Slimelord: Chytridiomycosis Relinquished

Happy Mothering Sunday! Woooooooaaaarrrruuugggghhhh!!!!!

Chytridiomycosis Relinquished is out now on 20 Buck Spin.

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DJ Anderson do Paraiso: Queridao

My album of 2024 so far… out now on Nyege Nyege Tapes.

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Ruth Goller: Skyllumina

Every now and then, something comes along that feels so otherworldly it seems almost pointless trying to describe it. The solo work of Ruth Goller, an Italian-born bassist whose playing has graced recordings by her former bands Acoustic Ladyland and Melt Yourself Down, as well as Alabaster DePlume, Shabaka Hutchings, Damon Albarn and Paul McCartney, falls pretty comfortably into that category, but I’ll give it a try nonetheless. Goller’s unclassifiable (go on and try, I dare you) compositions hinge primarily on looping, detuned bass riffs and her own ghostly vocals, multitracked and overdubbed to create spaced-out DIY chorales, and the effect – particularly when she employs chiming low-end harmonics – is akin to some kind of David Lynch-directed fever dream about Julee Cruise piloting a dying ice cream truck to the bottom of the ocean. On her second album Skyllumina, Goller does as even the most individual of artists must and introduces a new element to her sound – drums; or, more specifically, drummers, as almost every track here features a different collaborator behind the kit. Jim Hart, Seb Rochford, Bex Burch, Tom Skinner (probably best known now as one third of The Smile) and more all contribute markedly different rhythmic backdrops, but whilst such a concept would be many artists’ idea of a USP for their album, none of Skyllumina’s guests come close to upstaging Goller. It’s a sure sign of a singular talent, and the fact that adopting a more conventional approach has made Goller’s music seem at once more accessible and more alien only serves as a reminder that she’s out there in a class – if not a world – of her own.

Skyllumina is out physically and digitally now on International Anthem, and will be available on streaming platforms shortly.

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Pissed Jeans: Half Divorced

Ok, so tell me this isn’t strange: the day I decide to resurrect this blog, literally the very same day on which the scales in my brain tipped over from “why bother?” towards “why not?”; at pretty much the moment the lightbulb pinged on and illuminated the small print stating that it’s ok to forget occasionally about being a dad/ partner/ ex-husband/ provider/ employee, and to talk freely, out loud, about something you like, and that makes you happy; on that same day, a band of angry, frustrated middle-aged Pittsburgh punks called Pissed Jeans – one of the most reliably entertaining groups of the last 15 or so years – decide to unleash upon the world a song called “Sixty Two Thousand Dollars In Debt”, a two minute thrasher wherein frontman Matt Korvette recounts the joys – the spring in his step, the smile in his face – of paying a chunk off his mortgage, daring to dream of a day when he only owes $61,000, but knowing that in reality he’ll probably die before he’s squared up, and it’ll be down to his kid to settle his account. So that’s weird, right? One of my favourite bands, who haven’t released an album in seven years, who were – once, at least (and maybe still, I don’t really keep up with these things anymore) – self-professed “don’t give up the day jobs” pragmatists; fellow wage-slaves, fellow dads, fellow fortysomethings, and they’re in my ears and in my face on the very day that I decide – for the first time in forever – to do something for myself. I mean, I already knew there was a new record on the way, of course I did; I’d been jamming propulsive first single “Moving On” since it landed, and noted with solidaric interest that the album was called Half Divorced. But this…? It’s rare that I take anything too personally (honestly lol), but this just felt a little too on the nose. Coincidence, you say? Probably more like an omen, and given that the song’s barely-disguised message is one of almost utter pointlessness, it’s most likely a warning that I shouldn’t fucking bother.

But if Half Divorced is very much an album of mature themes – not only futility, but also the way in which the mundane and the absurd increasingly seem to blur into one as the years pass – it’s also a masterclass in how to adult like a boss. By which, of course, I mean that PJ bitch and moan and seethe and spit venom like real grown-ups, and pummel their instruments as if they were the metaphorical brick walls against which we all find ourselves banging our heads and fists. There’s enough frustration and vitriol here to fuel half a dozen protest marches and the group seem indiscriminate with their ire, firing off at everyone from social media junkies to workaholics to helicopter parents as if they were solely responsible for the state of the world right now. Although the sleeve-notes should probably include a warning against taking offence personally, as one can’t help feeling PJ would probably be just as hateful of people who forget to take wet washing out of the machine or park their car outside of the lines as they are of politicians and the other real scum of the Earth.

Crucially though, no matter the shit they’re mired in, these dudes never sound like they’re having anything but the best time, and it’s this that elevates them to a league above scene peers quick to sacrifice fun in favour of fearsome fronting. Korvette may deliver his sermons in a fairly stereotypical hardcore bark (and occasionally in a deadpan Yow-like drawl), but the bile is shot through with acerbic observations and self-deprecating dry wit, not to mention a surrealist streak that sometimes calls to mind twisted tall tale-tellers like Tom Waits or Mark E. Smith (check out his reportage of a – hopefully fictional – gas tank explosion: “the worker’s arms looked like an old leather jacket/ It’s a pretty cute thing to call an infectious cancer rash”). Meanwhile his bandmates may be swinging at the bricks, but they’re doing so with the joyful abandon of a wrecking crew handed sledgehammers and told to go nuts on a condemned building, flailing wildly on “Killing All The Wrong People”, cranking out the closest thing the punk scene has had in years to its own national anthem (the hilarious and tirelessly catchy “Everywhere Is Bad”), and spinning speed-laced surf rock into space on “Junktime”’s goggle-eyed outro. Every second of Half Divorced feels vital, like Pissed Jeans simply had to commit these words and sounds to tape, regardless of who might hear them, or care, but – perversely, given the subject matter – the urgency presents itself as pure positive energy, and it’s thrilling. In the last few weeks I’ve blasted this album more times than seems feasible, and every listen just seems to reinforce my original reasoning for taking up writing again: I want to say things about stuff that I feel passionately about, even if nobody reads those words. Who cares, right? Everything (and, indeed, everywhere) is bad anyway. It’s not like I’m going to make it any worse.

