MUSIC
7420 products
The Unwound album that ended all Unwound albums. Recorded in a moldering farmhouse basement at the crest of the new century, Leaves Turn Inside You is the no-wave response to Spector’s wall of noise call. Infinite layers of choppy guitar stabs and bridge scrapes, guttural bass thronk, thrift store synths, and monotone chanting wash over suffocating rhythms to deliver the world’s only choral grunge LP. Remastered from the original analog tapes and pressed on heavyweight vinyl for the discerning noise-nik.
new avatar is where everything Kelela has been building toward comes into focus. She started writing her first songs in the D.C. indie scene before the club music and electronic production that defined her early career took over. With new avatar, she closes the loop: R&B run through distorted guitar living alongside new intersections in dance music, culminating in a sound that pulls from everywhere she has ever lived musically.
Bruno Berle is a singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and figurehead of a contemporary Brazilian music movement. With a quiet mastery of songwriting and an astonishing voice, his music has won hearts around the world. Since the release of his debut album No Reino Dos Afetos (2022), Berle has performed across the UK, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and China, only leaving his home country for the first time in 2023. Shaped by these journeys, Berle’s third studio album, Sem Fronteiras (Without Borders), reflects a utopian vision of a unified world. Recorded across London, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Germany, and Maceió, the album–co-produced alongside his longstanding musical partner Batata Boy–is the most expansive canvas Berle has worked on to date. Shot through with the imagery that has always animated his songwriting: open skies, morning light, vivid colours and the magic of human connection, Berle’s carefully crafted poetics and warm, delicate instrumentation drive this vivid body of work. “I came from nothing”–Berle doesn’t take his rise to global prominence for granted. Born to a working class family from Brazil’s northeastern Alagoas state, one of Brazil’s most economically deprived, Bruno moved frequently in his youth to follow any job opportunities his parents could find, before eventually settling in the coastal capital of Maceió. “I used to travel to Caruaru, Santa Cruz, Recife, Garanhuns, Arapiraca, which I loved and feel it made me ready to be in this rhythm i’, but at the same time I think not having friends from childhood and being in constant change made me a little numb to the constant upheaval”. On Sem Fronteiras, there is a similar duality at play. The album celebrates the collective joy and human connection that live touring brings, but it also sits with the darker realities of crossing borders. While music moves more freely around the world than ever before, our bodies are not granted the same privilege. Though he’s never lacked self-belief, Berle recognises that talent alone doesn’t guarantee opportunity. “Before my second album [No Reino Dos Afetos 2] everything I had ever recorded was made with the help and kindness of people who believed in my ability”. Determined to pay that kindness forward and help others from the sharp end of Brazil’s desperately unequal society, Berle produced and featured on the recent self-titled albums by his northeast Brazilian compatriots, Nyron Higor and Phylipe Nunes Araújo (both 2025), helping propel both onto the international stage. In turn, following the successes of Nyron & Phylipe’s albums alongside his own, Bruno finds himself at the forefront of a thriving community of artists now based in São Paulo, but primarily originating from northeastern states like Alagoas and Pernambuco. Much like the famed Clube Da Esquina movement that spawned in 1970’s Minas Gerais, they operate with a free-exchange of ideas, writing songs with and for each other, performing on each other’s albums and on the live circuit together. Lead single ‘Manha’ flows from this ethos. It was written by Berle’s friend and fellow Alagoan João Menezes (writer of ‘Ate Meu Violao’ and ‘Te Amar Eterno’ from Bruno’s previous albums) and Marvin Viera, and originally recorded on their 2018 album Areia e Mar. Sem Fronteiras opens with ‘Você Já Sabe Que Eu Te Amo’, just six beats of one nylon guitar chord ring out before changing key, paving the way for the gentle strike of fender rhodes and the arresting call & response duet between Berle and Higor. On ‘Amor Inteiro’, the album reaches a celebratory burst of catharsis, with the punch-packing drums of Pedro Lacerda and Nina Maia’s joyous backing vocals encapsulating the live energy that Berle and his band bring to the stage. With the abundant talents of this musical community at its heart, Sem Fronteiras releases 10th July 2026 via Far Out Recordings, supported by a summer tour across Europe. Bruno Berle will perform in a four-piece band alongside Nyron Higor, Phylipe Nunes, and Batata Boy, culminating in an appearance at Roskilde festival, Berle’s biggest live show to date. He’ll continue to carry a hopeful vision of a world where artists and musicians can move as freely as their music flows.
