in Pollard's orbit, its intention is clear when heard as a cohesive whole. The Pollard tenet that "less is more" is on full display here. The songs rarely creep past ninety seconds and coalesce much like Pollard's collage-styled visual art. Arena anthems in miniature ("158 Years of Beautiful Sex") bash up against eerie piano laments ("Universal Nurse Finger") without any time to breathe, acoustic lullabies that sound like a Midwestern summer's twilight ("Look It's Baseball") segue into monochromatic post-rock ("Maxwell Jump"). The euphoric joy and obtuse melancholy in Pollard's voice is so palpable on the album's standout, "Dayton, Ohio - 19 Something & 5" (which has since become a live staple), that it's impossible to find a more autobiographical yarn in his catalog. The album's closest analog is 1993's Vampire On Titus, as it contains that album's prickly, dark and shimmering obfuscation that only reveals its beauty after repeated listens. Tonics And Twisted Chasers maintains the lore because the melodies are so strong. Using a primitive drum machine, Radio Shack effects, minimal instrumentation and the DIY spirit that guided them in the first place, Pollard and Sprout construct a masterpiece of pop that could only come from a basement in north Dayton, Ohio. Anyone in that hallowed era who happened upon it, kept it as a secret.

“Do you dream too?” Tomemitsu’s Martin Roark asks on his sophomore album with Friends of Friends Music out September 20, 2024. The question is also what stemmed from the album title, ‘Dream 2’, a shorthand written in the lyrics. ‘Dream 2’ is quite possibly Tomemitsu’s dreamiest LP, if not his most diverse. It is brimming with both new territory and nods to his past. This record reveals a more buoyant side to accompany his traditionally spaced out productions. Since his 2013 release of ‘m_o_d_e_s’, Tomemitsu has combined calm with chaos to create chilled out nuggets of pop containing an ear for ambience in odes to offbeat artists from genres of all sorts. “Creators like Thelonoius Monk, Joao Gilberto, Daniel Johnston, Brian Eno, Bill Withers, Arthur Russell… they were all immediately inspiring to me. I think I’ve come to appreciate the ‘solo project’ness of tomemitsu without realizing how much i was nodding along to the loneliness of my favorite artists.” says Roark. For ‘Dream 2’, Tomemitsu also added a slew of analog and digital gear, processors and synthesizers, to his private Laveta Loca studio elevating the aural output from his hyper lo-fi origins.

Southern California shoegaze squad Cold Gawd return to Dais for their second and most supreme suite yet of crushing downer bliss: 'I’ll Drown On This Earth'. From the defiant scream that kicks off opening cut “Gorgeous,” the album rips in what singer and principal songwriter Matthew Wainwright describes as “go for it” mode: holding back nothing, wasting no time. Although the bulk of the songs were written in 2022, recording sessions weren’t booked until March of 2024, which allowed ample time to refine and distill the music’s hooks, heaviness, and haze. The result is a perfect storm of distortion and dream pop, cracked love songs cloaked in swooning walls of noise.Recorded at Paradise Recorders in Anaheim, California with Colin Knight (of post-punk unit Object of Affection), Wainwright tracked the strings while Cameron Fonacier handled drums. The process was efficient and effective, sharpened by years of performance. Anthemic headbangers like “Portland,” “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned For A Thing I Cannot Name,” and “Malibu Beach House” sound as dynamic as they do dialed-in, soaked into the bones of the players. The lyrics came last, written by Wainwright a week before recording. Moods of surreality (“I can hear the blood in my fingers / nothing tunes out / the world’s too loud”), infatuation (“I will follow / everywhere you go / any way to feel / how you glow”), and melancholy (“God kept me around / for no good reason”) flicker and fade within a fog of memory and reverb.As on 2022’s 'God Get Me The Fuck Out Of Here', Cold Gawd's contemporary vision of shoegaze manifests intriguingly in outlier moments, like the hushed, whirlpool reverie of “Tappan,” or the vaporous, slow-grind downtempo of ““Nudism”” (complete with regal piano outro). Theirs is a muse as vivid as it is varied, from Loveless, to Drake, post-hardcore and Beach House. Drown evocatively captures the expanding canon of Cold Gawd, dense with riffs and raptures, escape and revelation, channeled from stacked amps and hidden powers: “Give praise / to whatever / I got time for / hallelujah.”

