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On limited Coke Bottle color vinyl. In Pond's universe nothing stays still for long. Although no one who heard 2019's "Tasmania" could possibly describe it's pulsating psych-pop as straight, Pond wanted to try a more spontaneous way of working for their next record.

Taking a leaf out of krautrock outliers Can's book, at the start of 2020, Pond embarked on a series of totally off-the-cuff jam sessions from which songs and ideas could be pulled out. Given the pace at which ideas whizz past your head, it makes for a dizzying listen. Opener Song For Agnes explodes out the speakers like an intergalactic rock opera, running a synapse-tingling gauntlet through bubbling synth pop, 80s hair metal and blissed out saxophone before you know what's hit you. It's an apposite curtain-raiser for an album that can encompass pounding techno (Human Touch), elastic hipped robo- funk (America's Cup), tripped out motorik (Czech Locomotive) and acres more besides without even topping for breath. Take lead single Pink Lunettes, which opens up thumping like ESG eight hours into a session at Berghain before climbing aboard a gargantuan synthship and disappearing off over the horizon. Lyrically, too, 9 takes Pond into uncharted territory. Allbrook's songs here take a more impressionistic tack than before, resulting in both the hilarious one-liners within Human Touch's gonzoid thrash (sample lyric: "she was jacking a car but she seemed quite nice so I let her use the toilet in my place") and the social and environmental concerns of blissed out closer Toast, which addressed both last year's bush fires and the appalling wealth divide in Allbrook's childhood home in Western Australia. Above all though, what you get from "9" is a sense of creative abandon and just plain fun. If it was only a fraction as enjoyable to make as it is to listen to then they must have been having a hoot.

Tracks

1. Song for Agnes
2. Human Touch
3. America's Cup
4. Take Me Avalon I'm Young
5. Pink Lunettes
6. Czech Locomotive
7. Rambo
8. Gold Cup / Plastic Sole
9. Toast

Jack Antonoff-Produced Follow-Up to 2017's Grammy-Nominated Masseduction Inspired by '70s Stevie Wonder and Sly and the Family Stone!

Daddy's Home, the sixth album from St. Vincent, is the latest facet of an ever-evolving artist regarded by many as the most consistently innovative and intriguing presence in modern music. Warm Wurlitzers and wit, glistening guitars and grit, with sleaze and style for days. Taking you from uptown to downtown with the artist who makes you expect the unexpected. "Daddy's Home collects stories of being down and out in downtown NYC," Clark notes. "Last night's heels on the morning train. Glamour that's been up for three days straight."

The album was first teased in late 2020 when Clark completed an interview with Mojo. "I felt I had gone as far as I could possibly go with angularity," she said of the album's creation process, which she mentioned represents a "tectonic shift." She continued with: "I was interested in going back to the music I've listened to more than any other – Stevie Wonder records from the early 70s, Sly And The Family Stone. I studied at the feet of those masters."

Following up 2017's Grammy-nominated Masseduction, the collection was produced by Annie Clark and Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Lorde), recorded by Laura Sisk, mixed by Cian Riordan, and mastered by Chris Gehringer. The music was performed by Annie, Jack, Cian, Thomas, Evan Smith, Sam KS, Greg Leisz, Daniel Hart, Michael Leonhard, Lynne Fiddmont and Kenya Hathaway. Gatefold vinyl LP with 11 x 22 poster insert.

1. Pay Your Way In Pain
2. Down And Out Downtown
3. Daddy's Home
4. Live In The Dream
5. The Melting Of The Sun
6. Humming [Interlude 1]
7. The Laughing Man
8. Down
9. Humming [Interlude 2]
10. Somebody Like Me
11. My Baby Wants A Baby
12. ...At The Holiday Party
13. Candy Darling
14. Humming [Interlude 3]

Jakob Dylan Led Project's First New Studio Effort Since 2012!

