The opening track of Psymon Spine‘s new album, Charismatic Megafauna, “Confusion,” is pure dream / synth-pop bliss and lets you know that you’re in for a treat. The whole album mixes dance grooves with synth hooks and funk and inspires you to move and / or chill.
Bright synths, cool bass, and sweet disco beats are all over this record. Psymon Spine’s founders, Noah Prebish and Peter Spears, describe the slightly dark “Modmed” as a break-up song about leaving their previous band – Barrie. The bass on it is as thick as a dozen donuts eaten during a self-pity binge that becomes a “You know, what? Screw it. I’m eating these donuts because I’m moving on.” celebration. “Jacket” moves and sways like it has some junk in the trunk.
“Jump Rope” is a sexy romp with female vocals about meeting and defying expectations. “Milk” features Barrie – the lead singer of Prebish and Spears’ former band – doing backing vocals on another cool, bass-heavy track. “The game is called ‘Channels,” they sing on “Channels” – a fast dance-punk track about the drudgery of work and going along with the crowd when you really want to go off-road, forge your own path, and tell your doubters, “Get the fuck out of my face.”
“Different Patterns” mixes acoustic guitars with Knight Rider bass for a weird, dreamy effect. “Real Thing” bubbles and pops with synths that remind me of God Lives Underwater tracks and electric drums hit so snappy they could be a breakfast cereal. “Solution” bounces with a wicked house music beat that builds to a floor-filling frenzy. The album ends with “Unwound” – a bit of a psychedelic treat to send us off on a trippy note.
It’s a pretty cool record that blends its multiple influences well – making you dance and think. That’s not an easy task, but they make it seem easy.
Recorded barely a month after King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard released their breakthrough album, Nonagon Infinity, Live in San Francisco ’16chronicles the band playing a small club before they would soon be filling large concert halls and curating their own music festival. The power of a KGATLW show is on full display, and it’s great to hear them still with a raw edge and eager to promote Nonagon Infinity to the world.
A good chunk of Nonagon Infinity is here for us, including the opener “Robot Stop,” which is a pleaser to the eager, appreciative crowd. KGATLW come out like a flame thrower unleashed on an audience made up of hungry fire elementals. “Hot Water,” with its happy flute solos, keeps everyone bouncing. There’s barely time to breathe by the time we get to “Big Fig Wasp,” which has great double-teaming of guitars and drums that must’ve blown the audience’s minds as good as it sounds on this.
As wild as that is, “Gamma Knife” is somehow crazier – launching the show, audience, and venue like a cannonball across the California salt flats. There’s a brief pause as they build into “People Vultures” to let the audience cheer and hydrate for a moment before thunder rolls over them.
By the time lead singer Stu MacKenzie asks, “What’s goin’ on?” before “Trapdoor,” I imagine some of the answers he got included, “I can’t feel my face!” and “I feel like I’ve run a marathon!” “Trapdoor” slows things down a bit, but not by much as its groove is made for dancing. The double-shot of “I’m in Your Mind” and “I’m Not in Your Mind” makes for a wild trip. “Cellophane” moves back and forth between psychedelic grooves and flat-out punk rock screams. Everyone agrees that “I’m in Your Mind Fuzz” pretty much sums up how the audience feels by this point – fuzzed-out and tripping. Someone in the audience has lost their glasses by this point, but thankfully the band finds and returns them to the owner.
“Yeah! Fuck yeah!” a woman yells at the beginning of “The River.” I agree with her, as it’s a great live rendition of the happy psychedelic tune that last almost eleven minutes. The song drifts into space now and then, leaving the audience thinking the song is over before coming back to further hypnotize them. They follow it with “Evil Death Roll” to kick out the jams once again and blast the paint off the back walls. They close the show with over twenty-two minutes of “Head On Pill,” which lulls the audience into premature cheering multiple times as it winds across a desert dune like a sidewinder that’s just eaten a psychedelic mushroom.
It’s one of the best of multiple live albums KGATLW have put out in the last couple years, and a great addition to any collection of psych-rock or live music.
My wife and I recently hired a young woman to tutor us in French via Zoom. She asked us what we hope to do with the language. We mentioned being able to travel easier in Europe and other parts of the world, of course, but I also thought, “I’d like to be able to chat with all these stoner and doom metal bands coming out of France and Belgium right now.”
