April 2018: Album Review Roundup

We’re back for another (slightly-delayed) roundup of new releases. Between procrastination, life, and launching the newly-designed version of Swim Into The Sound, this post has just managed to slip through the cracks. I also lost progress on this document an unprecedented four times, so at this point, I’m convinced that it’s cursed. 

Personal drama aside, I’m also thankful that April broke the upward-trend set by previous months and gave me a bit of a break from the torrential flood of new music that we’ve been lucky enough to receive this year. And while April may have been a relatively quieter month in terms of albums released, the quality of the albums we got more than made up for it. In fact, this month’s roundup possibly contains the single widest array of genres we’ve written about, as well as some of the strongest contenders for Album Of The Year we’ve seen thus far. There’s also a weird through-line of albums about death, so it’s gonna get morbid, but you’ve been warned. Let’s get right into it and start off with one of my biggest surprises of 2018 thus far.

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Fiddlehead - Springtime and Blind

Fiddlehead is an emo supergroup comprised of members from Basement and Have Heart who are making hard-charging punk in the style of Jawbreaker or Balance and Composure. A recent addition to the Run For Cover family, the label’s co-sign immediately put the band on my radar and got me to give this debut a shot. While the 24-minute running time makes Springtime and Blind an easy listen, the lyrical content makes it anything but. After witnessing the impact of his father’s death on his mom, lead singer Patrick Flynn set out to bottle up that emotion and hurl it back in the face of his audience. Opening track “Spousal Loss” immediately sets the tone of the record, and (aside from an interlude or two) the heavy-hearted energy of this release doesn’t let up until its final moments. It’s a compelling and expansive listen that grabbed me on first spin and has somehow managed to hit even harder with each subsequent listen. It’s musical and spiritual forward momentum.

Hop Along - Bark Your Head Off, Dog

Known for their agile guitar-work, hard-hitting lyricism, and Frances Quinlan’s destructive vocals, Hop Along have made a name for themselves as a figurehead of the growing indie folk rock movement. Fusing indie rock, emo, folk, and even a dab of twangy country, Hop Along’s sound is both unmistakable and immediate. On Bark Your Head Off, Dog the group is more reserved than ever, playing their cards close to the chest and only letting their emotion get the better of them when it matters most. Each song unfolds with a rich tapestry of instrumental layers, passionate vocals, and haunting lyricism. It’s a feast for the ears and an album that explodes with both color and vibrance.

Saba - Care For Me

While most listeners will probably recognize Saba for his contributions to Chance the Rapper’s “Angels” in 2016, he’s been a figure in the Chicago hip-hop scene for years now. Taking cues from the SaveMoney sound, Saba makes woozy and poetic jazz rap in the vein of Noname or Towkio but ratchets the darkness up to near-uncomfortable levels. Just as the cover would lead you to believe, Care For Me is neither a “fun” or “bright” album, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable. Like a mix between I Don’t Like Shit and Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, Saba takes an open-heart approach to his music, using the album’s 41 minutes to vividly depict the loss, sadness, and strife that he encounters on a daily basis in Chicago. The album’s high point comes in the form of its penultimate “PROM / KING,” a song that recounts the life of Saba’s childhood friend and cousin who was stabbed to death in early 2017. Through these stark second-hand accounts, it quickly becomes clear that the album’s title is acting, not as a half-hearted ask, but a mission statement, a demand for compassion, and a plea for help. 

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Sex & Food

For their fourth record as a band, the New-Zealand-born, Portland-based psych group seem to have taken a negative perception of the world and spun into something positive. “Sex and food are the only two good things left anymore” UMO mastermind Ruban Nielson explained as he officially announced the album at the beginning of the year. Perhaps thanks to that focused but vague viewpoint, we now have what is essentially a Seinfeld of an album about nothing in particular. “This record is not political at all, to me. I'm surrounded by everything that's happening, but it's just about my feelings” and thus; Sex & Food. The approach Ruban & co. seem to be taking with this record is actually shockingly-similar to my own personal philosophy: the world may suck, but it’s important not to drown in that fact. There are still wholesome acts, beautiful moments, and communal strength to be found in the face of absolute oppression. Sometimes it can come across as a borderline-hedonistic fixation on the positive, but for Unknown Mortal Orchestra, it simply means good music. Sex & Food ends up being a wonderfully-groovy outing featuring chilled-out and laid-back tracks that perfectly mirror this philosophy of pleasure. 

Underoath - Erase Me

If there’s such a thing as a “legacy act” in metalcore, Underoath has undoubtedly achieved that status. Active since 1997, the group has released eight albums, survived a breakup, and acted as a genre-wide entry-point for millions of fans (myself included). They’re about as close to a household name as metalcore gets, yet unlike most other bands in their position (The Devil Wears Prada, August Burns Red, Bring Me the Horizon), they are now in the unenviable position of releasing their first album in nearly a decade. Stuck at a crossroads between accessibility and expectations, the band embraces pieces of each style resulting in an enjoyable, yet somewhat-uneven pastiche of opposing voices. There are spots of genericism in both the lyrics and the instrumentals, but these instances can probably be chalked up to time more than anything else. The band members have changed just as much as their army of listeners over the course of the past decade. They’re not the same people that recorded “Reinventing Your Exit” in 2004, and they never will be again. Erase Me is about as solid of an album as one could expect given all the elements at play. This comeback album is a nice compromise between the Underoath we know and the developments that have occurred in the genre during their absence. Erase Me is not bad, but it’s not an instant classic either, and the truth is it doesn’t really matter because at the end of the day it’s just great to have Underoath back.