Rock ‘n' roll is often hard to define, or even to find, in these fractured musical times. But to paraphrase an old saying, you know it when you hear it. And you always hear it with The Wallflowers. For the past 30 years, the Jakob Dylan-led act has stood as one of rock's most dynamic and purposeful bands – a unit dedicated to and continually honing a sound that meshes timeless songwriting and storytelling with a hard-hitting and decidedly modern musical attack. That signature style has been present through the decades, baked into the grooves of smash hits like 1996's Bringing Down the Horse as well as more recent and exploratory fare like 2012's Glad All Over.

But while it's been nine long years since we've heard from the group with whom he first made his mark, the Wallflowers are silent no more. And Dylan always knew they'd return. "The Wallflowers is much of my life's work," he says simply. That life's work continues with Exit Wounds, the brand-new Wallflowers studio offering. The collection marks the first new Wallflowers material since Glad All Over. Exit Wounds, which, true to its title, is an ode to people – individual and collective – that have, to put it mildly, been through some stuff.

"I think everybody – no matter what side of the aisle you're on – wherever we're going to next, we're all taking a lot of exit wounds with us," Dylan says. "Nobody is the same as they were four years ago. That, to me, is what Exit Wounds signifies. And it's not meant to be negative at all. It just means that wherever you're headed, even if it's to a better place, you leave people and things behind, and you think about those people and those things and you carry them with you. Those are your exit wounds. And right now, we're all swimming in them."

1. Maybe Your Heart's Not In It No More
2. Roots And Wings
3. I Hear The Ocean (When I Wanna Hear Trains)
4. The Dive Bar In My Heart
5. Darlin' Hold On
6. Move The River
7. I'll Let You Down (But Will Not Give You Up)
8. Wrong End Of The Spear
9. Who's That Man Walking ‘Round My Garden
10. The Daylight Between Us

Double vinyl LP pressing. Live archive release. In 1988, The Georgia Satellites rolled into Cleveland, Ohio for a blistering Monday night at local watering hole Peabody's, formerly the punk haven Pirates Cove. With Open All Night giving the band a second album to draw on, their salty, wide-open Chuck Berry riff'n'roll was full swagger - whether drawing on their reprise of the Swinging Blue Jeans' "Hippy Hippy Shake" from the Tom Cruise film "Cocktail," Joe South's swerving "Games People Play," George Jones' "White Lightnin'"or Jerry Lee Lewis' all-out "Whole Lotta Shakin'." Delivering an 18-song masterclass in roots, rock and raunch, the Satellites not only incinerated "Battleship Chains," "Railroad Steel" and "Can't Stand The Pain," they led the beyond SRO crowd through a shout-along of "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" threaded with a brazen stripper grind on the Rolling Stones' "It's Only Rock & Roll." Fans of reverb, thrashing drums, the rush of rock & roll momentum and all manners of electric guitars giving it over to basic 3 chord rock & roll, Lightin' in a Bottle retires the jersey. As the southern equivalent of the Replacements, the Ramones hillbilly (redneck) little brothers, no band delivered as much balls as the Satellites, who've never had an official live record. For a band who leaves it all onstage, that seems wrong.

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Whole Lotta Shakin'
• 2 Down and Down
• 3 Run Run Rudolph
• 4 Open All Night
• 5 Don't Pass Me By
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Nights of Mystery
• 2 Battleship Chains
• 3 Mon Cheri / White Lightnin'
• 4 I Go to Pieces
• - Disc 3 -
• 1 Shake Your Hips
• 2 Games People Play
• 3 Can't Stand the Pain
• 4 Keep Your Hands to Yourself
• 5 It's Only Rock N Roll
• - Disc 4 -
• 1 Sheila
• 2 Hippy Hippy Shake
• 3 Railroad Steel
• 4 I Wanna Be Sedated
• 5 Shake Rattle & Roll

Recorded in London in December 2020, Down By The River Thames finds iconic singer-songwriter Liam Gallagher accompanied by his full band for a set broadcast from a barge travelling along the Thames. The show includes iconic songs, fan favorites and a few surprises, spanning both his all-conquering solo career and his legendary time with Oasis – some of which he hadn't performed in years. Echoing unforgettable moments from the Sex Pistols and The Clash, the explosive performance rang out as the barge sailed past some of London's most famous landmarks. "So here it is, the gig they said we could never pull off!" LG said. "As we were in lockdown, bored and depressed, rock ‘n' roll came to save the day once again. It was a top night and a top gig and it's captured here on record for you to all enjoy." In a five-star review of the gig, NME wrote: "We're missing fans, flares, hurled pints and crowd chants, but this is without doubt the next best thing."

