Australian “Punk Rock” band “Amyl and the Sniffers” are most definitely a band to watch. Their fierce, fun-loving, and noisy style will resonate with anyone who loves the aggressive spirit of “Punk Rock.” Today the band released a brand new single titled “Monsoon Rock,” which will appear on their upcoming debut album set to be released on May 24th. No other details about the album have been unveiled at this time. You can watch the music video for “Monsoon Rock” below:
It’s been awhile since “Clinic” have blessed us with their oddball Psychedelia. Following their 2012 album Free Reign, the band will finally return with a new album titled Wheeltappers and Shunters on May 10th. The band have also released a new single titled “Rubber Bullets,” and it’s “Clinic” 101. You can watch the music video below:
Wheeltappers and Shunters Pre-order:
https://www.dominomusic.com/releases/clinic/wheeltappers-and-shunters/deluxe-mart-lp
Artist: Solange
Album: When I Get Home
Genre: R&B/Alternative R&B/Hip Hop
Label: Columbia Records
Rating: 6/10
Back in 2016 Solange Knowles released a powerful album named A Seat At The Table. An album that was just as much a statement as it was an adventurous exploration in the realm of “R&B” and it’s many sub-genres. With a smooth and sexy sleekness, the album touched on topics such as race, anger, and escapism through our many vices, and as important as this subject matter is, the album was never obnoxiously overbearing. Instead, Solange lured us in with her soothing vocals that displayed the importance of subtlety. As groundbreaking and acclaimed as this album was, you can imagine how much hype a follow-up would get, so naturally her new album When I Get Home is definitely receiving that hype. Unfortunately, the album does not live up to the hype. Following a highly successful album isn’t easy. The bar has been set, and most will want you to create something that is on par with the predecessor. We all know Solange has the talent to do so, but instead, most of the tracks on When I Get Home fall incredibly flat. This leads to a frustrating listen. Like A Seat At The Table, When I Get Home is filled with interludes, but the ironic thing is that all of the full-length tracks on this album sound like interludes. Each track has imaginative and quite innovative production at times thanks to a laundry list of collaborators such as Pharrell, Tyler, The Creator, Panda Bear, Dev Hynes, Steve Lacy, and Metro Boomin, but each track is anticlimactic with it’s repetition. Solange most definitely wanted to experiment more and offer a Psychedelic experience, but her ambition to explore as much as possible was a detriment to this album, making the whole thing sound completely scatterbrained. Songs like “Way To The Show” and “Stay Flo” feel like they should be a lot more impactful, but like the rest of the album, the tracks sound like unfinished rough drafts with lackluster lyrics and underwhelming vocals that get cringeworthy at times. Yes this album does feature thought-provoking subject matter, but that subject matter is translated through lackluster songwriting. Important subject matter doesn’t suffice when it comes to constructing a full album where every other element has to be up to par. Solange can do much better. Hopefully her next release will be an improvement.