Half Waif - Lavender

As the lead singer, keyboardist, front-woman and overall creative force behind Half Waif, a lot of responsibility lies on the shoulders of Nandi Rose Plunkett. After rocking the world (and my emotional state) with 2017’s form/a, Half Waif has returned only one year later with her full-bodied third LP titled Lavender. Created in the wake of a family death, the album acts as a memoriam; a loving document of Nandi’s recently-passed grandmother. More than that, Lavender stands as a testament to maternal strength, inter-generational wisdom, and the ever-shifting self. Tender, loving, and deeply personal, Lavender swirls around the listener and slowly bathes them in an aroma of loss and compassion for 38 minutes. If any of us are fortunate enough to have such a gorgeous work of art commemorating our lives, we should consider ourselves lucky.

The Wonder Years - Sister Cities

The Wonder Years are my favorite band of all time, full-stop. As documented in my Upsides write-up (and the fact that I spent over $110 on the ultimate bundle of this album), this is a band I love, trust, and follow implicitly. While I was originally drawn to the group for their fast-paced pop-punk stylings and heart-on-sleeve lyricism, its members have (expectedly) matured in the near-decade since I’ve been following them. Gradually shifting away from that explosive in-your-face musicality, the band has been growing up, mellowing out, and moving on to the point where they no longer identify with that aggression any longer. Using their last album as a bit of half-step between these two styles, Sister Cities finds the band fully-realizing their new sound with a now-fleshed out and fine-tuned musical pallet. 

Opening track “Raining in Kyoto” finds lead singer Daniel Campbell an ocean away from his dying grandfather, regretfully missing his last opportunity to say goodbye before he passes. While it starts on a dour rainy mood, the song (and album as a whole) eventually shift toward positivity and even joy in some spots. Sister Cities is a record about how little distance truly matters. It’s about love, and life, and heartbreak, and death, and all these concepts that bond us as humans. No matter where we are or who we’re with or what we’re doing, there are life events that are so intrinsic to the human experience that they bond us in this beautiful and inescapable way. It’s an album about the resilience of humanity. The good in us and the beauty within others.

I’ll admit I still like the band’s “faster” music much more, but even then I can see that Sister Cities is just as poetic and personal as the band’s early work. Their first few albums were about longing for happiness, purpose, and a sense of being, and now that they’ve finally achieved some of those things, they’re looking back in appreciation. Their discography is like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs; those base-level traits are the things bond us. Meanwhile those higher needs are are the things that we’re all striving for, but you cant skip straight to them. When the band members were in their 20’s those base level things seemed almost impossible to maintain (or achieve in the first place), but now that they’ve grown as humans, they’re looking up at the next level confidently for the first time in their lives. As they stretch and reach to those top-tiers towards self-actualization, they find themselves tumbling back down over and over again, but the point is that they never give up.

Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer

It’s a bit early to claim anything as album of the year, much less pronounce a record’s eventual impact on an entire genre, but if there’s a better candidate for both of those accolades than Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer, then I haven’t heard it yet. Wonderfully-accessible, powerfully-confident, and unabashedly-weird, this is the album we need in 2018. Dirty Computer is about extending the middle finger to assholes of every type from close-minded bigots to our very government. It’s an album about being yourself and owning it. It’s an album about the prison of technology and the hangups of society. It’s an album about everything. There are bangers like “Django Jane,” and undeniable bops like “Pynk,” even Prince-esque perfection on “Make Me Feel,” and those songs are all next to each other on the album. Dirty Computer is expertly-balanced, wonderfully-varied, and well-paced, but most importantly, it’s coming at the perfect time. It all hangs together beautifully and should cement Janelle Monáe as one of the most fantastic and creative thinkers of our time. An achievement of pop.

Quick Hits

• I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas: A full-album cover of The Mountain Goat’s seminal All Hail West Texas featuring a compilation of artists from the Night Vale-adjacent I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats podcast.

• Cardi B - Invasion of Privacy: personable bangers of empowerment from the stripper turned platinum rapper.

• Adam Ackerman - Autobiologist: Sorority Noise guitarist and known shredder Adam Ackerman gets emotional on his first release as a solo artist.

• Kississippi - Sunset Blush: Sunny, shimmering, and soulful, Kississippi’s long-awaited debut is a brightly-colored reflection of interpersonal drama.

• Flatbush Zombies - Vacation in Hell: The Brooklyn trio unleashes a series of never-ending and always-varied flows against a background of brightly-colored tie-dye.

• Young Thug - Hear No Evil: A triplet of rubbery trap songs with big-name features, all of which allow ample room for Thug to zanily bounce around like the living Animaniac that he is.

• Animal Flag - Void Ripper: Heavy alternative rock that’s not afraid to bask in regret.

• Princess Nokia - A Girl Cried Red: The latest development in the emo trap movement ignited by Lil Peep.

• King Tuff - The Other: Sun-drenched psych rock in the style of Ty Segall.