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Hello (Live from Down By the River Thames)
• 2 Wall of Glass
• 3 Halo
• 4 Shockwave
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Columbia
• 2 Fade Away
• 3 Why Me? Why Not
• 4 Greedy Soul
• - Disc 3 -
• 1 The River
• 2 Once
• 3 Morning Glory
• 4 Cigarettes & Alcohol
• - Disc 4 -
• 1 Headshrinker
• 2 Supersonic
• 3 Champagne Supernova
• 4 All You're Dreaming of

C'mon You Know follows the huge success of Liam Gallagher's previous two solo studio albums As You Were (2017) and Why Me? Why Not (2019), which established his iconic status for a whole new generation. While C'mon You Know pulsates with the traits that have made Liam such an iconic figure – a raucous rock ‘n' roll anthem topped by his signature snarl – it's also a strong step forward in terms of both attitude and audio.

Musically it's layered with unexpected sonic touches: surging Motown-tinged gospel backing vocals, shrieking saxophone from Ezra Koenig, and vintage Moog synths heightening the sonic maelstrom. Liam's lyrics also come from a fresh place: rather than being combative, his words brim with positivity and the joy of being reunited with friends, family and fans. As he openly admits, "I'm sick of being tough."

As suggested by the title track and "Everything's Electric," C'mon You Know infuses Liam's classic, hands-in-the-air anthems with fresh experimental flourishes. Andrew Wyatt is the main producer throughout, while Koenig contributes to a selection of tracks. Other producers/writers include Greg Kurstin (Adele, Sir Paul McCartney), Dave Grohl, Ariel Rechtshaid (HAIM, Brandon Flowers), Adam Noble (Biffy Clyro), regular Liam collaborators Michael Tighe and Simon Aldred, and members of his live band, Dan McDougall and Mike Moore.

1. More Power
2. Diamond In The Dark
3. Don't Go Halfway
4. C'mon You Know
5. Too Good For Giving Up
6. It Was Not Meant To Be
7. Everything's Electric
8. World's In Need
9. Moscow Rules
10. I'm Free
11. Better Days
12. Oh Sweet Children

Diamond Star Halos is the first new album from Def Leppard since their chart topping self-titled record in 2015. It features 15 tracks including the anthemic, stadium-ready singles "Kick" and "Fire It Up," with guest vocals from Alison Krauss on "This Guitar" and "Lifeless." The album title references T. Rex's "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" with further nods to David Bowie and Mott The Hoople across the album. To herald the arrival of Diamond Star Halos, the band has released "Kick" – a powerful and rip-roaring new rock single from the album. The artwork design follows pedigree with instantly recognizable album covers from their celebrated past, and follows the band's influence through their eyes today.

1. Take What You Want
2. Kick
3. Fire It Up
4. This Guitar
5. SOS Emergency
6. Liquid Dust
7. U Rok Mi
8. Goodbye For Good This Time
9. All We Need
10. Open Your Eyes
11. Gimme A Kiss
12. Angels (Can't Help You Now)
13. Lifeless
14. Unbreakable
15. From Here To Eternity

On Violet color vinyl. Born and raised in small Texas towns, the members of Good Looks met and began playing together in Austin.

