Last month, No Joy announced a new EP entitled Big Life, Big Leaf (out August 21st via Hand Drawn Dracula). The EP is the follow up to the widely beloved 5th LP from Jasamine White-Gluz long-running project, 2025’s Bugland, which like the new EP was co-produced by the heralded Chicago experimental artist Fire-Toolz. That album earned a Best New Music designation from Pitchfork, who called it “a perfect album for our current shoecraze…Bugland is full of more textures, more ambiance, more chunky ’90s guitar. It crushes like a giant box of Gushers,” with further praise coming fromBandcamp,FADER, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, AV Club, Hearing Things, FLOOD, and Exclaim. and wasalso recently nominated for the Polaris Prize.
The new EP was announced with its title track, which was co-written with Japanese Breakfast and Sky Ferreira producer Jorge Elbrecht. Today, No Joy are sharing a second single from the EP called “Barking At The Sun.” that blends dreamy shoegaze with ferocious blast beats and scratching from DJ Diego Juarez..
White-Gluz says of the track:
This song is driving through empty corn fields with the windows down on the first warm days of spring. During the last solar eclipse, I drove my car to the fields and watched the sun disappear and reappear, feeling like it was both the beginning and the end of the world.
This was the first song Angel & I worked on after Bugland. The song grew out of a very old demo where I played around with Drop C guitar tunings. With this opening guitar riff, I collaged bits and pieces of other demos together to make a patchwork of a song. Angel then took that into her world and made it more technicolor.
Following up on their White EP, Lowsunday have continued their return of fine industrial shoegaze with the Low Sunday Ghost Machine – Black EP.
“You’re So Wired” (a song about the confusing state between dreaming and waking) opens the dark gates with heavy reverb vocals, fuzzy yet bold guitars, and snappy drum beats to either snap you out of your brain fog or plunge you back into it, depending on which you choose.
The bouncy, yet warped guitars on “Shattered” are fascinating. It’s prime shoegaze stuff with Shane Sahene‘s vocals echoing everywhere to the point where you’re never sure if he’s singing or just making vocal sounds. It’s good either way. “Someone to Talk to” continues the strange, jangly guitar work by Sahene and Bobby Spell‘s bass creepily crawls all around you.
“This Is Not Heaven” is a goth track you heard in a dream once after you spent the night with some cool people you met at a club who gave you a ride to an all-night diner in the middle of nowhere in their car that smelled like clove cigarettes and jasmine. It’s a song that would give A Place to Bury Strangers a run for their money.
The EP ends with “Don’t Want to Dream Again” and some of Spell’s best bass work on the record. Seriously, that groove is outstanding.
Lowsunday’s Black EP helps you find presence with its fuzzy hooks and dreamy vocals. Good shoegaze is always a treat, so don’t skip this.
South Bay based singer-songwriter Billy Azurdia is releasing “Solamente En Mis Sueños,” on July 7, 2026. The genre bending single will be the 3rd and final release before his upcoming full length album. A danceable and ambitious departure from the straight forward tenderness of “Contigo,” “Solamente En Mis Sueños” showcases Azurdia’s confident versatility, blending city pop, folk and shoegaze.
Azurdia delivers a distinct 3-act anthem that begins on a sparkling dance floor, followed by a chromatic build that releases into a massive, distorted crescendo. The lyric and emotional component describe a chance meeting, that while beautiful, leaves one with a heart full of longing and bittersweetness. The finale explodes with fuzzy guitars, and dreamy synths, as Azurdia belts “Dejame aquí, puedo verte sonreir” (“Leave me here, I can see you smile”).
Billy Azurdia has been writing, producing and releasing music from his solo projects and as a contributing member of multiple Los Angeles projects, including Mind Monogram and Jane Astronaut, since 2011. His most recent work is an arrival as an indie folk writer, blending earthy grit and shimmering whimsy.
