30.05.2024-SKYLAR GUDASZ Cinema (Suah Sounds,2020)

 

INDIE ROCK / INDIE POP

   The North Carolina singer-songwriter has a voice that attracts metaphors about hypnotism. Her second album reveals a subtle, complex staging of femininity that resists easy resolutions.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/tohguw

27.05.2024-BEN HOWARD Collections From the Whiteout (Island,2021)

 

FOLKTRONICA

   Ben Howard’s fourth album, ‘Collections From the Whiteout’, is something of a time capsule, a freeze-frame of the headlines that caught the London-born musician’s attention and distracted him from himself in our current predicament. That he’s given this to the world in 2021, when a global pandemic has pummelled our collective attention span to a crisp, seems pretty apt.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/bx4ula

25.05.2024-TALL SHIPS Impressions (Fatcat,2017)

 

ALTERNATIVE ROCK

     Following the release of their 2012 debut Everything Touching, Tall Ships were heralded by the British music press as the next big thing. Unfortunately, after some personal turmoil and a falling out with their record label, the band found themselves at a crossroads – whether to pick up the pieces and continue or pack it in.

     Fortunately, Tall Ships regrouped at keyboardist Jamie Fields’ country home, and went back to the DIY recording process that gave birth to their much-heralded debut years earlier.

     And for the most part it works. Tracks like “Will to Life,” “Home” and the single and video, “Meditations on Loss,” display the extraordinary promise of their debut. However, lesser cuts like the sleepily depressing “Road Not Taken’ and the repetitive “Sea of Blood” detract from what could have been an outstanding return from what is obviously talented band.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/u34d0x

24.05.2024-LUCY DACUS No Burden (EggHunt,2016)

 

INDIE ROCK

   No Burden was recorded in one day, and it’s fun to imagine that every song was tracked in order, so she got to feel the same Ramones-esque rush from the knockdown first four-song run — one of the year’s finest thus far — that we do hearing it. The bluesy “Troublemaker Doppelgänger” asks, “Is that a hearse or a limousine?” before detailing a Jenny Lewis-styled subject who’s “too young to play but too old to mess around,” that may be herself, as the title implies. If she was once divided into conflicting pubescent halves bent on love or attention, it’s implied that she got her fill of possibly both, with the bad-experience punchline “One of these nights I’ll sleep with the windows down.” And the droning riff is a dead ringer for forgotten ‘90s boys the Flys’ “Got You (Where I Want You).”

https://www.sendspace.com/file/8bky4v

21.05.2024-CRAFT SPELLS Nausea (Captured Tracks,2014)

 

INDIE ROCK

   After a couple long years of quietude, Craft Spells (the songwriting vehicle of dream pop scholar Justin Vallesteros) reemerge with Nausea. The album shares a name with a Sartre novel about existential angst. The buoyant synths that once dominated Craft Spells’ sound have been largely swapped out in favor of moody string arrangements and pensive, piano-based compositions. While that might sound like a blueprint of boilerplate growing pains, Nausea is both mellowed and emboldened by actual adult hurt, most evident on the seasick yet crestfallenly pretty title cut.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/ewwjqm

20.05.2024-MIKAELA DAVIS Delivery (Rounder,2018)

 

INDIE POP / INDIE FOLK

     The classically trained harpist’s crowd-funded debut, released in 2012, felt limited in scope, with Davis never straying far from harp-laden folk in the vein of Florence and the Machine and Of Monsters of Men. With Delivery, she nimbly explores various genres spanning psych-rock, synth-pop, and gritty funk.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/37nssx

18.05.2024-DIRTWIRE Dirtwire (Dirtwire,2012)

 

INDIE / ELECTRONIC

     Americana band, comprised of multi-instrumentalist David Satori, Evan Fraser & Mark Reveley.

Conjuring up a gris-gris of sound with an amalgamation of traditional instrumentation, global percussion and electronic soundscapes.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/8a9sn2

15.05.2024-COATHANGERS The Devil You Know (Suicide Squeeze,2019)

 

PUNK ROCK

     The Devil You Know has the trio still railing against the pressures of modern life: greed, drugs, mental illness, violence against women and gun violence. This is an album full of what The Coathangers do exceptionally well; take the fuzz and raw energy of new wave and garage rock and add great tunes, riffs and solid drumming. They move from the pop joy of tracks like ‘5 Farms’ and ‘Stasher’ to the menace of ‘Crimson Telephone’ and ‘Hey Buddy’ to haunting arrangements on ‘Stranger Danger’ and ‘Last Call’.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/0prj8f

14.05.2024-COTTON MATHER The Big Picture (Rainbow Quartz,2001)

 

ALTERNATIVE ROCK

     Here’s a perfect model of how should a band sound like, in an attempt to recreate The Beatles’ legacy, and it’s a fact that even the Gallaghers agree with.

     Of course, this is much more than that, adding a dose of originality that will make you forget all the influences, here properly used only as a starting point in creating the band’s own expression.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/r9bwb7

13.05.2024-NO JOY Motherhood (Joyful Noise,2020)

 

SHOEGAZE

     Motherhood, the first full-length LP from the project in five years, is genre-mixing ear candy. Still here are the shoegaze influences, but they are sweetly complimented by everything from nu-metal to chamber pop.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/ptue33

12.05.2024-ALICE BOMAN Dream On (PIAS,2020)

 

FOLK

   Alice Boman confesses most intimately, emotions we have all felt at some point in our lives, but rarely admit to.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/4eitcj

10.05.2024-ED SHEERAN Divide (Asylum,2017)

 

POP

       In the four years since Ed Sheeran established himself as Taylor Swift’s opening-act-slash-bestie, the British singer-songwriter hasn’t just become a star – he’s helped make over pop’s sound. Blending acoustic sensitive-guy vibes with digital-age craft, Sheeran has knocked out hits for Justin Bieber and One Direction while influencing the strummy likes of Lukas Graham and Shawn Mendes. On ÷, his first album since 2014’s X, Sheeran doubles down on the blend of hip-hop bravado and everyday-bloke songwriting that helped him break out at the turn of the decade.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/8y9vq1

08.05.2024-TOMMY GENESIS Goldilocks X (Downtown/Interscope,2021)

 

HIP HOP / R&B

     The Canadian rapper and singer’s sense of playfulness is the highlight of a second album that attempts to reach beyond her raunchy sex-rap comfort zone.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/8lqg5e

04.05.2024-FUNERAL SUITS Islands Apart (Rubyworks,2016)

 

ALTERNATIVE / INDIE ROCK

   Musically, it literally sounds like an island – tropical advances, energetic synthesizers, purifying vocals, and joyful builds. It’s unfortunate that this is the last we’ll hear from the band.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/duuib4

03.05.2024-BOMBETTES Get Out Of My Trailer, Sailor! (Ny Vag,2010)

 

PUNK ROCK

   The Bombettes formed in 2005 and play catchy punk rock with influences from the 60s. They have toured both Europe and USA, they’ve played at clubs, garages, squats, pubs as well as bigger arenas. With their catchy tunes and in-your-face attitude no one is able to stand still during their shows.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/4k0eep

02.05.2024-BLEEDING KNEES CLUB Nothing To Do (I Oh You/Illusive,2012)

 

POP PUNK

     Hailing from the musical desert that is Queensland, this duo meld five decades of teenage angst – surf rock, Brill Building heartbreak, punk  petulance – into shambolic, snotty, two-minute  anthems that sound like they were recorded in a toilet, sung by drummer Alex Wall in a bratty, nasal, Jagger-esque whine.

https://www.sendspace.com/file/pctxb9