Geoff Farina’s Southern Records tenure was not just about Karate. His late-90s guitar-and-vocal solo output included the bedroom-recorded Usonian Dream Sequence that echoed The Secret Stars’ intimate lo-fi sentiments, Reverse Eclipse that rode the more delicate fringes of Unsolved-era Karate, and the single Steely Dan, a paean to a contemporaneous guilty pleasure. FFF collects all three long-out-of-print releases here on vinyl for the first time, fastidiously packaged and punctuated with Farina’s written reflections on their making.
Geoff Farina’s Southern Records tenure was not just about Karate. His late-90s guitar-and-vocal solo output included the bedroom-recorded Usonian Dream Sequence that echoed The Secret Stars’ intimate lo-fi sentiments, Reverse Eclipse that rode the more delicate fringes of Unsolved-era Karate, and the single Steely Dan, a paean to a contemporaneous guilty pleasure. FFF collects all three long-out-of-print releases here on vinyl for the first time, fastidiously packaged and punctuated with Farina’s written reflections on their making.
There are collaborations that feel engineered, and then there are those that feel like summer sun’s warmth on a Sunday. Helado Tropical, the debut collaborative album from Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical, belongs to the latter, channeling that easy, sun-drenched tenderness into sound. It didn’t begin with a plan so much as a meeting: two artists orbiting similar questions around language, identity, and music, finally landing in the same room. What followed was less a traditional writing process than a shared unfolding – an instinctive, immersive exchange that stretched across geographies, time zones, and states of being. The duo first met in June 2024 in North Carolina, brought together by a mutual friend and a loose invitation to spend time in the studio. What might have been a brief session turned into something closer to a three-day sleepover – equal parts conversation, curiosity, and creative risk. Reyna Tropical, who often works within intimate, long-standing collaborations, arrived unsure of what it would mean to open their process to someone new. Helado Negro, long known for expanding the sonic and emotional language of Latin music, entered with a similar openness: no expectations, just a willingness to see what might emerge. What emerged was immediate, rather than easing into collaboration, the two found themselves propelled forward by it – building songs in real time, responding to each other’s instincts without over-explaining them. There was no rigid division of roles. One would begin an idea, the other would answer. A melody would suggest a rhythm; a rhythm would reshape a lyric. “There was never a moment where we felt super stuck,” Helado Negro recalls. “It was just like ‘ok what’s next?’ and even within the songs, trying to create these micro worlds – we just felt excited about each moment.” That sense of momentum became foundational to Helado Tropical, a nine-song project that feels both weightless and deeply rooted. Built from guitars, drum machines, and synthesizers, the album resists clean categorization. It lives somewhere between ambient and rhythmic, intimate and expansive; essentially, a sonic language of its own making, shaped as much by feeling as by form. If there is a unifying thread, it’s movement. The album was written across multiple locations – North Carolina, Portland, and the midwest – with both artists continuing to shape the songs in between sessions, sending ideas back and forth in a kind of long-distance dialogue. At times, the process resembled a “postal service” exchange, each artist adding layers in solitude before returning to build together again. The result is music that carries a sense of travel within it – not just physical, but emotional and spiritual. For Reyna Tropical, that movement became central to the project’s meaning. “You can really lose yourself in where you are and you can miss a lot of processing,” they say. “But I think that this particular album really was able to ground me in what movement means to me and just different characters that the range of movement, travel… environment – sun, wind, and water – has the potential to bring out.” The songs reflect that duality: they drift, swell, and shift, yet remain tethered to something steady beneath the surface. That balance is perhaps most evident in “Sensación,” a song that explores intimacy outside of traditional frameworks. Rooted in curiosity, it opens up a more expansive understanding of closeness – one that, yes, can exist between people but also within oneself, and in fleeting shared moments. There is a softness to it, but also a charge: like a storm forming quietly in the distance. Elsewhere, “Fluye” captures a different kind of release – an almost suspended state of awe, inspired in part by Reyna Tropical’s experience watching a sunrise stretch endlessly across a long-haul flight. It’s a song about surrendering to flow, awakening, and recognizing continuity and connection – even in moments of disorientation. And then there is “Tocando,” one of the album’s most visceral recordings. Built from a pre-existing beat Helado Negro introduced during their sessions, the track took shape after more than a day without sleep. Reyna Tropical recalls pacing, waiting for the lyrics to arrive, before finally delivering them in what they