“Solamente En Mis Sueños was an opportunity for me to explore unconventional structure, danceable rhythms and blending it with the singer-songwriter styled indie folk that I’ve been producing these days. I’ve had the desire to explore city pop for a long time and I love songs that don’t ever return to a previous section, like (The Beatles) Day In The Life. I ended up with something I’m really excited about.”
“Solamente En Mis Sueños” will be on streaming platforms July 7th 2026.
Music is what initially brought atmos bloom — Tilda Gratton and Curtis Paterson — together when Tilda auditioned to play bass in Curtis’ band at the University in Manchester.
Seven years on from those rainy nights rehearsing in Trafford, the duo, now life partners living in London, are set to release their most compelling record yet. Everythingness was born out of a series of balancing acts, the journey through youth and young adulthood, chasing adventure while longing for home and falling in love with the city where they found this home, yet still needing to escape it in order to think and create. The record maps the duo’s journey through these themes whilst staying true to what initially brought the two together. It’s set for a July 24th release via Spirit Goth.
Following last month’s release of “Everything,”today they share the new single for “Closer.” It plays into the hazy, half-lucid magic of the band’s formula.
On “Closer,” the band share:“‘Closer’ explores self-love and finding peace with yourself and your inner child, whilst also missing past versions of you that no longer remain.”
atmos bloom’s first musical venture together: a psych-rock-shoegaze outfit inspired by bands such as Sonic Youth, Pavement and julie ignited a love for being in a band and making music. Their debut album Flora was born as the pandemic began to ease and restrictions in the UK were starting to be lifted. The record reflected this new beginning, a shining, shimmering record of hope that felt like an endless summer, with just a glance over the shoulder at the troubles left behind. As a result, Flora was inspired by jangly bedroom and dream pop, such as Alvvays, Beach Fossils and Cleaners From Venus.
On this second album Everythingness, a much different time is represented, a time with more uncertainty, painting a clear picture of the state of flux the duo found themselves in. The flow of the record reflects the endless cycle of feeling up and down and the sudden changes we all experience. From hope, self-realisation and sufficiency to fear, loneliness and unbearable pressures. The most positive and joyous parts of the album are met with the darkest and most lost. Even within individual songs we find ourselves plunged into a landscape that’s unrecognizable from the one where we started, only to be dropped back in and end at the beginning. Neither the ups nor the downs linger for too long and the overall message of the record is left up to the listener.
Do we enjoy the light whilst we’re in it, cut loose in the dark and embrace the unpredictability? Or do we live in fear of the uncertainty that’s around the corner, unable to embrace either the light or dark for fear of a sudden shift. The record ends with a clock-like rhythm, representing the perpetual cycle we find ourselves in, unstoppable and uncontrollable, all encompassing – Everythingness.
Without the restraints of trying to make a particular record, the pair unleash a wide range of influences, all explored through an honest and personal lens on this self recorded and produced work. In particular, bands such as DIIV, Ulrika Spacek, Deerhunter, Broadcast inspired Everythingness, without betraying the duo’s foundation in both psych-rock-shoegaze and jangly bedroom/dream pop.
The album’s artwork and themes reflect the environments in which the album was crafted – a patchwork, a collage, intersecting aspects of life and the world, and the journey to find our place within it.
Riviera Gaz — the multinational trio of guitarist/vocalist Gustavo Riviera (leader of long-running Brazilian rock outfit Forgotten Boys), multi-faceted bassist/keyboardist Paulo Kishimoto (Pitty, Forgotten Boys) and drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) — have announced the release of their second studio album Catacroma, due August 21 via Shelley’s imprint, Vampire Blues. Weaving together a psychedelic collective consciousness where fuzzy riffs, glam rock energy, fearless studio experimentation, and Can-inspired grooves all melt together to form new mercurial elements, the 11-track collection presents an elevated expression of sound, stretching straight-ahead rock songs into strange and sprawling cosmic experiences. First single, “Monomania (Edit),” an abbreviated mix of the longer album track, is out now and accompanied by a video directed by Tomas Spicolli.