• J. Cole - KOD: I’ll be the first to admit I’m no J. Cole fan, and while KOD sometimes veers into Mr. Mackey territory, there are still enough scattered moments of poignancy to make this an endearing listen.

• Sleep - The Sciences: It’s not often that you can point to an entire genre’s definitive album, but Sleep managed to craft one with 1999’s Dopesmoker. Now nearly two decades later they have an official successor in the form of The Sciences, an album about smoking weed in space (suitably) released on 4/20.

• God is an Astronaut - Epitaph: Monolithic and star-dusted instrumental post-rock from the enigmatic Irish trio.

• GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! - Memory Lame: The first album in seven years from the doubly-named math rock duo.

• Royal Coda - Royal Coda: Legendary post-hardcore singer Kurt Travis returns to the genre with a new band and a blistering debut that proves he’s still one of the best in the game.

• Grouper - Grid Of Points: Pensive and slow-winding piano ballads that bottle up the trauma of heartbreak and serve it up to the listener in a foggy, dreamlike state.

• Post Malone - Beerbongs & Bentleys: Admittedly wack, but somebody needed to fill the void left by Kid Rock, and therefore; Post Malone.

• Sigur Rós - Route One: After driving around Iceland for a full day creating procedurally-generated post-rock with stems from "Óveður," Route One is a 40-minute album highlighting the best moments from the highly-conceptual nation-wide commute.

• Dr. Dog - Critical Equation: An extraordinarily well-polished psych album from the band that’s now been around almost long enough to have received an actual doctorate.

Plus we got new singles from Drake, St. Vincent, Dance Gavin Dance, A$AP Rocky, Get up Kids, Haley Heynderickx, Amine, Dr. Dog, Slim Jxmmi, Field Medic, Denzel Curry, Beach House, Kid Cudi, Florence + The Machine, Nicki Minaj (twice), God is an Astronaut, Lil Uzi Vert, Lithics, Lil Pump, Father John Misty, Denzel Curry, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, FIDLAR, Billie Eilish, Mitski, Ariana Grande, Ty Segall, Clairo, Mogwai, The Internet, and Kanye West.

The Liminal Beauty of I Need To Start A Garden

‘I need to start a garden’ is a phrase most of us are familiar with. Even if you don’t have a green thumb, you probably at least identify the sentiment behind it. A natural and meditative place that rewards patience, quietness, and maturity, the garden is metaphysical. It embodies the parental feeling of satisfaction that comes with the measured nurturing of something too helpless to survive without you. This sort of transitional longing for adulthood and stability is the exact type of conflict that Haley Heynderickx is grappling with on her debut album (aptly titled) I Need To Start A Garden.

Haley Heynderickx is an Oregon native who has found a home for her record on Portland’s own Mama Bird Recording Co. Accurately capturing the pensive, rainy-day headspace that defines life in the Pacific Northwest, I Need to Start a Garden is at once a casually-simple and laid-back listen that also features an inescapable darkness throughout. On first listen, most of the songs can be read as relatively-pleasant and straight-forward singer-songwriter fare, but multiple close listens soon reveal an underlying throughline of fear and self-doubt. 

Fueled by this ever-present threat of existential dread, many of the songs on Garden bear the same intimate setup centered around Heynderickx’s voice, her guitar, and (most importantly) her poetic lyricism. There’s some sparse instrumentation provided by her talented backing band, but for the most part, the record takes a minimalist approach to music that allows for Heynderickx and her words to be front and center.  

Sometimes opting for veiled metaphors that the listener can project themselves onto, other times utilizing hyper-specific depictions of her own life and relationships, all of Garden’s songs are well-crafted. On “The Bug Collector” Heynderickx shows herself attempting to quell her partner’s paranoia as they see past traumas embodied on insects throughout their home:

And there's a centipede
Naked in your bedroom
Oh and you swear to God
The fucker's out to get you

As Heynderickx explores her own emotional limits through each verse, the instrumental crests when tensions are high, and lies in the background calmly whenever Heynderickx needs to writhe in her emotions. No matter the song’s approach, every word is chosen carefully, every breath is measured, and every strum is calculated. 

As poetic and careful as Haley’s words are, she will, in some of the album’s more passionate moments get “stuck” on a certain phrase lodged between two verses. She’ll utter a phrase once and then keep repeating it with increasing intensity, adding a slight variation to it each time, until it becomes an explosive powder keg of energy. 

On the album’s 8-minute centerpiece “Worth It” Heynderickx sings a series of doubts until she lands on the song’s namesake:

Maybe I, maybe I've been selfish
Maybe I, maybe I've been selfless
Maybe I, maybe I've been worthless
Maybe I, maybe I've been worth it

With each line the guitar mounts and her voice begins to reach its upper register. Using the same framing device of “Maybe I,” she keeps the listener hanging on each word, waiting with bated breath to hear the resolution. As the verse continues, the instrumental gradually builds and mounts until Heynderickx eventually gets hung up on the song’s namesake. She repeats that final line four times until the song fades, each reading more passionate than the last. The contrast of “selfish” to “selfless” and “worthless” to “worth it” is a striking note to leave Side A on, and a wonderful bit of sequencing on Heynderickx’s part. 