Songwriter Tyler Jordan grew up in a South Texas coastal town dominated by the petrochemical industry, his childhood steeped in the tension between nature and industry, exploitation abundantly present and the wealth gap on full display. His father's church, described by Tyler as "cult-like in it's intensity," was homebase and where he learned to sing. Tyler eventually met lead guitarist Jake Ames in the late-night song-swap circles of the Kerrville Folk Festival campground (where they would also meet Buck Meek and Adrienne Lenker pre-Big Thief). They shared their mutual love of the Texas hill country canon (Blaze Foley, Townes Van Zandt, and Willie Nelson), a love of cheap diner food, thrift store baseball caps, and a healthy dose of harmless shit-talking. They began playing in bands together, backing up other songwriters and taking turns in the spotlight. They sought out producer Dan Duszynski (Loma, Cross Record, Jess Williamson) to engineer their debut album. What would form was Good Looks, a blue-collar political indie-rock band with healthy doses of Replacements swagger and shimmering, desert rock riffs not unlike The War On Drugs.

Tracks

• 1 Almost Automatic
• 2 21
• 3 Balmorhea
• 4 Bummer Year
• 5 First Crossing
• 6 Vision Boards
• 7 Walker Lake

Tracks

• - Disc 1 -
• 1 Day Drinker
• 2 Traps
• 3 You Should Know the Truth
• 4 Callum Is a Snake
• 5 Rough Justice
• 6 The Girls Are Fighting
• - Disc 2 -
• 1 Of Things Yet to Come
• 2 Sex Magik
• 3 By Any Means Necessary
• 4 In Situ
• 5 If We Get Caught
• 6 The Peace Offering

Poet, artist and Daughters vocalist Alexis Marshall delivers his solo debut album House Of Lull . House Of When via Sargent House. Produced by Seth Manchester the album is crafted around moments of spontaneity and sonic detritus. For it Marshall brought together an impressive group of collaborators to execute his vision, a vision that for the first time was under his full creative direction. Jon Syverson (Daughters) and Evan Patterson (Jaye Jayle, Young Widows) joined Marshall in Pawtucket, Rhode Island at Machines with Magnets studio with no material. The strategy was to embrace new sounds, employ the element of chance, and capture the creative process in a song format. The genesis of a song could be anything – a fragmented piano line, a drum pattern – but the impetus was often a non-musical sound. Marshall sourced a lot of his textural contributions from a hardware store all contributing to a proto-industrial rattle-and-rumble reminiscent of early Einstürzende Neubauten. The resulting material stands to be the boldest and exciting work of his career.

1. Drink from the Oceans Nothing Can Harm You
2. Hounds in the Abyss
3. It Just Doesn't Feel Good Anymore
4. Youth as Religion
5. Religion as Leader
6. No Truth in the Body
7. Open Mouth
8. They Can Lie There Forever
9. Night Coming

To recreate that original chemistry, the band recruited the legendary producer John Fryer to again helm Chasing Ghosts. Fryer, whose production credits include Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, 4AD, Cocteau Twins, and Love and Rockets, originally worked with Stabbing Westward on their best-selling early releases Ungod (1994) and Wither Blister Burn + Peel (1996). Chasing Ghosts was also mastered by Tom Baker who, like Fryer, worked with Stabbing Westward on their early releases and is part of the reassembled production team on the latest album. The current Stabbing Westward band lineup includes Carlton Bost (guitars and programming) and Bobby Amaro (drums). Says Walter Flakus, "It seems like we've been working on this album for a long time, trying to get it just right. With the help of John Fryer and COP International, everything fell into place. We are so excited for the world to finally hear the album. " Adds Christopher Hall: "It's great to be back and working with John Fryer and Tom Baker again was awesome and felt like making a pure old-school Stabbing Westward album. I was so excited to have the opportunity to go back to the very roots of SW by working with John again. John really helped us develop our sound on our first album and then help us take a huge leap forward with our second album. Even though this is our 5th full-length album, after such a long break it feels like a new beginning and it's very cool to have John at the helm once again. " The album is featuring artwork by David Seidman (an artist who has also worked with Coheed And Cambria and is known for his ethereal and surrealistic imagery)

• 1 I Am Nothing
• 2 Damaged Goods
• 3 Cold
• 4 Push
• 5 Wasteland
• 6 Control Z
• 7 Crawl
• 8 Dead & Gone
• 9 Ghost
• 10 The End

