Tag: Sextile

Top 25 albums of 2025: #’s 5 – 1

This is always a tough decision, although my number one album of each year tends to arrive early and not leave. This trend continued in 2025.

#5: Sextile – yes, please.

Thrilling electro, sexy bass, erotic lyrics, club bangers, provocative cover, you name it, this album has all of it. It shot up into my top ten of the year as soon as I heard it and was one of the hottest records of 2025.

#4: Lonnie Holley – Tonky

Beautiful, soulful, and powerful, Tonky has soul legend Lonnie Holley encouraging us to all come together in turbulent times, “protest with love,” and embrace our neighbors. This is an album that rings true in any year, but we needed it in 2025.

#3: No Joy – Bugland

I hadn’t heard anything from No Joy in a while, so it was great to hear from them again and with such a good record. It mixes shoegaze with psych and pays tribute to the healing properties of nature and presence. I didn’t realize how much I missed No Joy until hearing this.

#2: DITZ – Never Exhale

These fiery post-punk Brits seemed to come out of nowhere (to this Yank, at least) and unleashed one of the loudest, wildest records of the year. The album is about anxiety and panic, but it never goes completely off the rails. It keeps you on the edge of your seat or helps you burn off aggression, depending on which track you blast.

#1: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Death Hilarious

As soon as I saw that album cover, I knew Death Hilarious was going to be a monster of a record. My gut was right. This is another heavy stunner from Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs in a line of material that has yet to miss. The topics of loss (friends, creative energy, relationships) and satire are biting and empowering. You’ll growl, stomp, and roar along with this record. You’ll laugh at the absurdity of our times with it, and then dive into the mosh pit with glee.

There’s already a lot of good stuff lined up for 2026. Let me know what you’re looking forward to the most!

Keep your mind open.

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Review: Sextile – yes, please.

Sextile’s new album, yes, please. is a floor-filling, club-shaking banger that encourages us to embrace life and not let the bastards get us down. It’s a record that skewers misogyny, politics in general, the United States’ health care and education systems, and the music industry…all while giving you a rave freak-out.

After the early 2000s video game opening credits-like “Intro,” we’re let in on the not-so-secret information that “Women Respond to Bass,” with Melissa Scaduto and Brady Keehn instantly making you sweat within the first throbbing bass riff. This song will make you want to turn your lights on and off at rapid pace to simulate a strobe light if you don’t already have one within arm’s reach. Keehn takes over lead vocals on “Freak Eyes,” in which he sings about the pressure of making the album just as good, if not better, than the last, and to make it now (“I’m trying to get my shit together. People say I should be working faster.”). The warped sounds are probably reflective of how his brain felt at the time.

“Penny Rose” delves into what schools and education will become in the near-future thanks to AI and carefully chosen subject matter. Hip hop artists everywhere will want to steal the beats and bass on this. “Push Ups,” with guest vocals from Jehnny Beth, builds and builds until your workout becomes a mid-1990s aerobic VHS tape played in fast-forward. Speaking of fast-forward, wait until you hear the bass on “Kids,” which seems to be going faster than anything else on the album. It’s pure trance music that will lift you off the floor (and listen for the additional vocals by Izzy Glaudini of Automatic).

“99 Bongos” is a fun one, with the titular drums slapping down sick beats while synths never seem to stop rising around them and someone tells a tale of tripping on acid and taking a road trip they were lucky to survive. “S is For” has Scaduto spitting a sexy tongue-twister that is probably being played in S&M clubs even now. “Rearrange” calls out how many things have been changed for everyone, and not for the better for most of us. Scaduto’s vocals sound like they’re coming through a staticky radio tuned to a pirate channel. Its sister song, “Resist,” calls / yells for women to fight for their reproductive and health rights. The pulsating bass on it is fuel for action.

“Is this it? Is there something I’m missin’?” Keehn sings on “Kiss.” He’s wondering what the hell happened around here, how did he end up in the middle of it, and what does he do now? Apparently, you dance until you’re a sweaty mess because the last half of the track is a full-on industrial ripper.

If you’re wondering why so much of this album is about calls to action and to embrace life and, let’s face it, pleasure, part of it is because Scaduto spent a good chunk of time before this album was recorded in a New York nursing home after an accident that almost caused the loss of a leg. “Hospital” and “Soggy Newports” detail the experience, with “Hospital” being the wild synth-wave dance cut about her trying to figure out why health care is such a damn mess, and “Soggy Newports” being the low-key song about how health care can be so damn depressing (“Please get me out of here, because I’m going out of my head.”).