One of the most dense and complex songs on the album is the penultimate “Oom Sha La La.” Featuring male background vocals and a bouncy doo-wop chorus, the song begins disarmingly with Heynderickx listing all the doubts she has about herself:

The milk is sour
I've barely been to college
And I've been doubtful
Of all that I have dreamed of
The brink of my existence essentially is a comedy
The gap in my teeth and all that I can cling to

As the song rumbles forward, the album reaches its climax as these self-grievances culminate into a single realization that also happens to bear the name of the album:

I'm throwing out the milk
The olives got old
I'm tired of my mind getting heavy with mold
I need to start a garden
I need to start a garden.
I need to start a garden!
I need to start a garden!

As Heynderickx hits upon that sentiment her voice peaks into a near-scream until she cuts herself off and the instrumental pauses for a beat. Soon the next verse begins, and she regains her composure enough to explain her thought process over a single violin:

Gonna start a garden in my backyard
I'm gonna start a garden in my backyard
'Cause making this song up is just as hard
'Cause making this song up is just as hard

It’s that kind of combative self-struggle that Garden so perfectly encapsulates. The knowledge that you need to do something… but you’re going to end up avoiding it, even if it's to your own detriment. The self-help you need but are too scared to ask for. The work you need to do but can’t bring yourself to care about. The adulthood you know you need to embrace but feels too hard to adopt. 

From selfishness and personal demons to death and religion, Heynderickx packs innumerable topics into the album’s 30-minute runtime. At its core, this is an album about human complexities – about the things that hold us back and hang us up. The things that break us down and build us up. The line between metaphor and real life. The space between childhood and adulthood. Between happiness and acceptance. 

Portland Oregon may not be the warmest place in the world, but it’s certainly a great place to start a garden. Whether or not Haley Heynderickx ever actually set aside the time, money, and dedication to start a garden of her own, this record is irrefutable proof that she was able to nurture herself and struggle through all of that liminality to bring us something beautiful. 

March 2018: Album Review Roundup

This is getting out of hand.

As I do my best to stay up on “the culture,” my monthly lists of notable releases seem to be growing longer and longer. While I’m trying to limit these roundups to fewer than ten albums per post, roughly thirty albums came out this month that grabbed my attention in one way or another. There’s so much new stuff I almost don’t know where to start, yet I must.

Here are some of the best/most notable releases from March of 2018.

Previous Roundups: January, February.

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Soccer Mommy - Clean

While she made some waves in 2017 with her career-spanning Collection, Soccer Mommy (whose real name is Sophie Allison) has arrived in full-force this year with her debut album Clean. This 2018 release finds Allison moving away from the solo bedroom recording of her previous work and into full-band indie rock territory. With sparkling guitars, a rumbling rhythm section, and of course Sophie’s passionately-delivered vocals, Clean is the raw emotion you’ve been waiting for. Sometimes spiteful and vitriolic (“Your Dog”), other times writhing in insecurity (“Last Girl”), and occasionally wholly-triumphant (“Scorpio Rising”), the tunes off this record have cemented Soccer Mommy as a well-deserved star of the indie circuit, and the voice of a million awkward people fumbling through their own relationships.

Camp Cope - How to Socialize and Make Friends

Fists clenched and voices raised, the outspoken Melbourne trio has returned with the follow-up to their much slept-on 2016 full-length. Striking while the iron’s hot, How to Socialize is an album for right now. Fraught with political commentary and much-needed callouts, this is less of an album and more of an open defiance. The catalyst for change and the soundtrack to a long-overdue rebalance, this record is a blunt and open dialogue giving words to a group that’s needed them most. The music itself is beautifully-goosebump-inducing. Exploding with unrestrained vocal takes, cresting guitar strums, bouncy basslines, and rocksteady drum patterns, Camp Cope is the exact type of band that the music industry needs right now.

Sorority Noise - YNAAYT

YNAAYT is a full-album reimagining of You’re Not As _____ As You Think that casts new light on last year’s landmark emo record. Not content to merely swap electric instruments out for acoustic ones, YNAAYT indeed is best described as a “reimagining.” With loving acoustic arrangements, beautiful orchestral flourishes, and a remixed tracklist, Sorority Noise transformed what could have been a one-off gimmick into a gorgeously-composed piece of art. The songs are reworked, shifted, and changed just enough that it’s almost unrecognizable from the LP upon which it’s based, making for a compelling back-to-back listen. Released alongside a hiatus announcement, this would be a graceful note for the band to go out on (as much as I hate to think about it). This album is concrete proof that there’s beauty, serenity, and eventual recovery in grief.

Jack White - Boarding House Reach

I’d describe myself as a “begrudging Jack White Stan.” For better or worse, White has played the single biggest role in the formation of my musical taste. The foundation for everything I like, and an artist that has loomed large in my library for a majority of my life. In spite of (or perhaps because of) his importance to me, his work post-White Stripes has been hit or miss for me. While I eventually came around to Blunderbuss, Lazaretto came across as the musical equivalent of jerking off while staring into a mirror. Perhaps feeling the need for a pivot himself, White described his 2018 album as “a bizarre one” that sounded like “good gardening music or roofing music or… back-alley stabbing music.” The craziest thing is he isn’t wrong.