Cavaran, hailing from Belgium, is one such band, and their five-song EP, Bulldozer, is another fine example of the European stoner metal scene putting out some of the best examples of the genre right now. Opening track “Walter” is led by Patrick Van Der Haegen‘s groovy and heavy bass groove while Lieven Tronckoe‘s guitar soars like a peregrine falcon one moment and burns through the cosmos like a Moebius-designed spaceship the next.
Not to be outdone, drummer Gert D’hondt gets “Dino” off to a roaring start with hits as hard as a stampeding brontosaurus. Tronckoe and Van Der Haegen are just as aggressive, sounding like gunships flying over a raging wildfire. “Holy Grail” is another furious rocker, sounding like something Foo Fighters could’ve made if they’d kept a harder edge and didn’t worry about their next big single.
“Wörner” has a wicked groove to it that gets your head banging, but not so hard you’ll have whiplash by the end. Van Der Haegen’s bass again leads the charge and it sounds like D’hondt’s drum kit has a dozen cymbals attached to it at some points. The closer, “Bigfoot,” is as heavy and mythical as its namesake with Tronckoe shredding like a chainsaw in a Pacific Northwest forest, D’hondt using fallen trees to beat his kit, and Van Der Haegen stalking you the whole time like some kind of beast.
Bulldozer packs a lot of power into just five songs, the longest of which is just over six minutes. You can either jump onto the scoop shovel and race into battle with it or let it crush you. It’s your choice.
Margaret Sohn, also known as Miss Grit, confronts impostor syndrome, Midwest living, the benefits and annoyances of technology, and more on her second EP Impostor. Even the cover art shows her unease with being in the spotlight. She’s actually trying to hide behind it.
I’m here to tell her that there’s no need for that, because Impostor is a nice piece of work. Opening track “Don’t Wander” is like something you’d hear while in orbit and has hard-hitting, simple lyrics like “There’s no more reward for winning. There’s a bigger toll for missing.” Sohn’s guitar on “Buy the Banter” is fuzzed and funky while Gregory Tock‘s drums are solid drops like heavy, scattered rainfall. The song is a brutal wake-up call to anyone who seeks power (“If you think you’re somebody, you’ll have to prove you’ve got what they want, and they want.”).
“Blonde” is a sad tale of Sohn confronting identity issues as a half-Korean woman growing up in a majority Caucasian Michigan town. Zoltan Sindhu‘s bass line on the track is a deceptive one, lulling you into a warm groove before the track blooms / bursts into a fuzzed-out fireworks display. Sohn’s guitar prowess is on full display on “Grow Up To,” with plenty of shredding and arena-ready riffs.
“Dark Side of the Party” is a great track, with Sohn mixing guitars and synths well and singing about being stuck at a party full of people who, on the surface, appear to be sure of themselves, but who are actually as frightened as her (or more so) of being discovered as an impostor. The title track ends the album, bubbling with hard rock guitars before simmering with ambient synths to drift us out into the world again, ready to face our own doubts with a little more confidence.
Keep your mind open.
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Ritual Divination, the new album by Afrobeat / metal / funk / psych / who gives a damn band Here Lies Man, is the first one they’ve recorded as a full four-piece (Marcos Garcia – guitar / vocals, Geoff Mann – drums, J.P. Maramba – bass, and Doug Organ – keyboards) and the power and chops of their heavy groove live shows comes through on each track.
The opening guitars in “In These Dreams” is straight-up classic metal with keyboard stabs to shove you into the first scene of the “movie” that is Ritual Divination. In case you didn’t know, each HLM album (and live show) is essentially written and performed like a soundtrack to a film that’s different for everyone hearing it. With “In These Dreams,” you’re already thinking, “Well, this is a bad-ass movie and we’re still in the opening credits.”
The next track deals with one of HLM’s favorite subjects – mortality. “I Told You (You Shall Die)” starts out with a slow, trudging rhythm and then transforms into an epic space rock jam with the band both reminding us of our impending departure from this reality, but also telling us to not fear something we cannot truly comprehend. “Underland” is the shortest track on the album, clocking in at just under two-and-a-half minutes, but it packs a lot of guitar power into that short (compared to the other tracks) time frame.
The riffs on “What You See” immediately make your whole body sway forward and back with them. It’s a certain groove that HLM do so well and gets your attention at the outset. As good as it is, somehow the groove on “Can’t Kill It” is even better – possibly because it ups the funk and stirs it up with killer bass and keyboard work. “Run Away Children” is almost hypnotic with its trance-like vocals.