Etran de L’Aïr the STARS OF THE AÏR, the longest running wedding band in AGADEZ, capital of Tuareg guitar, return with a new album of sun-schlazed desert sound! Their first album, No.1, brought their music to critics and fans. Their second album, Agadez, sent them into the international touring circuit. And now they're back with 100% SAHARA GUITAR, ready to take on the world, with those swinging melodies, like a sandstorm blowing in from across the sea. Etran de L’Aïr are 100% SAHARA, and that goes same for the band, all sons of AGADEZ, including brothers Moussa, Abdoulaye, and Abdourahamane, and their dear friend, the youngest of the group, Alghabid. All the brothers write and play guitar, swapping out instruments while Alghabid keeps the FOUR ON THE FLOOR. In 100% SAHARA GUITAR, Etran de L’Aïr are back to claim the throne, with their first studio album! And what a sound it is. Recorded in sunny studios on the WEST COAST, the brothers take that old Agadez sound to new levels, adding even more guitars into the mix, weaving layers of reverb-laden melodies and shimmering harmonies into a tapestry of sound. How much guitar can they fit into one record? The answer is 100%.

Winter Pageant is the drama of utter melancholia documenting the broken promises, missed phone calls, conversations stalled, love lost. Colossal tasks recorded two guitars deep, forming a new Iliad, chapters on brave deeds and the power of love on the move. You can live for love, or you could live for the splendid cascade of guitar on guitar, voice over voice. It is the Softies combination of Jen Sbragia (All Girl Summer Fun Band) and Rose Melberg (Tiger Trap, Gaze, Go Sailor); feathers and thorns, fawn and fearless, fable and friction.

Hole Erth, Chaz Bear’s eighth full-length studio record as Toro y Moi, is the genre shapeshifter’s most unexpected and bold move to date, with Bear diving headlong into rap-rock, Soundcloud rap and Y2K emo. The album blitzes anthemic pop-punk next to autotuned, melancholic rap – two genres that inform one another now more than ever before — and packs in the most features ever on a Toro y Moi album. We get Don Toliver’s moody crooning on the anti-love song “Madonna.” We get Kevin Abstract and Lev’s breathy reflections on “Heaven.” We get emo king Benjamin Gibbard, the beating heart of millennial indie for crying out loud. Recorded in the span of a few months across late 2023 and early 2024, Hole Erth’s features built naturally over that short span, with Bear simply reaching out to long-time friends. The sum of Hole Erth’s parts is massive, and demonstrates Bear’s deft abilities as a producer, especially in hip-hop; his role in the culture has long been solidified from previous collaborations with some of rap's biggest trailblazers. It’s a daring left turn for Bear, but the feel is effortless, the make-it-look-easy of a master at work. All told, Bear pushes himself into new sonic ground for the TyM oeuvre while embracing the project’s celebrated, well-known electronic beginnings. Hole Erth is brand new, but somehow perfectly at home. The album’s title is an homage to Whole Earth, Stewart Brand’s DIY periodical from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the central purpose of which was to empower people to be holistically self-sufficient. From product reviews of carpentry tools, to how-to guides for growing your own food, to techno-optimistic analyses that’d go on to inspire Silicon Valley startup culture, parallels of the catalog’s DIY ethos can be found all throughout Hole Erth. Bear cites gorpcore, a new-age fashion trend of functional, outdoorsy outerwear worn as streetwear, as influencing the album’s aesthetic. This also ties back to Brand’s influential counterculture catalog. Bear notes: “Things have gone in a more gorp-y direction. Humans are tapping into this more tribal, earthier aesthetic. The Whole Earth catalog is this encyclopedic, self-sustaining guide. With the album title alone, that’s something I wanted to spark as a conversation. We can be off the grid, and also be on the internet, and try out all of these different lifestyles at the same time.” This sense of duality exists within Hole Erth: it’s seeped in the technological world while embracing real-world human connection. The sounds that make up Hole Erth might feel like new territory for Bear, but in reality it’s a return to form for Toro y Moi – a project that has always orbited electronic music. “Toro is not a rock band,” Bear assures. “To me, my folk records and psych rock records are the side quests. What I fell in love with with the Toro project were the electronic productions – the samples. There’s always more to be done in the electronic world.” His experimentation with electronic production is most obvious on tracks like album opener “Walking In The Rain,” an immediate immersion into the brooding pulse of Hole Erth. Given Bear’s work with some of modern rap’s most influential acts, it’s no surprise that his autotuned cadence and cheeky play-on-words calls to mind the moody braggadocio of today’s popular hip-hop. “Hollywood,” featuring Benjamin Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service fame, places warped vocals and ephemeral sound bites of internet dial-up beneath watery ruminations on celebrity and the delusions prevalent in Tinseltown. The track’s nostalgic nods in combination with Bear’s genre fluidity is a Toro y Moi trademark that can be heard throughout his discography. From the twangy, laidback reflections that comprised his most recent Sandhills EP, to the retro-futuristic grooves of 2019’s Outer Peace, Bear is no stranger to flexing his muscles as a forward-thinking musical chameleon, while still managing to make music that feels eternally familiar yet compelling. A sense of nostalgia sneaks its way into almost every Toro y Moi release, but angst is an emotion that Bear has never intentionally explored the way he does here. Tracks like “Tuesday'' channel a specific, yet forever-relatable sense of adolescent unease. A distorted guitar riff leads into a repeating chorus that conjures misunderstood teenagers singing aloud, maybe too loud, while riding bikes through American suburbs. This foreboding can also be heard on “HOV,” though not without poking some fun with lines like “Romance is so cold / My advice? To bring a coat.” A sense of playful ambition and experimentation sits at the core of Hole Erth. Bear has the energy, but is acutely aware that his energy isn’t forever. At a time when the internet is blending multiple genres into one at an increasingly rapid pace, Bear accomplishes the rare feat of keeping up with the contemporary alternative listener. Constantly changing, evolving and experimenting is the heart