“The song ‘Monomania’ evokes the soundtrack to a road movie, with constantly transforming landscapes, shifting colors and a steady rhythm that takes the listener from earthly horizons to a post-industrial future,” says Riviera. “It’s a celebration of obsession. It presents a world where irrational desires, impossible dreams and personal fixations are encouraged. Within the territory of obsession, of mania, an invitation to surrender to your ‘psychotic dreams’ and trust in the impossible.”
While earlier Riviera Gaz material was largely Riviera’s songs fleshed out by the group, Catacroma is a more completely balanced collaboration, with multiple sessions where everyone contributed from start to finish. Additionally, the band intentionally distanced themselves from the sterile digital aesthetic of modern recording, opting out of using click tracks, pitch correction, or instrument plug-ins, yet embracing the mixing phase of production as a means to organize the wild sound of the record. Extensive editing directly informed by techniques absorbed from famed producer Roy Cicala (John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Forgotten Boys), the subtractive atmospheres of the ‘Elemental Remixes’ of Lennon’s Mind Games, and Brazilian rock pioneer Erasmos Carlos whose most far out material became a central factor of how the songs were composed, resulting in moments like when “Lonely Moon” shifts unexpectedly between earthly heaviness and black hole spaciness, the emphasized tension between stoic acoustic chords and malicious layers of fuzz on “Name the River,” and drawing out of multicolored textures on the slow-blooming instrumental “Crime Scene.”
Lyrically, Catacroma moves through the same waves of the surreal and the unknown as the music. The album title itself is a word made up by the band, assembled from “Cata” (from the Greek katá, something that crosses, that goes downwards or inwards) and “Chroma” (color, tone, tint). This is meant to represent a core of color that expands into sound, but also has a political meaning when color symbolizes territories of dispute — not only sensory elements, but also tools of resistance, affirmation, and confrontation. The word carries the gesture of traversing the chromatic spectrum, dismantling invisible hierarchies that order what can or cannot be seen and heard. This is the starting point for lyrical pictures that summon up haunted hotel rooms, hyper-realistic poetry, a crime in the Hudson Valley where a son believed his mother was Medusa and would turn him to stone, and other shards of abstract thought.
Taken in its totality, Riviera Gaz‘s sophomore effort Catacroma is an aesthetic world of its own design. Its eleven tracks are a hall of fun house mirrors where killer songs break apart and come back together organically, never taking expected turns and always ending up somewhere even more interesting than where they began.
According to Wooden Overcoat‘s frontman, Brant Hajek, “Recording this EP almost ruined my life, and I hope it sounds like it.”
Hajek wrote, played, recorded, mixed, and edited Hello Sunbeam by himself, wanting “…to make something that sounds old but fresh…something that sounds warm and dense, but somehow also airy.” Mission accomplished, sir, as the EP is psychedelic, dreamy, and fuzzy.
Opening with “Home,” you immediately get the sense of sunbeams waking you in the morning and moonbeams illuminating your late night party that same day. It’s delightfully hooky. “Finally Arrived,” a song about the frailty of human connection, is lush and almost misty. It’s like catching a jasmine smell on the wind and you don’t know its origin, but you want to find it so you can hang out there for hours.
“Heaven Right Now” continues to explore how frail we are and uses reverb-soaked guitars and vocals to show how many of us are always on the edge of the ledge and ready to fall and shatter…yet it’s still hopeful and captivating. It’s no secret that Hajek wrote the album during a dark period of his life. His mother was diagnosed with cancer, he was going through a breakup, and the world was both literally and figuratively on fire (even his band’s name is a nickname for a coffin).
The vocal harmonies on the closing track, “I Knew You Would,” blend well with the psych-surf guitar and soft beats. I’m willing to bet it’s about Hajek’s relationship turning sour and an outcome he saw coming and knew he couldn’t avoid. The guitar solo on it is a standout.
The title of the EP comes from a mantra that Hajek would say when he felt things crushing in on him. It was to remind him that the sun was still there and, as Gandhi once put it, “In the midst of darkness, light persists.” Hello Sunbeam acknowledges the dark, but also embraces the light.