“I Wander” is a standout, with Maramba’s bass hitting hard, Mann’s jazz background being on full display, and Organ and Garcia working so well together it’s difficult to tell where one of them ends and the other begins. HLM let us know that you can cut and strut all you want, but “night comes all the same” on “Night Comes” – another reminder of our mortality and to embrace impermanence. “Come Inside” chugs along like a train powered by onyx instead of coal.
“Collector of Vanities” could be a song for most of us. How much junk do all of us have? How many selfies do we take? How many do we filter, polish, and recolor in order to project an illusion to the world? HLM encourage us, through the power of fiery rock, to de-clutter our collection and focus within instead of on the surface. The title of “Disappointed” is repeated almost like a mantra through the track. As for what HLM is disappointed in…well, they did record the album in 2020 so it’s anybody’s guess.
“You Would Not See from Heaven” gives a strong nod toward their Black Sabbath influences – in both the sweaty, heavy groove and its somewhat doomy title – although I suspect the song is more about how, in heaven, you would not see your desires, vanities, and illusions because you are free from them. “I want to run, I want the night…” Garcia sings on “The Fates Have Won.” They always do. You might not think they will, but they have infinite patience. “Out Goes the Night” is a song that is both heavy as stone and yet uplifting as the sunrise at the same time (“In comes the light, out goes the night.”). The closer, “Cutting through the Tether,” puts down a slick drum groove (with extra hand percussion to boot) as Organ’s keys, Garcia’s guitar, and Maramba’s bass slither in the background like asps waiting to strike.
It’s another solid record from Here Lies Man, who continue to put out work that is hard to define, but once you hear it you want all of it you can get.
Keep your mind open.
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What do you do when you spend a good chunk of your young adult life as a touring rock band, build your identity around said band and said touring, and then have all of that yanked away from you by a pandemic?
If you’re British rockers Shame, you look inward, ask yourselves “What the hell were we thinking? We’re more than…whatever we were during nonstop tours and parties.”, and refocus on how they (and the rest of us) were going to deal with reality in 2020 and beyond. You also write and record an outstanding record like Drunk Tank Pink.
Named after a color used in jail cells to calm, you guessed it, drunks, Drunk Tank Pink has Shame taking their angry, bratty punk sounds down multiple avenues that include post-punk influences like Talking Heads and pop icons like Elton John.
“Alphabet” starts off with snappy drums and singer Charlie Steen telling us flat-out “What you see is what you get.” He and his mates are through with perceived notions and crafted images. They’re just as pissed and antsy as the rest of us, and Sean Coyle-Smith‘s guitar certainly amplifies that notion. “It just goes on,” Steen sings on “Nigel Hitter” – a song about repetition and how life can and will continue whether you want it to or not. “Born in Luton” has Steen raging about feeling trapped alone in his own home (“There’s never anyone in this house!”). The song dissolves into a slow burn of boiling anger at a world that botched its collective response to the pandemic and thus left millions feeling like him.
“I should just go back to sleep…In my room, in my womb, is the only place I find peace,” Steen sings on “March Day.” It’s a rather plucky song about depression, with Steen poking fun at himself and realizing that self-medicating his way through the pandemic wasn’t a good idea. “Water in the Well” has a deceptively wicked bass line from Josh Finerty and some fun horror movie imagery and great percussion from Charlie Forbes that runs around the room like a cackling gremlin.
“I live deep in myself, just like everyone else!” Steen yells on the wild “Snow Day” – a barrage of punk and prog fury that has great, sly lyrics like, “I know what I need, I just haven’t got it yet.” Finerty’s bass is at the front of “Human for a Minute,” which would be a great name for a Gary Numan song but sounds more like a slightly heavy EdwynCollins track with its groovy swagger and lyrics about finding a new identity with a new lover (“I never felt human before you arrived.”).
“Great Dog” builds and builds to wild, mosh pit-filling riffs and then plunges off a cliff at the end to leave you breathless. “6/1” has Steen proclaiming, “I pray to no God! I am God!” He’s determined to be in control of his own destiny / fate / life, even more so as he watches so much of the world tear itself apart over petty things while the rich get richer. Coyle-Smith and Eddie Green‘s guitars on “Harsh Degrees” come at you from so many different angles it’s like you’re being attacked by a a dozen Shaolin monks. “I need a solution, I need a new resolution and it’s not even the end of year,” Steen lazily sings on the closer, “Station Wagon.” He’s looking for something, anything, to turn a lame year into something worthwhile. We were all doing that in 2020 and still are not even a full month into 2021. “Look up there. There’s something in that cloud. We’ve seen it before,” Steen says. “Won’t someone please bring me that cloud?”