Endless Arcade follows Teenage Fanclub's 2016 album Here, a record that garnered universal acclaim, a mark of how much the group is treasured. The new album is quintessential TFC: melodies are equal parts heartwarming and heartaching, guitars chime and distort, keyboard lines mesh and spiral, harmony-coated choruses burst out like sun on a stormy day. In the 1990s, the band crafted a magnetically heavy yet harmony-rich sound on classic albums such as Bandwagonesque and Grand Prix. This century, albums such as Shadows and Here have documented a more relaxed, less "teenage" Fanclub, reflecting the band's stage in life and state of mind, alongside which Endless Arcade slots perfectly. The album walks a beautifully poised line between melancholic and uplifting, infused with simple truths. The importance of home, community and hope is entwined with more bittersweet, sometimes darker thoughts of insecurity, anxiety, and loss.

1. Home
2. Endless Arcade
3. Warm Embrace
4. Everything Is Falling Apart
5. The Sun Won't Shine On Me
6. Come With Me
7. In Our Dreams
8. I'm More Inclined
9. Back In The Day
10. The Future
11. Living With You
12. Silent Song

HOUSE OF CONFUSION is Trace Mountains' third album & the rugged, earthier follow-up companion to 2020's Lost in the Country. Recorded in the winter of 2021 in various locations - a studio in the foothills of the Shawangunk Ridge in New York, at home along the Rondout Creek of the Hudson Valley, a NYC apartment & in a small shared music workspace in Denver, Colorado - the album is an entangled assortment of thoughts, a hay bale of songs. Each one wrapped up in the intentions of the other, the album is comprised of road songs, rock songs, country songs, religious songs, disco songs, satanic songs, jams & simple tunes, laid out in careful presentation - to use at your leisure.

In the year of the coronavirus pandemic which followed the release of Lost in the Country, primary songwriter Dave Benton - jobless & like many other musicians, with newfound time on his hands - threw himself into an early-morning routine of instrumental practice & dedicated songwriting time. "I was used to waking up early for my warehouse job, so when I got laid off, I just kept up that schedule & implemented another daily regimen focused on improving my guitar playing & writing songs." He began exploring fingerstyle guitar, learning new picking patterns & implementing them into his songwriting. He would wake up, feed his cats & then spend hours on the couch downing cups of coffee, repeating patterns & swapping newfound guitar techniques with his housemates. The companionship he found at home eased the melancholy of missed opportunities & the burden of loneliness that so many had to endure that year. Benton considers himself lucky & in some ways, he admits, he even reveled in the solitude imposed on him. "It felt like a unique moment & opportunity in my life that I might not get again, so I just tried to channel every feeling & moment into the songs I was working on." These slice-of-life moments appear all throughout HOUSE OF CONFUSION - a housemate taking a drag from his pipe or the moon hanging low in the sky on a clear night - but they quickly get turned on their head, shifting to some alternate reality that blends past, present & future, chasing a revelation that feels just out of reach. Despite having been cut off from touring just after the release of Lost in the Country, Benton found a way to explore his world from home. "I was on the road in my mind," he explains, "thinking back on my life as a musician - my successes, my failures - & I was reflecting on the ever-ongoing process of moving on that my life has been made up of". The result is a natural progression onward from Trace Mountains' previous work, a look in the rearview that examines how things change & what it feels like - and more than ever, Benton's songs are touched with a tinge of realism. "I just started writing songs about that feeling we all have, of suddenly waking up to a brief moment of clear-headedness, like 'Oh wow, HOW did we get here?'" he laughs. "I started thinking about that a lot and just approached the feeling from different points of view & different voices that felt relatable to me. And a lot of that led back to images of the road." House of Confusion's themes are blended carefully from song-to-song, each one revealing a different stretch of the same road, with no true end in sight. On HOUSE OF CONFUSION, Benton is joined by mainstay players Jim Hill (guitar, keys), Greg Rutkin (drums) & Susannah Cutler (voice, mellotron) - as well as new additions to the recording band, Bernard Casserly (bass), J.R. Bohannon (pedal steel, guitar), David Grimaldi (guitar - tracks 4 & 5) & Ryan Jewell (drums, marimba - track 4). The result of this new combination of players is a band that sticks together like mud, loosely & effortlessly gliding through performances that may at any moment fall apart. Moving even further away from bedroom-recording style of the band's first proper album A Partner to Lean On, the songs & arrangements on HOUSE OF CONFUSION lean ever-more into the rootsier impulses of Lost in the Country, relying heavily on live recording & instrumentation that features the acoustic guitar & pedal steel. This shift reveals a new, understated complexity within the songs & the tangible, tactile nature of the performances, evoking the free-flowing nature of influences like Tom Petty or Built to Spill, all-throughout imbued with the energy of Country icon Emmylou Harris' cult classic & band favorite, Wrecking Ball. The players on the album remain essential to Benton's vision for the music, with much of the magic emanating from the warmth of collaboration with close friends. All captured by recordist Matt Labozza (Palm, Palberta) at the New Paltz, NY studio Hum House in the span of a few days, the raw jams were taken home to be finished in Benton's home studio & other locations over several months. Pink color vinyl LP