It seems that in between unearthing old music, sounding like an old man, and being hopelessly conceptual, Mr. White actually had time to cook up a decent record. I’ll admit that (of the two sides of Jack) I’m a bigger fan of his more thrashy garage rock half, so the fact that this album takes that distorted riffage and cranks it up to 11 makes me a very happy stan. There’s still a decent amount of jangly country Nashville sound, but “Rock” (with a capital R) is this record’s primary language. There are moments of unbridled weirdness, which are to be expected (ironically), but at its heart, Boarding House Reach is the best album that I can expect from Jack White in 2018.

Earthless - Black Heaven

Speculate what you will about where music is “headed,” but there will always be room in my heart for a great rock album. On Black Heaven, the typically-instrumental Earthless gives us a collection of sprawling and hard-charging metal tracks. Their fifth album as a band, Black Heaven is a psychedelic heavy metal odyssey. 39 minutes of forward momentum and chest-inflating riffs that fire on all cylinders up until the final notes. An album for driving through the desert as fast as your car will allow while the sun is at its highest point.

Yo La Tengo - There’s A Riot Going On

While Yo La Tengo may not be the biggest band in the world, their influence can be felt all over the indie rock sphere. Over the course of their thirty-plus-year career, they’ve hardly ever made a misstep, and There’s A Riot Going On only adds another layer of greatness to their legacy. Half ambient, half traditional Velvet-Underground-Esque slow jams that they’re known for, Riot is best described as a pleasant album. A record you can devote yourself to entirely, or let run in the background, both to equally-enjoyable ends. A calm, relaxing, and chilled out hour of new material that will provide the soundscape for years of creativity to come.

Haley Heynderickx - I Need To Start a Garden

On I Need To Start a Garden we witness as Haley Hendrickx attempts to balance the cultivation of her soul with the well-being of those around her. With deeply-cutting lyricism, haunting, fragile vocals, and wonderfully-arranged instrumentals, Garden is a carefully-crafted record. At its best moments, the album’s minimalism serves Hendrickx’s style well as the songs crest from held-back whispers into full-blown explosions of sound and emotion.

Easily my biggest surprise of the month, and an early frontrunner for album of the year, Haley Hendrickx is a person to watch, with a record to love. For my full review of I Need To Start a Garden, click here.

Quick Hits

Two Dozen albums from the past month. All summarized in one sentence.

• Donovan Wolfington - Waves: Released posthumously following the band’s untimely demise, Waves is a textbook shredder of an album. Proof that it’s better to go out on top than not at all.

• Disco Inc. - The Boredom Keeps me up at Night: Five forthright and punchy punk rock tracks stretched across 15 electrifying minutes. Equal to or greater than the energy received from a cup of coffee.

• Titus Andronicus - A Productive Cough: Eschewing all previous conceptual frameworks and punk-leanings, A Productive Cough finds frontman Patrick Stickles embracing, emulating, and achieving a pitch-perfect version of the singer-songwriter music that he was brought up on.

• The Breeders - All Nerve: As if the last two decades never happened, the Deal sisters are back alongside their primo ‘93 line-up. Together they deliver a collection of 11 beautifully-grungy tracks that prove the 90’s aren’t dead yet.

• Superorganism - Superorganism: Eight pseudonym-clad bandmembers deep, this synth-laden indie pop group formed, and turned this record around within the space of a calendar year. Bright, vivacious, and charming as all get out, Superorganism have already made a name for themselves with this bubbly debut.

• Lucy Dacus - Historian: Slow-moving and heavy-minded singer-songwriter moodiness for a rainy day or a broken heart.

• Gulfer - Dog Bless: Tappin’ guitars, screamin’ vox, bombastic drummin’, Gulfer deliver emo revival goodness on their gleaming sophomore album.

• Lil Yachty - Lil Boat 2: Coasting off the recognition of his breakthrough mixtape, Lil Yachty offers up 17 sleepy and unfocused tracks that only occasionally meander into genuine entertainment. Overall, it seems like Yachty has lost the plot.

• Logic - Bobby Tarintino II: Rick and Morty skits aside, the latest Logic mixtape isn’t as cringy as the internet would have you believe. Packed with dense lyricism and hyper-technical bars, this release cuts out all the fat and gets straight to the rapping.

• Young Father - Cocoa Sugar: Electronic, unpredictable, and utterly new, Cocoa Sugar is future music.

• Vile Creature - Cast of Static and Smoke: Optimistic queer black metal from the fantastical Canadian duo.

• Remo Drive - Pop Music EP: A trio of fresh tracks from the breakthrough pop-punk band. Aptly-titled, this 8-minute release is catchy, bright, and colorful. Essentially the musical equivalent to fructose-laden soda.

• Of Montreal - White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood: A groovy, dancy, funkwave inferno of radiant two-sided indie tracks.

• Nap Eyes - I’m Bad Now: Indie rock with Lou-Reed-esque vocals that display resolve, even while in the calamitous eye of the hurricane.

• Mooseblood- I Don’t Think I Can Do This Anymore: The UK pop-punks offer up a vague and uniform 36-minutes of relationship strife on this blue follow-up to Blush.

• Mount Eerie - Now Only: Another long-form meditation on the death of a loved one. Heartwrenching and spell-binding.

• The Decemberists - I’ll Be Your Girl: The Portland, Oregon five-piece return with a mixed bag of brightly-colored election reaction tracks.

• Preoccupations - New Material: sharp and bombastic post-punk from a future that almost didn’t exist.