Drunk Tank Pink comes to us in 2021 to remind us that, yes, 2020 was one of the worst years ever (“No one said this was going to be easy,” Steen says on the final track.), but, you made it here if you were lucky. You survived. You have the moment, the moment all of us have had and ever will have, to move forward and emerge stronger.
You can come out of the drunk tank with a new perspective. It’s okay to acknowledge what you suffered. There’s no shame in that. This album reminds you to put that rage down after you’ve acknowledged it, to learn from it, and to keep moving ahead.
Back in October, when we were in full COVID-19 doldrums, wondering how we were going to safely hand out Halloween candy and being baffled by everything happening (or not) in Washington D.C., LADYMONIX released Club Nowhere – a four-track EP that is made to make you move and forget your troubles. Turns out we still need this EP three months later…Boy, do we ever.
The opening title track is a house music dream, bringing to mind warm night clubs in European towns with its lovely, piping synths and thick bass. It grabs your attention, and you’re thankful for the pick-me-up. “Mood” is a lush track almost in the “chill vibe” category, but with enough dance beats to keep you bopping on your way and from getting a gin and tonic.
On the B-side, “Gonna Let” is even more hypnotic. It curls around you like a happy cat and will have you creating a dance club in your kitchen, living room, bedroom, or driveway. LADYMONIX’s sampling (and the chopped-up restructuring of a single vocal sample) is top-notch…as is that killer bass groove. “Movin’ On” encourages you to leave the past, the drama, the anger, and anything else keeping you down behind…and to dance your way out of the MF’ing room.
You can’t help but be happy listening to this EP, which is a tremendous blessing in these crazy times.
Keep your mind open.
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Hailing from Washington D.C., Too Free (Awad Bilal, Carson Cox, and Don Godwin) got together to make a record that blended multiple genres (R&B, electro, house, synthwave) and to get people to move and love themselves and each other. They also decided to force nothing about the album. The record, like their friendship and collaboration, would naturally emerge and be a full team effort. The result, Love in High Demand, sounds like they’ve been making albums for years instead of it being a debut.
Opening track “Gold” blends Tears for Fears synths with nearly industrial / goth bass and beats while Bilal sings to his crush that he could be his one and only if his lover would accept not only Bilal but his own true nature. “Elastic” has Bilal putting his foot down, saying, “Boy, I’m not a clown.” and declaring he won’t wait all night (let alone his whole life) for his lover to get his head straight. Cox and Godwin’s beats on it are sharp as tacks, and the guest guitar of G.L. Jaguar of Priests is a nice touch.
“Touch Upon Touch” is a sultry track with Bilal’s vocals weaving a sexy tale as his bandmates almost recreate an Art of Noise sound. The beats on “ATM” are nothing short of outstanding. Bilal’s vocals almost sound like they’ve wandered in from another song, and it works. It works very well, making you want to dance and yet stand still at the same time so you can just absorb the whole thing. “X2” races with near-punk speed and layers Bilal’s vocals over each other to point where you’re not sure which set of lyrics is the lead one. It’s a cool effect.
His vocals on “The Void” echo back and forth with gospel-style passion and trip-hop styling before the album moves onto the longest track on the album, “Breathing Underwater” (at just over five minutes). Godwin’s simple, groovy bass line roots the song and the electro beats and Bilal’s sampled breathy sighs provide the rest of the rhythm. Bilal sings about touching “all the right stuff” and letting himself drown in ecstasy.
On “Wanna Let Me Know,” Bilal delivers a smoky performance as he encourages his lover that he’s ready to his next Big Thing. It’s a short R&B / synth appetizer for the closer, “No Fun” – which is actually a lot of fun. “…change your life, make up your mind,” Bilal sings. His lyrics and Cox and Godwin’s make-out dance music beats encourage all of us to “go for broke” and pursue the love we want and deserve. You can’t ask for a much better message to go out on than that.
Love is indeed in high demand nowadays. Too Free’s debut album not only acknowledges this, but gives us the (loving) shove we need to go after it – on the dance floor, across the street, through a webcam, or anywhere else.