Tracks

• 1 Seen It Coming
• 2 If You Do
• 3 On My Knees
• 4 7 Angels
• 5 Idk
• 6 The Moon
• 7 Late
• 8 America
• 9 Morningstar
• 10 Eyes on the Road
• 11 Heart of Gold

Limited yellow colored vinyl LP pressing. 2021 album from the British singer/songwriter and former leader of the Jam and the Style Council. Paul Weller - sometimes referred to as 'the Modfather' - has been creating music for 40 years, constantly reinventing himself in the process.

Like every record Superchunk has made over the last thirty-some years, Wild Loneliness is unskippably excellent and infectious. It's a blend of stripped-down and lush, electric and acoustic, highs and lows. On Wild Loneliness you'll hear echoes of Come Pick Me Up, Here's to Shutting Up, and Majesty Shredding. After the justifiable anger of What a Time to Be Alive, this new record is less about what we've lost in these harrowing times and more about what we have to be thankful for. 

It feels like the band is refocusing on possibility here, and possibility is built into the songs themselves, in the sweet surprises tucked inside them. The "secret ingredient" – is always surprise. Perhaps the same is true of songs. Like when the sax comes in on the title track, played by Wye Oak's Andy Stack, adding a completely new texture to the song. Or when Owen Pallett's strings come in on "This Night." One of the best surprises on Wild Loneliness is when the harmonies of Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley of Teenage Fanclub kick in on "Endless Summer." It's as perfect a pop song as you'll ever hear sweet, bright, flat-out gorgeous and yet it grapples with the depressing reality of climate change.

Because of COVID, Mac, Laura, Jim, and Jon each recorded separately, but a silver lining is that this method made other long-distance contributions possible, from R.E.M.'s Mike Mills, Sharon Van Etten, Franklin Bruno, and Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura, among others. Some of the songs for the record were written before the pandemic hit, but others, like "Wild Loneliness," were written from and about isolation.

Tracks

1. City of the Dead
2. Endless Summer
3. On the Floor
4. Highly Suspect
5. Set It Aside
6. This Night
7. Wild Loneliness
8. Refracting
9. Connection
10. If You're Not Dark

Nash Kato and Eddie "King" Roeser met at Northwestern University, formed Urge Overkill (named after a George Clinton/Parliament lyric), and soon released a Steve Albini produced EP on Restless Records. After a string of acclaimed releases on Touch & Go Records (including the Stull EP, containing their cover of Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon," which became a hit after being featured in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction), the band moved to Geffen Records and issued a pair of albums which took over alternative radio. It was a whirlwind decade for the band. It wasn't until 2011 that the world would hear new Urge Overkill music, when the band released Rock & Roll Submarine (which earned a four-star review in Mojo.) Now, a decade later, is the world ready for more? There is only one answer: Oui. It features twelve new tracks from Kato and Roeser – eleven are Urge originals, with the opener (and first single) being a cover of Wham!'s "Freedom!" Add in tracks like "How Sweet The Light" and "Forgiven" and it all adds up to an Urge Overkill release the world not only wants, but needs.