• Citizen - Live at Studio 4: Live in-studio versions of three of the best cuts off 2017’s As You Please.

• Hot Mulligan - Pilot: Chicken soup for the modern emo’s soul.

• Blessthefall - Hard Feelings: Neon-lit metalcore with a hyper-clean and poppy approach.

• The Sword - Used Future: Equal parts jammy, psychedelic, stoner, and riffy. This is a chill and laid-back album that’s perfect for the outdoorsy metalhead.

• Trace Mountains - A Partner to Lean On: Chilled-out Alex G-esque Americana with an electronic slant.

• The Voidz - Virtue: An hour of political indie rock from the outspoken and leather-clad Julian Casablancas.

• Frankie Cosmos - Vessel: Verbose (professional) bedroom folk from the Princess of Bandcamp.

• Czarface x MF DOOM - Czarface Meets Metal Face: Bars. Just. Bars.

• Casey Musgraves - Golden Hour: Lovely, lovesick, loveless country music made for sun-drenched valleys and porch-lit beers.

• The Weeknd - My Dear Melancholy,: Six smutty, spacy breakup songs from the void of heartbreak.

Plus singles from The Voidz, Gucci Mane, The Wonder Years, Snail Mail, Jack White, DJ Khaled, Royce Da 5’9”, God Is An Astronaut, Parkway Drive, ZHU, Half Waif, Anderson .Paak, Beach House, Dj Khaled, Vince Staples, The Decemberists, A$AP Rocky, Grouper, Dr. Dog, Parquet Courts, Courtney Barnett, Weird Al, Panic! At The Disco, Underoath, Flatbush Zombies, Miguel, Jens Lekman, MØ, Our Last Night, Iceage, Cardi B, Migos, Manchester Orchestra, Alvvays, Lil Pump, CHVRCHES, Rae Sremmurd, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Hop Along, and N.E.R.D.

Field Medic – Songs From the Sunroom Mini Review

There’s an interesting dynamic at play when you discover an album “naturally” on your own. You had no involvement in its creation, no connection to its author, and you probably weren’t even aware of its existence until the second you stumbled across it. In all likelihood, that “discovery” was just a file served up by an algorithm trying to give you something it thinks you might like… yet there’s still a strange sense of pride in uncovering something new and falling in love with it.

Over the past year it feels like I’ve been subsisting almost entirely on new recommendations and old favorites, but just this past month I made a discovery that has gripped me in the most fantastic and unexpected way. While I’ve been enamored with the music itself, the fact that I discovered it on my own just makes the album feel all the more precious and one-of-a-kind. Lately I have been posting a lot of overly-long and/or abjectly-goofy write-ups, so I just wanted to hit you guys with a quick recommend and introduce you to one of my favorite new artists: Field Medic.

Field Medic is the pseudonym of Kevin Patrick Sullivan, a San Franciscan creating a self-described amalgamation of “freak folk, bedroom pop, and post country.” Despite the barrage of genres I just used to describe his music, nearly everything created under the Field Medic moniker is immediately accessible, instantly catchy, and impressively melodic.

Sullivan’s 2017 full-length Songs From the Sunroom was recorded during a “heightened creative period” in which he was writing, creating, and recording music in the titular sunroom of his San Francisco apartment. Bearing a singular lo-fi charm throughout, Sunroom strikes a perfect balance between a handful of disparate genres and packages them all up in one compact 46-minute listen.

The lowercase love ballad “uuu” was the first Field Medic song I heard, its title immediately sticking out amongst a playlist as a post-internet embrace of non-conventional capitalization. The track itself is a laid-back acoustic jam that sounds like it’s coming through a record player from an alternate universe. The next song titled “GYPSY DEAD GIRL” is the album’s emotional centerpiece, a heart-aching pang of vulnerability and hurt wrapped in an immensely-catchy melody. With crests of high-pitched vocal strain, the song culminates in a cathartic cry of its title before ultimately settling away to a single programmed drumbeat.

Whacky song titles aside, there’s lots of genre experimentation here from “NEON FLOWERZ” and its warbly hip-hop beat to the jaunty “do a little dope (live)” which is a just straight-up country song. Other highlights include the trippy “p e g a s u s t h o t z” and the beautifully-stripped-down “OTL,” both of which depict two sides of the same relationship coin from equally-stark perspectives. Finally, the late-album cut “fuck these foolz that are making valencia street unchill” is a verbose and hilariously-spiteful Bob Dylan-esque song of gentrification and displacement in the tech cradle of San Francisco.

Every song off Songs From the Sunroom adds a different flavor to the record, yet at the same time, they all blend together, creating a consistent and charming lo-fi haze. Sullivan manages to strike a wonderful balance between his alt-country poetry and straight-up pop-music levels of earworminess. Sunroom is an intoxicating mix of gut-punching emotional indie and bouncy banjo-plucked alt-country. The lyrics oscillate between deeply-resonating beat poetry and realist slice of life tales, all interspersed with gummy choruses and phrases that lodge themselves in your head.

And speaking of balance, part of my love for this album probably comes from where I’m at in life right now. Stuck between a million choices in my personal and professional life, I feel absolutely paralyzed and frozen that any choice I make could be the wrong one. Sometimes the right thing presents itself to you at the right time, and this album came to me like divine intervention. The exact sort of remorse and reflective nostalgia that I crave in this early phase of the year. I’ve felt emotionally stagnant for months, but this album has managed to spark something inside that moved me on a cosmic level. I’m glad that Songs From the Sunroom is around for me to appreciate it, and I want to formally thank Kevin Sullivan for ushering this creation into the world.