describe as an almost essay-like outpouring. The result is a song that holds tension and tenderness simultaneously: a meditation on relationships that feels both fragile and fraught, intimate yet edged with warning. That duality of softness and sharpness, as well as openness and resistance, runs throughout the album. It’s there in “Soledad,” the final track recorded, which came together in a single late-night session after the project was technically complete. What began as an improvisation on keys turned into something magnetic, keeping both artists back into creation. “[We] couldn’t leave the room,” Reyna Tropical says. The finished song retains that energy between them, and sense of flow coupled with immediacy, unfolding with minimal alteration from its original form. Across Helado Tropical, there is a noticeable absence of constraint: not just musically, but conceptually. Both artists share a long-standing resistance to the expectations often placed on Latin music: what it should sound like, how it should feel, what stories it should tell. As they do individually, these two artists create space for something more fluid and personal on this project. That freedom extends to the album’s emotional perspective. While many of the songs explore intimacy, they rarely function as direct dialogues between the two voices. Instead, they exist within a shared world where each artist expresses something individual and collective. “It’s not about us speaking to each other,” Helado Negro explains. “It’s about us existing in the same feeling.” What makes Helado Tropical particularly resonant is the sense of trust that underpins it. Trust in each other, of course, but also trust in instinct, in process, and the idea that not everything needs to be fully understood in the moment it’s created. Much of the album was written through improvisation, with meaning revealing itself only later, as the artists listened back and reflected. In that way, the project functions as both creation and documentation: a record of a specific time, place, and connection. Reyna Tropical describes it as a form of archiving – capturing not just songs, but the emotional and relational context in which they were made. “It was a lot of processing, a lot of transition” they say about where they were at personally. Ultimately, it was about understanding that “this is supposed to be released so we could keep going. I really feel like this album does that personally, and hopefully is able to hold that for other people too.” That forward motion propelled by release is felt in every part of the album. It hums beneath the surface of even its quietest moments, carrying a sense of continuation, and of something still unfolding. Ultimately, Helado Tropical encapsulates a moment of two artists meeting at the right moment, with the right openness, allowing something larger than either of them to take shape. It is spontaneous yet intentional, grounded yet expansive, deeply personal yet invitingly universal. And this convergence of forces is just the beginning.
Female fronted emo from the First State. Only 100 miles from D.C., Delaware enjoyed no immunity to emo. Wilmington’s Jade Tree held down the state’s first entries, foisting a 7" and album by label co-founder Darren Walters’ Railhed project onto unsuspecting Swiz and Universal Order of Armageddon customers. Railhed drummer Nick Rotundo played a key role in the shadow of the Twelve-Mile Circle, setting up Clay Creek Recording Studio in his wood-paneled Newark home and documenting local heroes Boysetsfire, Clevinger, and Network 34 in the process. “Without Nick, there would be no punk scene,” Eldritch Anisette bassist Marc Krupanski said. “He was an anchor in our fucked-up family of misfits and punks.” They called themselves The Enoch Collective, a group of young adults putting on $4 shows at VFW halls, churches, and Girls Inc. locations. Named by an awkward marriage of H.P. Lovecraft’s Eldritch Tales and the aniseed Mediterranean liqueur, Eldritch Anisette formed in spring 1996 when members of Clevinger and Network 34 showed the elasticity of adolescence. Singer Courtney Miller and guitarist Allen Hitchens were old enough to drink, while the rhythm section of Krupanski and drummer Tim Nichols had just gotten their licenses. That age gap is heard in the band’s varied influences, from Samiam to screamo, Samuel to The Sundays. “My biggest writing influences at the time were Harriet Wheeler and Tori Amos,” Miller said. “The subjects they explored felt really relatable and in some cases challenged me to feel more comfortable with putting work out there that was sometimes thematically difficult.” In winter ’97, they booked time at Clay Creek and spent two days tracking their six-song oeuvre, at a cost of $100. “Suckerpunch,” “Pessimism Goes To Work,” and “Dissection of Silence” were selected for a 7", the others relegated to a DAT Rotundo held onto for safekeeping. The band deteriorated shortly after the record’s spring ’97 release. Collected here for the first time are the band's complete recordings, pressed in an edition of 500 and housed in a hand screened chipboard jacket with lyric insert for easy scream alongs with the kids.
Originally released in 1998, Boston emo outfit Jejune's shoegaze-inspired second album has been given the Numero treatment with a long overdue remaster. RIUYL Rainer Maria, Superchunk or Karate.