The final five on this list were, believe it or not, fairly easy to determine. This is probably because they were so good and also because they all hit some emotional note for me because I didn’t think I’d see any of them ever again (or, in one case, even once).
#5: Nine Inch Nails – United Center – Chicago – August 20, 2025
This surprise tour sold out in rapid time, but luckily Nine Inch Nails added a second Chicago show due to popular demand. I had tickets for my fiancé and I, and then learned that my future stepdaughter was a NIN fan. I managed to get a third ticket to what turned out to be a stunning show with three stages, excellent remixes, and an enthusiastic crowd who were roaring for every song.
#4: Underworld – Radius – Chicago – May 17, 2025
Here’s the band I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see. Underworld playing two full sets at this intimate venue was an immediate purchase. It was a brilliant time, and stunning to see these two gents who can fill stadiums play such a small show with full energy to keep us dancing until the late hours.
#3: Midnight Oil – Riviera / Chicago – June 10, 2022
Midnight Oil was one of my late wife’s favorite bands. We’d seen them two during college, then on their reunion tour in the 2010s, and then we were supposed to see this show, but she died barely eight months earlier. I felt the need to go to honor her and see friends. It was the right decision. The show helped lift some of the weight off me. Midnight Oil sounded great, and it was their final tour. They belted out classics and left us all ready to resist tyranny and love each other.
#2: Love and Rockets – Riviera – Chicago – June 06, 2023
Here is the band I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see. I missed them in their heyday, and the closest I’d come until this show was seeing David J play an acoustic set at Levitaiton Music Festival. Love and Rockets flattened the place, sounding as strong as ever and reminding all of us that they were and still are rock stars. I was on cloud nine for the whole show.
#1: Failure – Bottom Lounge / Chicago – July 01, 2022
Failure are one of my favorite bands of all time. I don’t joke when I tell people that their Fantastic Planet album can be life-changing. This reunion tour caught me off-guard. I stumbled upon the announcement and then word that they had a VIP package that included a meet-and-greet and attendance at their sound check. It was another emotional show for me, as I was still reeling from my wife’s death and hearing “Another Space Song” live brought me to tears. The show was powerful for a lot of us. I saw a lot of people beaming throughout it, and the band were all happy to chat with us, sign anything, and talk with us about everything from music to films, and, in my case, grief. Again, I don’t joke when I say this show was instrumental in my healing. I’ll always thank Failure for it.
There have been plenty of good shows already in 2026, so come back in early 2027 to see which of those make the list for the best of the year.
If you weren’t aware, The Black Angels are currently on tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album, Passover. They’re playing the whole album front to back and a second set of favorites and new material. Their recent return to Chicago’s Thalia Hall was a sold-out affair with spooky psych-rockers L.A. Witch opening for them.
I think this kind of lighting follows L.A. Witch wherever they go.
L.A. Witch played a smoky, spooky set of psych-rock mixed with California garage rock and a bit of doom metal. Their drummer, Ellie English, is sharp and puts down heavy krautrock rhythms at times. They also have a cool wall-of-sound vibe to them that washes over you and can induce a hypnotic state.
Same thing with The Black Angels, really.
Passover launched the careers of the Austin, Texas psych-heavyweights, and the album is still powerful in its message of the insanity of war…which is, unfortunately, also still relevant twenty years later with even just the first two tracks: “Young Men Dead” and “The First Vietnam War.”
“Black Grease” has always been a favorite of mine, so it’s a treat to hear it live, and “Manipulation” has grown into one of their best live pieces as Christian Bland and Alex Maas trade lead vocals throughout it and everyone gets trippy with it. After seeing Stephanie Bailey pound her kit during the back-to-back endurance contests of “Empire” and “Better Off Alone,” my guess is that she carb-loads like a triathlete before each show. By the way, she came out on stage on crutches and still rocked the entire set.