February 2018: Album Review Roundup

Swim Into The Sound is back with another Monthly Roundup! I’m honestly not sure how long I’ll be able to stay this “up” on new music, but so far I’ve been having a good time keeping track of new releases and compiling my thoughts.

As great as January was, February was even better, both in terms of quantity and quality, so I’ll waste no time in jumping into it. Here are some of the best/most notable releases from February of 2018.

Cameron Boucher & Field Medic - Split

Released on Valentine’s Day, this lovely and heartfelt split features two songs from Kevin Sullivan of Field Medic and two from Cameron Boucher of Sorority Noise. With both artists coming off wildly-successful2017 releases, this split seems to be a low-key acoustic victory lap of sorts from two of emo folk’s current reigning champs. Oh, and all of the album’s proceeds go to Covenant House, so on top of the great tunes, these two dudes are also class acts.

Hovvdy - Cranberry

Easily my biggest surprise of the month, Hovvdy is a band I’d never heard of until I sat down to listen to this record. When I hit play, I instantly fell in love with the warm, hazy, nostalgic sound of Cranberry, and with each subsequent listen a different track has jumped out at me and grabbed my attention. Both spiritually and stylistically, this album reminds me of Turnover’s Peripheral Vision from 2015. Both albums hooked me on first listen and bear the same fuzzy spaced-out sense of nostalgia. While Turnover’s record is more pop-punk influenced, Cranberry finds itself taking cues from bedroom indie, Americana, and even country at times, but both play out like a distant memory that slowly grows to shroud the listener in their own nostalgia.

MGMT - Little Dark Age

MGMT have had a long and storied history since their humble college-based beginnings in 2002. Continually straddling the line between synthpop, psychedelia, alternative, and indie, their 2018 record Little Dark Age finally seems to have attained the perfect balance of every one of their styles. While nothing may ever be as iconic as the breakthrough “Kids” or instantly-recognizable as “Electric Feel,” this album strives for (and achieves) something much different. From the opening narration-based exercise of “She Works Out Too Much” to the far-off echoes of “Hand It Over,” every move on Little Dark Age seems more self-assured than ever. A compact, addictive, and beautifully-crafted comeback.

Turnstile - Time & Space

Hardcore will never die, and bands like Turnstile are here to prove that single-handedly. Over the course of 25 minutes, the Baltimore group runs the listener through an obstacle course of unbridled ferocity, pure aggression, and raw power. You’ll experience throat-shredding vocals, chest-pounding riffs, and thunderous drums, eventually to be spat out on the other side invigorated and aggressive. Proof that there’s beauty in brevity, the forceful grouping of songs off Time & Space rarely cross the two-minute mark. Turnstyle doesn’t seem to be interested in wasting a second of the listener’s time or expending one ounce of wasted energy.

Various Artists - Black Panther: The Album

Unlike Drake’s More Life, the Kendrick Lamar/Top Dawg-helmed Black Panther album feels more like a playlist than a record. With a (loose) central theme, a wide range of guest collaborations, and consistent contributions from its figurehead, Black Panther: The Album is what all collaborative art should strive to be. Well-performing on its own right outside of the already-successful movie, Kendrick’s accompaniment is both an achievement for Marvel and an artistic work that stands on its own. Between the album’s pop bops, futuristic chase songs, and braggadocious fight music there’s something here for everyone. When I saw a grandma groove out to SZA as the movie’s credits rolled, I was more confident than ever of this album’s universal appeal.

2 Chainz - The Play Don’t Care Who Makes It

2 Chainz has been on a roll for years now. Often opting for smaller, more bite-sizedprojects and collaborations over full-on albums, The Play Don’t Care Who Makes It is the newest installment in Mr. Chainz’ series of low-commitment EPs. Coming in at a crisp four songs over 16 minutes, each song is expansive enough for Tity Boi’s usual comedic bars, a couple of guest features, and even a loving shoutout to all of Atlanta’s strippers. The Play is 2 Chainz incarnate: every song hits, and the short running time doesn’t leave any room for it to wear out its welcome.

Justin Timberlake - Man of the Woods

Whew. I don’t want to spend an excessive amount of time shitting on this record because I’m far from the first to do it, but also because it feels a little over-done… that said, Man of the Woods is a pants-shitting mess from front-to-back. Self-described as “Americana with 808s,” this album was doomed from conception. Even one half-attentive viewing of the “Supplies” music video is a good indicator of the full-album experience: a violently-bright and schizophrenic country-fueled acid trip gone wrong. Each track feels like Timberlake is throwing everything at the wall, indiscriminately mashing ten ideas into one track, laying terrible lyrics over the top, and then just delivering it all in the most earnest way he possibly can. In a way, I admire it.

As a whole, Man of The Woods feels like some sort of Joaquin Phoenix-esque meta career move in which you’re not quite sure how much of this is serious and how much is parody. Featuring Do-wop vocals, dueling harmonicas, and unnerving narration, it’s like Timberlake heard Young Thug’s Beautiful Thugger Girls and thought “I could do this” … but he can’t.