Jejune were only around for four years, but they left behind them a subtle trail of influence that's exemplified on their milestone sophomore album. Unlike their debut 'Junk' (that Numero remastered and reissued earlier this year), 'This Afternoon's Malady' began to subvert the emo template, shoring up Arabella Harrison and Joe Guevara's fragile, cracking vocals with thick, wall-of-sound production that betrayed the influence of MBV's 'Loveless' and Catherine Wheel's 'Ferment'. The band were saddled with accusations of being "emo" when the album originally emerged in the late '90s and the term had become a slur, and now we can visualize their influence a little more clearly. They were emblematic of the genre's refined, ultra-melodic second wave, and since they splintered in 2000 they've been referenced constantly online. Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba called them one of his favorite bands, and Jejune neatly bridge the gap between hardcore punk and indie rock, foreshadowing the '00s boom.
Capturing the raw, melodic sounds of 90’s second wave emo - Jejune’s 1997 album Junk is anything but. Blending dual vocals, massive drums, and riffs stacked on riffs, this is the blueprint for indie bands to follow.
Capturing the raw, melodic sounds of 90’s second wave emo - Jejune’s 1997 album Junk is anything but. Blending dual vocals, massive drums, and riffs stacked on riffs, this is the blueprint for indie bands to follow.
Capturing the raw, melodic sounds of 90’s second wave emo - Jejune’s 1997 album Junk is anything but. Blending dual vocals, massive drums, and riffs stacked on riffs, this is the blueprint for indie bands to follow.
Feed Like Fishes is Should's first full-length record — an album of noisy, sedate, and minimal pop songs. Falling somewhere between shoegazer, slowcore, and postrock, Feed Like Fishes is a wonderfully complicated record that echoes the sounds of Yo La Tengo, Slowdive, Bedhead, and Galaxie 500. The album also includes Should's take on The Wedding Present song "Spangle."
The album begins with "Fish Fourteen," a fuzzed-out lo-fi instrumental inspired by Colin Newman's instrumental solo record, Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish. "Sarah Missing" fits perfectly with the work on Should's A Folding Sieve album, with its unforgettable vocal chorus awash in shoegazing delight.
"It Still Would" and "It's Pull Is Slight" are moderately-paced indie rock tunes that bring to mind Bedhead, the latter song featuring a parade of bells throughout its extended coda.
"Memdrive" encircles whispered vocals with gliding bass and guitar lines in the spirit of Main's early work. Should also explore Apollo-era Brian Eno on "Inst2" substituting heavy analog-delayed guitar notes for Eno's keyboards.
"Both Eyes Open" ends the record with a nod to the melodious, delicate side of Yo La Tengo with Marc and Tanya's coupled vocals going down as sweet as sugar.
The San Diego via Boston alt trio's complete original studio recordings, remastered, restored, and compiled into one lavish box set. Wait A Lifetime gathers the band's peerless albums Junk and This Afternoons Malady, plus a first time vinyl pressing of R.I.P., expanded to include their unfinished 3rd album, singles, splits, and comp tracks. The 28-page accompanying booklet details the entire saga via Nina Corcoran's essay and dozens of period photos, all housed in a stunning case-wrapped and varnished box. Sink into the ground and fly.
A band that played so loud their entire fan base went deaf and never spoke of them again. Formed in 1993 in the go-nowhere exurb of San Jose, California, Super Static Fever played only a handful of gigs in their brief two year existence, punishing spectators with a tinnitus-inducing wah-wah wall of Marshall-stacked distortion. Their sound was a mix of Melvins-esque sludge, Swervedriver’s melodic crunch, and latter-day Black Flag’s penchant for volume, as heard from the stock stereo of a hot-boxed 1985 Ford Econoline. Unfinished tapes from two ear-bleeding sessions are all that survived the ensuing 25 years since their indifferent break-up, mixed by the exacting Steve Albini as the band’s one condition for reissue. The package reeks of the ’90s computer-crippled D.I.Y. aesthetic, with VHS blur and opaque white screened on chipboard. A record that just barely does, and probably should not, exist.
For the first time on vinyl, Yo La Tengo’s understated, lonesome score to Kelly Reichardt’s classic “Old Joy.”
Recorded in a single afternoon at Yo La Tengo’s studio in Hoboken, Old Joy is a drifting, improvisatory journey, born out of years-long friendship between the band and the film’s director.
The six instrumental tracks, created in collaboration with legendary guitarist Smokey Hormel, carry that unmistakable Yo La Tengo sound, but delivered in service of another great work of art. The music, like so much of Reichardt’s film work, is low-key yet arresting, stripped down to the essentials, warm and unpretentious. The record includes two variations on the beloved “Leaving Home” theme, released for the first time on vinyl after years traveling in Yo La Tengo fan circles.