Tracks

1. Freedom!
2. A Necessary Evil
3. Follow My Shadow
4. How Sweet The Light
5. I Been Ready
6. A Prisoner's Dilemma
7. Forgiven
8. Totem Pole
9. Litany
10. I Can't Stay Glad@U
11. Won't Let Go
12. Snow

For nearly a decade now, Noah Kardos-Fein has been making post-industrial / neo-no wave music under the name Yvette, building a distinct and arresting repertoire along the way. In 2016, Yvette began work on what would become their highly anticipated sophomore album How The Garden Grows. It took three years of stops and starts – multiple studios and different producers and engineers – to write and record. The album, now seeing the light of day in 2021, is the culmination of years of hard work, and countless obstacles. It marks a period of significant growth and change: not just within the band, but also in the musicians' personal lives, the world of New York experimental/DIY music, national politics, and an increasingly globalized world. And it reveals a band carving paths into a new realm of experimentation, in terms of both songwriting and technical approach. 

How The Garden Grows is an intense, kinetic space where animosity is soothed by moments of beauty, and beauty is sharpened into a metallic spearpoint by animosity. "B61" opens the album with two minutes of spacious clattering atop a nauseous hum, the harmony of which becomes clear when Kardos-Fein's voice bubbles to the surface. His delivery starts out glassy and melodic only to boil over into a scream midway through the track, creating one of the most aggressive moments on an already aggressive offering. By the song's end, the mood is complete panic, with Kardos-Fein's guitar-controlled synthesizer evoking distorted alarms, as if to emphasize the apocalyptic imagery of his lyrics. Songs like "Besides" and "For A Moment" march with a similarly anxious momentum of double-timed rhythms and overdriven textures, but here they serve a more discernible pop framework, highlighting Yvette's acute sense of songcraft.

For all of its energy, the album concludes with eight minutes of beat-less atmosphere in the form of "Intermission," a reflective piece of inertia that serves to contrast the utter dismay that precedes it. It's the only track that Kardos-Fein performed by himself, a droning, improvisational piece he recorded when everyone else had left the room. One of the last things you hear, accidentally picked up by the mic as the instrumental drifts into oblivion, is the sound of his bandmate opening and closing the studio door, leaving Kardos-Fein to carry on as Yvette alone. It's a surprisingly prescient sonic farewell for an intensely unconventional album. The droning fades, and the listener is left feeling slightly uneasy, wondering what comes next.

1. B61
2. Contact High
3. Warm Up
4. Besides
5. For A Moment
6. Close Quarters
7. Smoke In Your Eyes
8. Best Intentions
9. Translucent
10. Intermission

Transcontinental, experimental duo Smoke Bellow have been at it since 2012, relocating from Australia to Baltimore, MD and back again and then back again (now firmly settled in Baltimore). The duo released the Blooming/Middling LP in 2014, followed by Isolation 3000 in 2018 (both on Baltimore label Ehse Records) After a line-up shuffle, they eventually recruited one of their favorite drummers and dear friend, Emmanuel Nicolaidis (Thank You, Oh Hang) which found the duo refining their sound into a dizzyingly attractive mixture of kosmiche serenity, minimalist composition, test-card psychedelia, and highlife guitar.

With Open for Business the three members set out to create a set of songs more immediate and bare than previous outings. The album title itself is a cheeky reference to Maryland governor Larry Hogan's less than inspired motto "we're open for business". Half of the songs were written in a room together and the second half via email (for obvious reasons). At the time they were listening to a lot of post punk and were struck with the partnership of drums and bass as propulsive instruments. The trio started writing songs around that idea - with the rhythm as a brace to hang their decorations.