Some cuts are perfectly fine and listenable (“Montana” is pretty great, “Breeze Off the Pond” is at least pointed), but the remainder of the songs are comically bad and go on for minutes longer than they need to. The album’s most definitively bad moment comes in the backstretch when a half-awake Jessica Biel provides the excruciating introduction to “Flannel” which sounds like Lonely Island performing a children’s lullaby.

At the end of the day, this is just a pop album from Justin Timberlake, so I didn’t expect high-art, and I didn’t expect a mind-shifting release. That said, it’s been fun to revel in the collective schadenfreude of watching someone fail at such an audacious genre experiment in such a spectacular and public way. The full album may leave the listener in a state of ongoing agony begging for it to end, but the good thing is: it’s just pop.

Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy  (Face to Face)

For the sake of getting the rotten taste of Man of the Woods out of your mouth, we’ll end with one of the best albums of February: Car Seat Headrest’s remake of Twin Fantasy. Already a breakthrough record in its own right, this 2018 release is a version of the record that’s been completely remade from the ground up. While the original album is still up for streaming in all its lo-fi charm, it’s hard to deny the absolute achievement that Twin Fantasy represents.

Just as verbose, meta, poetic, philosophical, and fraught with emotions as the day that it was first recorded, Twin Fantasy will stand the test of time as an album about the most universal of journeys. About the simplicity of letting go and putting your hands around someone else’s shoulders and the complexity of everything that tends to follow. Temptation, rejection, debauchery, desire, contradictions, fears, manias, sexuality, routine, experimentation, depression, addiction, nervousness, otherness, love, and heartbreak. This album somehow manages to touch on every one of those topics in a raw, poignant, and open way that rarely is captured in life, much less crystallized on an album.

The fact that one of this generation’s most pivotal breakup albums could not only exist but be remade not to its own detriment is a testament to the creative core and message at the center of this record. Car Seat Headrest managed to improve the original, change it just enough that it feels new, and managed to keep the original spirit intact, all of which sounds like an impossibility, yet at the end of it all, there’s this album. It’s the most accurate portrayal of modern love ever captured in sound. It’s love and heartbreak on an oceanic scale. It’s Twin Fantasy.

Quick Hits

Because I may not have a lot to say, but I listen to a lot, and I like to be thorough.

• Rich Brian - Amen: After achieving viral success and undergoing a name change, the Indonesian rapper offers up his first official release packed with chilling, bassy, self-produced songs.

• Ratboys - GL: A four-track EP of slidey, female-fronted emo songs in which every move is measured, and every past action is regretted.

• Towkio - WWW.: Dropped from space, WWW. is this Savemoney crew member’s debut following the excellent .WAV Theory mixtape.

• Dashboard Confessional - Crooked Shadows: Chris Carrabba’s first album in 9 years is the definition of “hit-or-miss.” We’ll probably never get another song as precious or hard-hitting as “Ghost of a Good Thing,” but this album still has its moments.

• SOB X RBE - GANGIN: After introducing themselves to a broader audience with their Black Panther appearance, the group smartly follows-up their newfound exposure with this ballistic sophomore album.

• Rhye - Blood: Adult contemporary, but not in the way you’re thinking.

• Pianos Become the Teeth - Wait For Love: An unrelenting, explosive, and propulsive grouping of 10 songs from the post-hardcore torchbearers.

• American Pleasure Club - a whole fucking lifetime of this: The recently-renamed Run For Cover signees openly noodle, experiment, and remorse for a laid-back genre-less half-hour.

• Caroline Rose - Loner: Yet another album filed under “surprises provided by the internet,” Loner is the exact type of lowkey hyper-conscious slacker indie that’s eternally-appealing to me.

• Superchunk - What a Time to Be Alive: The 90’s DIY-rockers are back with 11 tightly-wound tracks that they volley at the listener without pause.

• Thundercat - Drank: The “chopped not slopped” remix of last year’s Drunk finds even more groovy mellow bass-centered love here.

• Ought - Room Inside the World: Ought lurch forward sadly with this collection of glowing tracks that bubble up to the listener’s ears with palpable remorse and moodiness.

• Palm - Rock Island: Traditional time signatures be damned! The fourth record from the Philadelphian math rockers is polished, jagged, and filled with more unexpected moments than a Black Mirror episode.

• Franz Ferdinand - Always Ascending: It’s ok.

• U.S. Girls - In A Poem Unlimited: Psychedelic, sexy, and occasionally-dancy indie jams that explode with violence and lust.

• Ravyn Lenae - Crush EP: Slow-moving and delicate, this Steve Lacy-helmed EP is a brief outing that should fill the R&B-shaped hole in your heart.

Plus we’ve also got fresh singles/covers from Frank Ocean, The Wonder Years, Beach House, Courtney Barnett, Ryan Adams, Father John Misty, Blocboy, Parquet Courts, Sorority Noise, Underoath, Code Orange, Run The Jewels, 6Lack, Kero Kero Bonito, Girlpool, Mount Eerie, , Remo Drive, Rae Sremmurd, The Voids, Flatbush Zombies, Car Seat Headrest, Post Malone, Julien Baker x Manchester Orchestra, Janelle Monáe,Jay Som, A$AP Rocky, A$AP Ferg, Kim Petras, Chvrches, Soccer Mommy, and Future.