Written By: Steven Sandoval
Date: 03/05/19
Everyone’s favorite chain-smoking and cheap beer drinking musician Mac DeMarco is back. Mac has announced a new album titled Here Comes The Cowboy, which is set to be released on May 10th through “Mac’s Record Label.” He has also dropped the album’s first single titled “Nobody,” and no the album title or single isn’t a reference to Mitski’s Be The Cowboy. It has been confirmed that this is a coincidence. Mitski herself even had a laugh about it on social media. Here Comes The Cowboy will follow Mac’s fantastic album This Old Dog. You can watch the music video for “Nobody” below:
Last year Ari Aster scared the living shit out of everyone with his disturbing full-length debut film Hereditary, and now it looks like Mr. Aster is about to traumatize us once again with his new follow-up Midsommar. The film follows a couple traveling to Sweden to attend a mid-summer festival, but little do they know, the two are merely pawns in a violent competition lead by a Pagan cult. The film will be released through “A24 Films” on August 9th. You can watch the trailer below:
Australian band “Tropical Fuck Storm” have been on a roll, and it looks like the band don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Today these oddballs released a brand new track titled “The Planet Of Straw Men,” as well as a music video to accompany it. The track will appear on their upcoming follow-up to last year’s spectacular debut A Laughing Death In Meatspace, which is set to be released later in the year. You can watch the music video below:
“The Planet Of Straw Men” Pre-order:
The masters of field recordings, “Matmos” are set to release their new album Plastic Anniversary on March 15th. The album’s instrumentation consists of sounds of various plastic objects. Why? Well, it’s “Matmos,” that’s why. Who else can make you groove to washing machine sounds? The duo have shared two brand new music videos for the tracks “Breaking Bread” and “Thermosplastic Riot Shield” off the upcoming album, and in true “Matmos” fashion, the duo’s imaginative talent has found a way to make you dance to unorthodox instrumentation. You can watch the videos below:
Musician Hannah Rodgers under the name “Pixx” has been making some of the most enticing “Art Pop” in the past few years. Her debut album The Age of Anxiety was one of the best albums of 2017, an album that fused various genres such as Art Pop, Synth-Pop, Dream Pop, and Post-Punk, and it all featured frequent Gothic sensibilities that offered a gloomy contrast to the album’s colorful tone. Today, Rodgers unveiled the details of her upcoming follow-up Small Mercies. The album will be released on June 7th. Rodgers has also dropped the album’s first single titled “Disgrace.” “This song is about growing up in an ultra-conservative Catholic school which was restrictive and oppressive. I think there is a lack of humanity in the way that system works, rather than teaching empathy and kindness it forces people into a dangerous self-loathing cycle. This is an ode to anyone trapped in a place they don’t feel they belong,” Rodgers says of the track. You can listen to “Disgrace” below:
Small Mercies Pre-Order:
Artist: SPELLLING
Album: Mazy Fly
Genre: Art Pop/Experimental/Electronic
Label: Sacred Bones Records
Rating: 8/10
Have you ever discovered an artist so unapologetically imaginative and creative to the point where you suspect that this artist is not from this planet? Well, Chrystia Cabral A.K.A. “SPELLLING” most certainly fits this description. Following her 2017 debut Pantheon of Me, the Oakland, CA based musician delves further into her spiritual, poetic, and otherworldly mind on her new album Mazy Fly, the first on new label “Sacred Bones Records,” which is a perfect home for her immense experimental ambitions. This album, like I mentioned earlier, is vastly otherworldly with spacey instrumentation consisting of minimal and at times dark synthesizers, bare but mood-setting drum machine patterns, and eerie sound textures that can be as nightmare-inducing as they are angelic. The album is produced almost entirely by Cabral, but she also brings along other musicians for the ride to create her own universe. The live drums and guitars that flirt heavily with “Doom Metal” on the track “Real Fun,” the pristine saxophone on the track “Afterlife,” and the subtle violin on the epic track “Under The Sun,” are all gorgeous additions to this spiritual journey of an album, and also like I mentioned earlier, the alienistic lyrical themes further prove my hunch that she is from another planet. With lyrical themes such as aliens traveling to earth to discover music and dance to Billie Holiday and “Billie Jean,” and the use of theramin that evokes the spirit of B-level “Sci-Fi” films, it’s apparent that Cabral is a visionary who constantly looks past the surface level and lays her eyes upon the stars. Though she often speaks from the perspective of someone who extremely admires the universe and it’s endlessness, Cabral explores human sentiment as well. The track “Hard to Please,” speaks on the emotional and mental toll the pain of trying to please an unsatisfied lover can take on someone, but with a constant sense of optimism, this album never strays into nihilism or cynicism, no matter how deeply personal this album can get. Though I feel like Chrystia Cabral has yet to reach her magnum opus, Mazy Fly is one giant leap toward her masterpiece.