Sonically, Smoke Bellow are inspired by disparate sources. The heyday of Compass Point studios' famed rhythm section of Sly and Robbie sustained them for months. Others included good old VU, ESG, guitar hero Zani Diabate, The Raincoats (especially their under-appreciated second album, Odyshape), the frenetic sound collisions of the Flying Lizards, the ever warm blanket of Yo La Tengo, the evolving repetition of Stereolab, the understated genius of Asa Osborne, as well as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. The David Byrne/Robert Wilson "Knee plays" reminded them of the joy of the spoken word set to music.

Lyrically, Best and McHugh drew from life in Baltimore, from isolation (again), memories of life in Melbourne, their friends and each other. "We wanted to talk about resilience and resistance," says Best. Recording and mixing took place between a remote cabin in the Smoky Mountains and Tempo House in Baltimore with Jared Paolini. "Maybe Something" includes cello from Owen Gardner (Horse Lords). Words on "Night Light" by Daniel Stephensen.

1. Fee Fee
2. Hannan
3. Anniversary
4. Night Light
5. Furry Computer 2
6. Fuck On
7. Maybe Something
8. Wrong Size
9. Take The Line For A Walk

Enter Networker, the new album by Omni and first with indie giant Sub Pop Records. Their sound is still defined by sparse drums, locked-in bass, blistering guitar, and nonchalant, yet assured vocals, but from the first notes of "Sincerely Yours" you'll immediately notice that Networker sounds much cleaner and more "HI-FI" than their prior two albums, Deluxe (2016) and Multi-task (2017). The departure in fidelity suits the new record and allows the listener to enjoy the nuances of their meticulous arrangements. Don't worry, the riffs of Gang of Four and Wire are still present, but the production is more lush and the harmony is even more expansive. Despite nods to the sounds of the '70s and '80s what comes through is a record fully rooted in the here and now. Thematically, this is apparent on the title track "Networker" taking a candid snapshot of the "digital you" aspect of life in the age of the internet. The otherwise fun romp "Skeleton Key" also acknowledges the "direct message and obsessive" side of social media with lines like "if you don't like what you see, the pretty face on the screen, scroll on by..." Networker was written half between tours and half during recording sessions.

Mesmeric and kaleidoscopic, shimmering with electrified unease, Show Me How You Disappear is both an exercise in self-forgiveness and an eventual understanding of unresolved trauma. Jilian Medford's third record as Ian Sweet unfolds at an acute juncture in her life, charting from a mental health crisis to an intensive healing process and what comes after. How do you control the thoughts that control you? What does it mean to get better? What does it mean to have a relationship with yourself?

Recorded with Andrew Sarlo (Big Thief, Empress Of) and Andy Seltzer (Maggie Rogers), among others, Medford approached this album as a curator. She handpicked the producers that fit each song, which explains the range and experimentation showcased. Medford then recruited Chris Coady to mix and tie everything together into one cohesive piece. Dizzying and enthralling, Show Me How You Disappear is the sound of someone coming apart and putting themselves back together – the moment an old mantra, repeated into the mirror time and time again, finally clicks. To look at your reflection, and finally feel seen.

1. My Favorite Cloud
2. Drink The Lake
3. Sword
4. Dirt
5. Sing Till I Cry
6. Dumb Driver
7. Get Better
8. Power
9. Show Me How You Disappear
10. I See Everything

Alt-pop icon Gus Dapperton’s vast and ambitious album Henge builds a new world – tugging the listeners between night and day, socializing and solitude. With nearly 2 billion collective streams across his career – the Warwick, NY native constructed the album with the concept of entering an underworld as the sun goes down and trying to get home before dawn—or risk being stuck in a time loop. Sonically the album delivers a contemporary eclectic sprawl, at times landing between 80’s new-wave and 70’s funk. Collaborators include Cruel Santino, Ocean Vuong, and BENEE – who Dapperton reunites with musically following their double-platinum viral hit “Supalonely” which has amassed over 1 billion streams. Dapperton’s music maintains the intimacy that made his previous offerings so resonant – including singles Horizons, Wet Cement, and Don’t Let Me Down.

Track Listings