This music is a balm, remarkably full of emotion despite (or maybe because of) its restraint and minimalism. Originally released on They Shoot, We Score, a CD compiling several of the band’s soundtracks, Old Joy stands as a cohesive whole here, blooming and rewarding repeat listens. Sliding reverbed guitars, muted piano and percussion, the hum of an old amp - the blurry memory of an afternoon in the studio, or a short-lived road trip through the backwoods of Oregon.
Small-run, high-quality LP pressed at Smashed Plastic in Chicago, on black and transparent pink vinyl.</p><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 340px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=853350/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://mississippirecords.bandcamp.com/album/old-joy-official-soundtrack">Old Joy (Official Soundtrack) by Yo La Tengo</a></iframe>
Reverend Baron’s singular troubadour soul may best understand the capacity music has to span the distance between points on a map and pages in a calendar. Daniel, the acoustic instrumental follow-up to 2022’s Karma Chief label debut, From Anywhere…, expands the world beyond LA’s concrete canyons and overpasses to the bustling, churning sea of life that is Mexico City, to the sparse, rolling landscape of Red Cloud, Nebraska. In each locale, the constant companion was a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar — with a well-traveled history of its own. “It was my father’s guitar,” recalls Danny Garcia, the man behind the Reverend. “I found out a few years ago that it was my grandfather’s as well.” Ever-present since his childhood, the Mexican acoustic has taken on increased meaning for Garcia with each passing year. Hours upon hours spent playing, traveling, and breathing meaning into its fretboard have made it both a tool and talisman. “There’s the obvious bloodline and family and link…that link through history,” confides Garcia. “It’s kinda the only family heirloom I have.” Over the last while, all this playing (or “noodling” as Danny puts it) had Reverend Baron chasing a sound — one which belies the guitar’s origins. It’s a sound he would hear from time to time, and when it came to record Daniel, it would be his true magnetic north (or south as it were). Spinning through Daniel, and you will hear echoes of Antonio Bribiesca and Luiz Bonfa's guitar tones. Dig deeper and you’ll see the bones of Townes Van Zandt and Nick Drake guitar textures as well. While not claiming their virtuosity in his playing, the soul and vulnerability that have become calling cards for the first two Reverend Baron albums complement these influences. There is a warmth in Daniel that takes center stage in these acoustic meditations. From brief, fluid moments like “El Monte” and “How Glad” to the high-lonesome “Muchacho,” the songs drift like cumulus clouds over a deep blue skyway. Their graceful float is in stark contrast to the album’s origins. The studio Garcia was using for his intended second release on Karma Chief was a victim of the LA wildfires in January of 2025. “[The fires] halted work on my record,” says Garcia. “So I ended up leaving and went to Mexico City for a few months, and so worked quite a bit [on Daniel] there.” With his striped-down set up -- featuring his guitar, a few microphones, and a laptop -- the time in Mexico City set the tone for the project. “I just came into this space because it seemed like I could just do it…it seemed like it was time, and I didn’t have to force anything.” After leaving CDMX, Reverend Baron spent a few weeks in Red Cloud. While all the traveling and miles energize Garcia, this small midwestern village’s peaceful and unassuming nature was the ideal spot to focus and create. “LA is home and has its own cultural juice, which I love…Nebraska is very quiet. No one disturbs you, and I can just work and concentrate for weeks [there].” Daniel’s 11 tracks criss-cross the laylines of border music and folk, but categorizing them along a fault line or genre tag misses the point. These acoustic numbers move with a deliberate ease, never overstaying their welcome. The songs respond to time and distance with equal parts reflection and transparency; both mirror and window to the soul. Daniel is Reverend Baron’s conversation with his bloodline, influences, and the stops along the way. By the album’s closer, “Velasco,” Daniel’s conversation becomes your invitation to search for a path along that great sonic continuum housed within a song.
The latest by iconic slowburn Australian duo HTRK is an elegant nine song suite of windswept emotion and heartbreak noir, crafted in skeletal arrangements of guitar, voice, metronomes, and FX. Inspired by a recent infatuation with “eerie and gothic country music,” Rhinestones moves from whispered lament to acoustic eulogy to downtempo vignettes, tracing muted embers of loss and lust through haunted city streets. Taking cues from the economy and brevity of western folk but skewed through a narcotic, nocturnal lens, the album maps enigmatic badlands of strung out beauty and lengthening shadows.