Keep your mind open.
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Aaron Frazer‘s debut album, Introducing…, sounds like it’s played by cats who casually walk into a restaurant where they sometimes have jazz or soul bands play on Friday nights, but are playing on a rare Wednesday evening when they have the good chicken pot pie special, and then are so good that your pot pie becomes cold because you forget to eat it due to being wowed by them.
Introducing… is a sharp R&B / soul record, produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys no less, and Frazer’s first solo record. He’s one of The Indications, as in Durand Jones and The Indications, and is known for his falsetto voice, drum chops, and all-around love of soul, love songs, and grooves.
Opening track, “You Don’t Wanna Be My Baby,” with its horn section back-up and lead bass, let you know right away that you’re in for a treat. Frazer’s voice comes out of your speakers like warm maple syrup. “If I Got It (Your Love Brought It),” inspired by a Teamsters slogan, has a groove you can’t escape – nor do you want to do so.
Fuzzy guitars join the party on “Can’t Leave It Alone” as Frazer delivers a verbal smackdown on his lover for treating him bad, yet he knows he can’t walk away from a hot thing. “Bad News” would make Marvin Gaye proud with its bad-ass 1970s groove, jazz flute, and Frazer’s assured vocals that sound so natural that you think he could just roll out of bed and put down a track like it anytime he wants.
Frazer’s gospel influences are evident on “Have Mercy” – in the title, the backing voices, and Frazer’s pleading to a lover to go easy on him because he’s fallen so hard he might shatter. He’s “Done Lyin'” on the next track, however. The groove on this cut is so good that you’re moving and swaying like you’re one of his backup singers within seconds.
“Lover Girl” is classic soul that sounds like it was found in a Detroit basement near the Motown Studios’ original property. Frazer encourages his lover to take a love journey on “Ride with Me.” He just wants to her take the leap of faith and head off into a groovy sunset with him. Who doesn’t want that?
Big and bold piano and horns start “Girl on the Phone,” then the piano turns downright funky as Frazer sings, “Wish I had someone to love me like this girl I just heard on the phone.” It’s a tale of him overhearing a conversation on a party line (Remember those?) and falling for her just from the sound of the voice, and being envious of the lover to whom she was speaking. Frazer tries to answer a question people have been asking since, well, there have been people on “Love Is.” It’s “what you make it,” according to Frazer, or “anything you make it.” I know I’m in love with the bass groove on the track because it could seduce the coldest of hearts.
The drums on “Over You” (the album’s first single) are as hot as popping popcorn and Frazer’s vocals bounce off the back of the club wall and practically shove you out of your chair to the dance floor. The album ends with “Leanin’ on Your Everlasting Love,” with Frazer and his band laughing as the song begins and sweet organ chords taking us by the hand for another gospel-inspired love song. It’s a lovely send-off.
And it’s a lovely record that I’m sure will be high on my “Best of 2021” list. There isn’t a bad track on it, and Frazer knocks his debut out of the park.
Named after a Mark Twain short story, Punch Brothers play a cool brand of folk that, dare I say, might have some krautrock influences on their 2015 album The Phosphorescent Blues.
My possible evidence for that is the opening track – “Familiarity.” On it, lead singer and mandolin player Chris Thile goes bonkers on it, playing at the speed of a hummingbird, while singing in seemingly a different time signature, and the rest of the band puts down sparse, repetitive beats and bass for over ten minutes. Crank up the fuzz and put in a second drummer and this could be an Oh Sees tune.
The record is full of musical mastery like this. The bass line on “Julep” is so smooth that it might cause you to fall on the floor. “Passepied (Debussy)” is a nice instrumental. “I Blew It Off” and “Magnet” are as good pop tunes that Fountains of Wayne might’ve written. “My Oh My” has great vocal work to back the instruments, and “Boll Weevil” gets back to the band’s folk roots with subtle instruments to underscore the lazy nature of a warm morning in Appalachia.
“Forgotten” comes after another short instrumental and is a soft track with some underlying jazz bass that makes it excel. There’s a fun bounce to “Between 1st and A” after Thile’s vocal intro. It continues throughout the song and puts a pep in your step like a walk on a cool fall day. The album ends with “Little Lights,” a soft ballad that takes its time and is all the better for it. The song is under five minutes long, but it seems longer – in the best possible way.
It’s an impressive record, and a pleasure to hear such master musicians at work.