Japanese musician Hakushi Hasegawa/長谷川白紙 proudly announces their new album Mahōgakkō/魔法学校 for LA-based Brainfeeder Records, out July 24th. As part of the announcement, Hasegawa shares a new single and video – “Boy’s Texture” – serving as the album’s second single after last year’s “Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)”. The news arrives alongside Hasegawa’s grand gesture of revealing their face to fans for the very first time, unveiling a new side of the elusive and compelling artist.

“Boy’s Texture” sprints with all the energy of springtime. A warm, easygoing guitar forms the track’s main center, a through line as skittering synths, pounding drums, and a chorus of voices swirl around it. The video, directed by Gauspel (Brandon Saunders), explores the desire to find a missing piece of yourself in the wild. “Most people hold this preconceived notion that your being will be complete upon this revelation and that the broken pieces that comprise you will find their final puzzle piece,” he explains. “But there is no such grand revelation, just self-reflection… just you.”

Mahōgakkō, translating to “Magic School,” also seeks to make sense of a chaotic, vibrant world by letting itself get swept up in it. A balance of pop and pandemonium, the album is one of extremes, where chipmunk-pitched voices square off against percussion set to speed metal’s tempo and volume. Noise and melody, cutesy and aggressive, acoustic and electronic — all come to a head in a process Hasegawa calls the Explanatory Ratio.

“The balance is probably the only thing in my work that is intentional and very important to me,” shares Hasegawa. “In many of my songs, I use a scale that I personally call the ‘Explanatory Ratio’ to guide my work. This is not a sophisticated musical theory at all, but simply a subjective scale that looks at the balance of sounds that are explainable to me and sounds that are not explainable to me, and whether or not they are distributed in the ratio that I set for each piece.”

Mahōgakkō finds Hakushi pushing their boundaries to the absolute limit, with hyperspeed jungle and breakcore traded up for the even more pummeling onslaughts inspired by Tanzanian singeli so that they become just another texture in the wild sonic landscapes. And just when your senses are bordering on overloaded, Hakushi gifts you a moment of sweet reprieve before the roller coaster sets off again with hectic syncopations and harmonic jumps not for the faint of heart.

Impressively, the eye of this maelstrom revolves solely around Hasegawa, who taps only a few select collaborators to enliven their vision. Those who caught lead single “Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)” will recall bassist Sam Wilkes added depth to the track juxtaposed against Hasegawa’s high-pitched singing. The lone featured vocalist rapper KID FRESINO lends his voice to “Gone,” where FRESINO’s determined flow seems to ground the skittering drums from spiraling out of control. NYC-based jazz composer Miho Hazama likewise lends her own form of control to “KYŌFUNOHOSHI”, guiding horns and saxes brought in by Yohchi Masago, Ryo Konishi, and Tomoaki Baba (J-Squad).

With Mahōgakkō there is no doubt that this is the sound of a once-in-a-generation artist not just breaking boundaries for Japanese music but global music culture and it will leave you with no doubt that Hakushi Hasegawa is only really just getting started. 