Nigel Yang cites friendship as a central muse, “particularly the forging of it, and its potential for new feelings of telepathy and trust.” Jonnine Standish’s wounded, alluring vocals echo similar mysteries of connection and unknown crossroads, poetic but direct, dream diaries faded with age and rain. The rhinestones of the title evoke the glittering plastic of cowboy glamor, yet “made precious somehow;” Standish cites as an example a baby blue star brooch from Texas, gifted to her “from a stoned friend on New Year’s Eve 10 years ago in Brighton – cheap keepsakes can be more valuable than diamonds.”
Even for a group as enduringly versatile as HTRK, Rhinestones is a revelation, condensing their lyrical alchemy to its simmering, magnetic essence. “Sunlight Feels Like Bee Stings,” “Reverse Déjà vu,” and “Gilbert and George” in particular are masterpieces of drama, delivery, and distillation, dried flowers clouded by smoke, the candle’s flame flickering but unforgotten: “Some things are not like the others / Some friends are not like the others / did I ever say / did I ever say / did I ever say thank you?”
Market East finally shares their most important statement to the world in the form of their debut LP, French Street. The group, composed of Kurt Cain on vocals, Vincent John on vocals, bass, guitar and keys, and Maxwell Perla on vocals, drums and percussion, deliver their signature celestial three part harmonies over arrangements that have never sounded so rich and compelling.
French Street is extremely soulful and the vocals are lush, like if the Zombies recorded at Muscle Shoals. The lyrics are poetic and nostalgic, as the group wrote songs about their bygone “golden” years. Back then, the boys didn’t have much besides each other and their shared love of music. Vocalist Kurt Cain lived in a small rowhome in North Philadelphia on a nearly deserted alley named French Street. It was here that Cain, John, and Perla came together every week to escape reality and get high off sharing music. They developed a deep appreciation for all things 60s and 70s, from Simon & Garfunkel to the Moments, and everything in between.
All these years later, and Market East has created a classic record of their own. From the baroque pop of the title track and the roaring soul of “Roses,” to the Latin flavors of “Echoes of My Heart” and the orchestral flares of “Everyday, Springtime,” Market East shows their impressive range. Recorded to analog tape in Philadelphia, the record was produced by the band and Eraserhood Sound. Grab your copy of this timeless classic today.
Greg Mendez has always been an economical songwriter – he wields restraint and simplicity as tools, the core of his songs sharpened into simple, cutting truths. On Beauty Land, his new album and debut LP for Dead Oceans, we’re guided by a wry but forgiving narrator, an underdog who has learned to balance cynicism and faith. These songs are self-effacing without self-pity, carefully constructed altars of imperfection channeled through pop melodies, shimmering but urgent guitars, and a voice that reaches for choir boy innocence. The bulk of Beauty Land was recorded directly to tape, almost entirely alone in Mendez’s makeshift home studio in Philadelphia – a small room with no natural light. It’s his first full length since his unexpected self-titled breakthrough in 2023, which was a slow burn success following 15 years of writing and recording music in relative obscurity between Philly and New York. Beauty Land picks up where we left off three years ago – plumbing the depths of grief, love, and addiction – but its intense, quiet clarity shows Mendez at his songwriting best. Parts of Beauty Land feel like a lucid dream, dented characters carve their way through a world that’s cartoonish and warped – the broken-clock march of “I Wanna Feel Pretty,” the chiming toy piano on “Gentle Love.” “Mary / Dreaming” begins as a sparse, finger-picked lament before cutting abruptly to a deflated, Beach-Boys-but-make-it-fucked-up resolution that brings both melancholy and joy; a sense that all things can be true at once. None of the 14 tracks here break three minutes, but they tell stories that span lifetimes. Death floats through the record, whether it appears as a memory or a threat. Everything feels precarious. There’s a fragility to how these songs are built: the way the funeral organ hits alongside the morphine on “Looking Out Your Window,” the devastating simplicity of “Frog,” with its slowed-down keyboard and bare refrain: “Please forgive me for my faults.” Beauty Land feels, at times, impossibly lonely. Which makes it really count when it doesn’t – like when Mendez sings in harmony with his wife and bandmate, Veronica near the end of “So Mean” and it feels like a cherished reunion, a fleeting moment of redemption, a temporary parting of the seas.
El Michels Affair's limited edition 7-inch single Anticipate b/w Indifference features two tracks from their latest album 24 Hr Sports. With guest appearances by Clairo and Shintaro Sakamoto, the release blends vintage soul with a modern sensibility.