If you’re looking for a hot dance record, look no further. If you’re looking for a sexy record, look no further. If you’re looking for a boring record, look elsewhere.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media!]

Sextile let us know was “S Is For” on their new single.

Credit: Cesar Adrian

Los Angeles duo Sextile are celebrated for a stylish, albeit unflinching electronic punk sound. Today, the band shares the new single “S is For,” which arrives ahead of the album, yes, please., out May 2, 2025 on Sacred Bones. The track is a defiant clap back at feminist connotations, with singer Melissa Scaduto leaning into lyrical repetition “Sex / S*** / Swell / Stiff / Slag / Snap / Shut,” she repeats, her talk-singing outlined by bloopy synthesizers and techno drums. Like the best Sextile songs, “S is For” marries danceability and heartfelt spunk. The video accompanying the track follows Sextile on their exhilarating recent tour with Molchat Doma. 

On the track, Mel Scaduto of Sextile shares: “It’s not super relevant to Sextile but with my other project ‘S. Product’ I was always asked what the S is for – it’s always really been a Scaduto product to me. But this song is sassy way to explain how many things the S could be.”

“The video originally had a completely different concept and was scheduled to be shot a week before leaving on a 7 week tour. However due to the heartbreaking and tragic LA fires the video shoot was cancelled of course and we had no other choice but to shoot the video while on the road. The video is a collage of performances, audiences and backstage moments across several different shows during our US tour with Molchat Doma.”

LIVE DATES
May 23 – London, UK @ Wide Awake Festival
May 24 – Bristol, UK @ Dot to Dot Festival
May 25 – Nottingham, UK @ Dot to Dot Festival
May 27 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
May 28 – Manchester, UK @ White Hotel
May 29 – London, UK @ Rough Trade East Instore
May 20 – Brighton, UK @ Dust
May 31 – Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
June 01 – Margate, UK @ Where Else?
June 03 – Tourcoing, FR @ Le Grand Mix
June 04 – Paris, FR @ Trabendo
June 05 – Le Havre, FR @ Le Tetris
June 06 – Saint Point, FR @ Les Mouillotins Festival
June 07 – Saint Brieuc, FR @ Art Rock Festival
June 10 – Eindhoven, NL @ Altstadt
June 11 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Upstairs
June 12 – Rotterdam, NL @ Rotown
June 16 – Vienna, AT @ B72
June 17 – Budapest, HU @ Durer Kert
June 19 – Istanbul, TR @ Blind
June 23 – Munich, DE @ Zirka
June 24 – Cologne, DE @ Bumann & Sohn
June 26 – Berlin, DE @ Modus
June 28 – Warsaw, PL @ VooDoo
June 30 – Krakow, PL @ Gwarek
July 03 – BE @ Rock Wertcher

Keep your mind open.

[S is also for “Subscribe.”]

[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media.]

Sextile open up their “Freak Eyes.”

Credit: Sarah Pardini

Los Angeles duo Sextile – celebrated for an unflinching, electronic punk sound injected with trance-pop grit – have announced their bold upcoming album, yes, please., out May 2, 2025 on Sacred Bones. 

Much of yes, please. is being performed on a current North American run of dates supporting Molchat Doma into March. Sextile has also shared the single “Freak Eyes,” which pushes their dark, pulsing signature sound to new heights. It opens with a nasty bass growl, which abruptly gives way to a techno beat peppered with clanging cowbell and sharp hi-hat. “I feel the pressure / Man the pressure I feel when we’re together,” vocalist Brady Keehn cooly, albeit firmly yell-sings in the opening lines. Inspired by the ways in which pressure can provoke challenges and improvement alike, “Freak Eyes” conjures electrifying images of seedy Sunset Strip backrooms and leather clad warehouse dance floors.

On the track, Brady Keehn of Sextile shares: “”Freak Eyes” is aboutthe pressures of making art, living, and aspiring. The sound was inspired by house parties we went to in NY, where certain tracks had the conversation stopping power. If you were in the middle of convo with a friend and heard certain songs, it didn’t matter what you were talking about, you stopped and joined the party in the collective release of emotion, singing, dancing, and drinks flying everywhere. It was like in that moment, nothing else mattered but that energy that we all collectively felt. And I felt like I hadn’t seen that at a party, or anywhere in a while, and wanted to try to bring that feeling back into the world again.”

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media.]