Prospect Hummer, 2005 EP by Animal Collective featuring Vashti Bunyan on three tracks, is reissued on black vinyl

The second part of Matador’s reissues of the essential early records by Texas’s Butthole Surfers continues with three of their most insane slabs -- 1985’s ‘Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis,’ 1987’s ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ and 1988’s ‘Hairway to Steven.’

The period during which these records were first issued parallels the Buttholes’ transition from being weirdo Texas outcasts to becoming internationally recognized smut-kings of the American underground. In 1985 they were still the sole province of hallucingen-soaked punk rock freaks. By 1988 they had toured Europe, had records licensed internationally, and bought a house in Driftwood Texas to serve as their home base. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

‘Hairway to Steven’ is a blast, ranging from the blood-smeared guitar-overload of “Jimi” to the acoustic guitar-based sing-along sweetness of “I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas” to the Fugs-like ranting of “John E. Smokes.” Yet somehow, the album managed to get the straight media to actually notice. For all its strangeness, ‘Hairway’ got rave notices in places that had never paid the band any attention previously. It was the Buttholes’ last album of the ‘80s and marks the beginning of their ascendance into something akin to commercial success. Not that the band actually imagined anything at all like that occurring.

The second part of Matador’s reissues of the essential early records by Texas’s Butthole Surfers continues with three of their most insane slabs -- 1985’s ‘Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis,’ 1987’s ‘Locust Abortion Technician’ and 1988’s ‘Hairway to Steven.’

The period during which these records were first issued parallels the Buttholes’ transition from being weirdo Texas outcasts to becoming internationally recognized smut-kings of the American underground. In 1985 they were still the sole province of hallucingen-soaked punk rock freaks. By 1988 they had toured Europe, had records licensed internationally, and bought a house in Driftwood Texas to serve as their home base. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

‘Hairway to Steven’ is a blast, ranging from the blood-smeared guitar-overload of “Jimi” to the acoustic guitar-based sing-along sweetness of “I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas” to the Fugs-like ranting of “John E. Smokes.” Yet somehow, the album managed to get the straight media to actually notice. For all its strangeness, ‘Hairway’ got rave notices in places that had never paid the band any attention previously. It was the Buttholes’ last album of the ‘80s and marks the beginning of their ascendance into something akin to commercial success. Not that the band actually imagined anything at all like that occurring.

Legendary musician and multi-disciplinary artist Kim Gordon returns with her second solo album, The Collective, which will be released March 8th on Matador. Recorded in her native Los Angeles, The Collective follows Gordon’s 2019 full-length debut No Home Record and continues her collaboration with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor), with additional production from Anthony Paul Lopez. The album advances their joint world building, with Raisin’s damaged, blown out dub and trap constructions playing the foil to Gordon’s intuitive word collages and hooky mantras, which conjure communication, commercial sublimation and sensory overload.

“On this record, I wanted to express the absolute craziness I feel around me right now,” says Gordon. “This is a moment when nobody really knows what truth is, when facts don’t necessarily sway people, when everyone has their own side, creating a general sense of paranoia. To soothe, to dream, escape with drugs, TV shows, shopping, the internet, everything is easy, smooth, convenient, branded. It made me want to disrupt, to follow something unknown, maybe even to fail.”

Salad Days is the follow-up to Mac DeMarco’s lauded 2012 album 2, which saw the Edmonton local propelled into the limelight. Written and recorded around a relentless tour schedule, Salad Days gives the listener a very personal insight into what it’s all about to be Mac amidst the craziness of a rising career in a very public format.In celebration of the 10 year anniversary of DeMarco’s career-defining album, this limited edition 2xLP compiles both the original Salad Days and Salad Days Demos into a unique ‘Chamber Of Reflection’ package complete with full color poster, 12-page booklet with DeMarco’s Salad Days Tour dates, original rider, previously unpublished photos, and new liners written by Mac. “DeMarco channels Harry Nilsson, The Beach Boys, Steely Dan, and The Beatles, but the offbeat stoner vibes are all him.” - Rolling Stone“An outstanding crystallization of [DeMarco’s] gifts” - Pitchfork“The real-talk advice of Jonathan Richman with a far more accessible poetic dreaminess.” - Pitchfork

Thee Marloes, by way of Surabaya, Indonesia are Natassya Sianturi on vocals, Sinatrya Dharaka on guitar, and Tommy Satwick on drums. Their unique sound mixes elements of their local culture and music with influences of Soul, Jazz, and Pop.