Half Divorced is out March 1 on Sub Pop.

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Ackermann: Stadium Techno

Does exactly what it says on the tin… bangers for days mate! Chooooonnn!!

Stadium Techno is out now on Safe Space.

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Torrey: Torrey

Generally speaking, a new Slumberland Records release is going to be one of two things: jangly punk pop, or fuzzy guitar rock. Which is fine, by the way. Everyone loves to bop along to some C86-inspired indie jams or gaze through their fringe at their plimsolls whilst letting waves of distortion wash over them, and the Oakland label has an uncanny knack for filling its roster with bands and artists who roll out those sounds in smart enough ways that we tend to forget they’ve been around in pretty much the same forms for going on 40 years. Bay Area outfit Torrey drop fairly neatly into the fuzzy rock column, but they bring more than enough of themselves to the conversation for it not to feel as though they’re just reading from a well-thumbed script. Their self-titled second album (and Slumberland debut) plays like a musical Trojan horse, sneaking through the gates on the back of some fairly standard, reverb-heavy shoegaze fare before suddenly bursting forth a couple of tracks in, jacking up the tempo and throwing in some Sonic Youth style noise bombs, and the group maintain the element of surprise throughout, creating in the process something akin to a perfectly sequenced mixtape, where a galloping rocker like “Hawaii” and a shimmering dream-pop gem such as “Slow Blues” can sandwich a trippy half-speed bossa nova (“Garage Intermission”) and still come across as natural bedfellows. Cliched as it may be to say, Torrey feels like it could be the perfect soundtrack to a Summer daydream, but that’s not to say it’s anything like background music; finer details like the juxtaposition of sunny sighs and icy synths on “Bounce” and the unbridled joy of the aptly named “Pop Song” will keep snapping even the most jaded of listeners out of their reveries and have them grinning from ear to ear.

Torrey is out March 8 on Slumberland.

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Bullion: Affection

Ok, so… we’re back, after 8 years of radio silence, and bopping along in our third (?) iteration to the forthcoming album by Bullion – who, coincidentally, last released a full-length long player around the same time as we last published a blog post. Well signposted by the odd singles and EPs the artist born Nathan Jenkins has released since, as well as the production work he’s done for Westerman, Nilufer Yanya and Avalon Emerson’s Charm amongst others, Affection plays like a modern day western counterpart to the currently hip sounds of ‘80s Japanese “city pop”, all warm, wobbly jazz chords, scratchy guitars and bouncy synths (ear-) worming their way around motorik drums and bubbling global rhythms. There are a fistful of impeccably cool featured vocalists (hi there Panda Bear and the marvellous Charlotte Adigéry!) on hand but it says something about the quality of Jenkins’ songwriting – and his understated croon – when even the coolest pop star in the world Carly Rae Jepsen (guesting on “Pure”) resolutely fails to upstage the star of the show. The album isn’t out for a little while yet, but if you’ve ever wondered what early Hot Chip might have sounded like if they were obsessed with Prefab Sprout instead of Prince – and let’s face it, who hasn’t? – then Affection is definitely worth getting excited about. An early 2024 AOTY contender.

Affection is out April 26 on Ghostly International.

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One More Time…?

Shall we…?

Let’s.

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Lionlimb: Shoo

Lionlimb - Shoo
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Even the most tone deaf among us will have noticed the influence on the current indie rock scene of a certain strain of early-1970s pop – think Nilsson, Todd Rundgren, Randy Newman: grown-up, clever studio-born music that combined complex baroque arrangements and a laid-back, rootsy warmth. Nashville duo Lionlimb smartly set themselves apart from the rest of that particular pack with their debut album Shoo, which updates the sound by coupling it with head-nodding, organic crate-digger rhythms and somehow manages to avoid sounding forced or gimmicky; indeed, whilst project mastermind Stewart Bronaugh and drummer Joshua Jaeger both serve in gothic country-punk songstress Angel Olsen’s touring band, the effortless funk with which they imbue their ditties could see them mistaken for old-skool Stax session players. But despite employing enough sax, Fender Rhodes and wah-wah pedals to keep the most ardent jazz fusion fan happy, Shoo isn’t all about slinky grooves. The longest shadow cast over proceedings belongs to Elliott Smith, and not just because Bronaugh bears such an uncanny resemblance to Smith vocally that the latter’s hardcore faithful might just believe he has returned from the dead: the likes of “Domino” and “Lemonade” call to mind the balance of hushed, slightly overawed melancholy and peppy songwriting that characterised much of the singer’s work while album highlight “Turnstile”, with its acid-fried psych-soul fuzz and depictions of love as a series of emotional scuffs and scraped knees, encourages the listener to imagine an alternative and altogether happier ending to Smith’s tragic real life ballad of Big Nothing. A punchy, playful record, then, but a bruised and infinitely soulful one too, and one of the best debut albums in quite some time.
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Shoo is out now on Bayonet Records; check out “Turnstile” below.
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https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/215867869