Written By: Steven Sandoval
Date: 02/26/19
Artist: Sleater-Kinney
Album: The Hot Rock
Genre: Alternative Rock/Indie Rock
Release Date: 02/23/99
Rating: 8.5/10
It’s mind blowing to think that 1999 was 20 years ago. It feels like just yesterday people were bumping “Limp Bizkit,” wearing “Austin 3:16” T-shirts, and stocking up on bottled water and canned food for Y2K. Yes, those are all outdated references, but there are timeless gems that occurred in 1999 that remain relevant. One of those gems is Sleater-Kinney’s fourth album The Hot Rock. Sleater-Kinney in my opinion are one of the greatest “Rock & Roll” bands in music history. Emerging from the “Riot Grrrl” movement of the early 90’s, an impactful movement that utilized the aggressive spirit of “Punk Rock” to take down misogyny and toxic masculinity with a feministic ethos, “Sleater-Kinney” consisted of members of pre-existing “Riot Grrrl” bands such as “Heavens to Betsy” and “Excuse 17.” After three incredible albums that garnered much attention for their raucous and thought provoking styles, “Sleater-Kinney” went in a different direction in 1999 for their fourth album The Hot Rock. After turning down record deal offers from numerous major labels to remain on the label “Kill Rock Stars,” the band went in a more mellow and melodic direction with The Hot Rock. Though some tracks still featured that raw and cutting style, the bulk of the album is gloomier with lyrical content that focuses more on personal themes such as failed relationships and personal uncertainty. The instrumentation is among some of the band’s finest work. The guitar and vocal interplay between members Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein is truly unique, something that is a prominent element in the band’s sound. The Hot Rock was also the second album to feature Janet Weiss on drums, who replaced original drummer Lora MacFarlane. Weiss’ drum work added a more complex structure to the percussive side of the band, and her drumming on The Hot Rock is utterly distinct, subtle but hard-hitting, and the backdrop she provides for Tucker and Bownstein’s technical and at times off-kilter guitar interplay is something only she can do. With the oblique nature of the guitar work and even the incorporation of violin on the tracks “The Size Of Our Love” and “Memorize Your Lines,” and even the melodica that outros the closing track “A Quarter to Three,” it’s evident that the band wanted to branch out of the simplistic conventions affiliated with “Punk Rock.” They wanted to showcase their instrumental talent as well as the lyrical content. Up until The Hot Rock, the band were primarily known for their meaningful and revolutionary lyrical content that often spoke out against misogyny, societal norms, and gender roles. There were however songs that touched on sentimental themes such as relationships and internal struggle, and The Hot Rock delves more into those themes. The unfortunate heartbreak that occurs when a relationship ends, or the feeling of uncertainty that can even be the resulting frustration of the unfair societal norms the band rails against, these themes introduced us to the gloomier side of the band, and it was just as impactful as their raucous side. “You say “Sink or swim,” what a cruel, cruel phrase. I’d rather fly,” sings Brownstein on the track “The End of You” where the band confidently rises above the enticement of money and the superficiality of the entertainment business, which could allude to their dismissal of major labels. Even though this album is more introspective, it isn’t without it’s content that looks outward. “God is a Number” spoke on how technology was becoming immensely dominant and our reliance on it was inevitable, which in retrospect is frightening how right they were given our technology-driven nature of today. The following track “Banned From The Edge Of The World” spoke on the ridiculousness of the Y2K scare. “I’ve no millennial fear. The future is here. It comes every year,” Tucker and Brownstein sing fearlessly. Moments like these conveyed the fearlessness of the band, but it’s also the sentimental tracks that cut like a knife. The line “Our love is the size of these tumors inside us” on the track “The Size Of Our Love” speaks on the uncertainty of a relationship or marriage and how they can become stagnant, which leads to the helpless feeling of wanting the relationship to work but but deep down knowing it has a vast potential to get much worse. The personal feeling of uncertainty on much of these tracks is something we can all relate to, and that combined with topical worldviews, backed by an ambitious focus on instrumentation, it was clear that the band were making the music they wanted to make, and that is incredibly inspirational. The Hot Rock arrived at the perfect time. The album’s instrumentation, honest content, and DIY aesthetic precursed the “Indie Rock” explosion of the early 2000’s. “Sleater-Kinney” have given us a lot to be thankful for.
Written By: Steven Sandoval
Date: 02/23/19
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