After a brief break, they came back with the ever-cool “Bad Vibrations” and then multiple new tracks: “Push It” (not a Salt & Pepa cover), “Daisies,” and “Turkish” among them. Their new album is going to be a stunner if these are any indication of its sound.
The bad vibrations are actually pretty good.
Don’t skip this tour. The new edge to the Passover songs is heavy and sometimes menacing, and the new songs will amaze you.
Just like my list of the top 25 albums I reviewed over the last five years, I decided to create a list of the top 25 concerts I attended in the same time. It was a harder list to make, although the top five were fairly easy to choose. Who put on the best shows? Let’s find out.
#25: The The – Salt Shed, Chicago, IL, October 25, 2024
There are many bands on this list that I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see live. The The is one of them. This show included two sets. The first had them playing their newest album, Ensoulment, in its entirety. The second was a “time traveler” set that included all older material, starting with “Infected” and ending with “This Is the Day.”
This was Yin-Yin’s first show ever in the United States, and they won over the entire crowd at Levitation last year. Their blend of funk, Euro-disco, and psych-rock was an instant hit. Everyone on and off the stage had a great time.
#23: Jon Spencer – Stockroom East, South Bend, IN, July 11, 2024
Jon Spencer and his backing band featuring two members of The Bobby Lees played about forty minutes from my house in a tiny venue and in front of maybe fifty people. They completely shredded the place, hitting it as hard as they would a big theatre and leaving many who’d never seen his live show slack-jawed by the end of it.
#22: A Place to Bury Strangers – Empty Bottle – Chicago – May 30, 2022
Any APTBS show is an experience, and this one in my favorite Chicago dive bar was especially wild. They were feeding off the crowd’s energy and crushing everyone and everything in sight. A friend of mine, a bassist for a Chicago death metal band (Aphixiator), was impressed by the power they generated. I think the walls shook for hours afterwards.
#21: Gang of Four – Far Out Lounge – Levitation Austin, November 01, 2024
Here’s another band I wasn’t sure I’d ever see live. Gang of Four showed that they were still powerful, relevant, and sharp. Seeing so many other GOF fans going bonkers with me was a highlight of the Levitation Music Festival that year.
Whew. It’s already heavy and loud. Who makes the top twenty? Come back tomorrow to find out!
The cover of Pale Blue Eyes‘ This House features a photo of the house and parents of lead singer / guitarist Matt Board. Everything in that photo is gone now. Well, the house might still be there, and Board’s memories of it are still intact, but it has new inhabitants now. The lawn is probably different. The decorations in it are different, and the people now living in it are building their own lives while Board, after losing both his parents within five years of each other, is still building his. The album is about loss, but also embracing the change that comes with loss.
The album begins with “More” (as in there is more after loss, if you allow it) as Lucy Board‘s synths and programmed beats immediately bring light and hope, and Aubrey Simpson‘s bass groove gets your feet tapping. As if that wasn’t catchy enough, “Simmering” is even peppier and encourages us to examine the “before and after” when you’re faced with a life-changing event.
After all, there’s “no turning back” after such a thing. You just want to “Hang Out” and let it drift by you “because I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Sometimes you have to be still…although this track is tailor-made to get you to dance. Put it on at the party you throw to alleviate your sadness. It’s perfect. Mrs. Board’s synths and programming on “Spaces” sounds like transmissions from outer space.
Simpson’s bass on “Heating’s On” sounds like something from a lost Go-Gos track. Mr. Board’s guitar goes all shoegaze on “Our History,” and it’s a gorgeous wash of sound crashing over you. “Million Times Over” slows things down just a bit, but the dance beats (and spooky synths) return with “Illuminated.” “Sister” is another shimmering shoegaze stunner. Looking for motorik? Don’t worry. Pale Blue Eyes have you covered with the snappy “Takes Me Over.”
The record ends with the lush “Underwater,” as if you plunged into a backyard pool at the end of a long day or late at night when the party is winding down and it’s just you and a couple close friends. You know things will be okay. You can embrace the shock, the cold, and you can embrace the support and the warmth. It’s all okay.
