April Review Roundup
Next month, next Roundup. This time with WAY more albums. No time to wait. Hurry, hurry! Let’s go!
Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams
Patterson Hood
Americana
This solo album by the Drive-By Truckers co-founder is adventurous, surreal, and downright cinematic. It also features some great guest spots by Waxahatchee and Wednesday.
Highlights: “Exploding Trees,” “The Forks of Cypress,” “The Van Pelt Parties”
A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole
Alabaster DePlume
Chamber Jazz
The saxophone-led jazz of Alabaster DePlume is more intense, more aggressive, and somehow more graceful than any other I’ve heard is a long time. If you’re looking for some word-free spiritualism, this comes highly recommended.
Highlights: “Oh My Actual Days,” “A Paper Man,” “That Was My Garden”
Dead Channel Sky
clipping.
Industrial Hip Hop
clipping. are some of the foremost experimenters and masters of beat-creation in the dark/weird hip hop scene. Dead Channel Sky may have dropped the slasher-horror themes of their previous releases, but it in no way lacks inventiveness or insane hooks. It’s a masterclass in complex sonic engineering through vibrant hip hop storytelling. Daveed Diggs and co. have done it again.
Highlights: “Dominator,” “Dodger,” “Ask What Happened”
45 Pounds
YHWH Nailgun
Experimental Rock
A raw, ambitious debut from a deeply original new band. Their post-industrial sound is a fascinating mix of fury and experimentation that’s full of texture and blasting with doom that will incapacitate your ability to process sound rationally.
Highlights: “Penetrator,” “Castrato Raw (Fullback),” “Blackout”
Can’t Lose My (Soul)
Annie and the Caldwells
Progressive Soul
It has been a long, long, looooong time—like, since before I was born—that a soul album was so concerned with…well, the soul. I know it seems odd to recommend what is essentially a christian-themed album, but it’s honestly great. The performances are stellar, and the production is flawless.
Highlights: “Wrong,” “Can’t Lose My Soul,” “I Made It”
For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)
Japanese Breakfast
Indie Folk
Japanese Breakfast is no stranger to making a great album. This one is subtly complex, highly creative, and the perfect blend of rock, folk, and pop, full of cinematic moments and magical soundscapes.
Highlights: “Honey Water,” “Mega Circuit,” “Picture Window”
Is
My Morning Jacket
Indie Rock
I honestly was not aware that Jim James was still keeping the My Morning Jacket project alive until I saw this in the release list. That said, this stands with some of the band’s best work, a fantastic anthology of different influences and genres to showcase their long-perfected talent, all flawlessly performed.
Highlights: “Everyday Magic,” “Time Waited,” “Squid Ink”
Night Life
The Horrors
Darkwave
It has been way too long since the last full-length Horrors album came out, the utter perfection that was 2017’s V. This is…not that album. While still technically proficient and beautifully presented, Night Life is goth in only the most Bauhaus sense, with an ever-present gloom hanging over every track. I don’t want to say it’s perfect for our current era, but…
Highlights: “Ariel,” “More Than Life,” “LA Runaway”
Lonely People with Power
Deafheaven
Blackgaze
After giving George Clark’s vocal chords a break with 2021’s very-much-not-metal shoegazey Infinite Granite, the boys at Deafheaven are back to their old tricks: screaming as indisticntly as possible into a chasm filled with the static echoing back from the big bang. This is by far the best thing they’ve done since their perfect album, Sunbather.
Only Dust Remains
Backxwash
Conscious Hip Hop
Backxwash’s catalog is full of heartbreaking tales of the intersection between transness and conservative religion, and the self-hatred created by that intersection. Her previous trilogy, which includes the jaw-dropping I Lie Here Buried with My Rings and My Dresses, showcased it thoroughly. But this album is unbearably heavy, full of the sense that something has gone fundamentally wrong. I, uh, don’t again want to say it’s perfect for our current era, but…
Highlights: “Black Lazarus,” “Wake Up,” “9th Heaven,” “History of Violence”
Glory
Perfume Genius
Art Pop
If you haven’t listened to Perfume Genius before, I cannot recommend enough his 2014 masterpiece, Too Bright, enough, hence why I wrote a whole breakdown of it here. If you are familiar, then I can’t enlighten him for you any further. This is another great release showing off his unique voice and songwriting talent, wrapped in his patented quirky, hyper-intimate pop veneer.
Highlights: “It’s a Mirror,” “No Front Teeth,” “In a Row”
Dan’s Boogie
Destroyer
Art Rock
Destroyer is Destroyer and this is a Destroyer album, so that means it’s good. I know that sounds like a shrug-off, but the man has so mechanized his pop-rock-in-a-folk-disguise sound that by this point we should just look at his releases like new clothes or phones: they may only be barely exciting, but we all need fresh fits once in a while.
Highlights: “Hydroplaning Off the Edge of the World,” “Bologna,” “Cataract Time”
Portrait of My Heart
Spellling
Alternative Rock
This first entry since Spellling’s fabulous turn at psychedelic pop, 2021’s The Turning Wheel, sees Tia Cabral take her musical project in an entirely new, unexpected direction. Her ability to seamlessly weave together post-punk, classic rock, and power pop is unmatched, and makes this new record one to check out immediately.
Highlights: “Portrait of My Heart,” “Destiny Arrives,” “Drain”
Forever Howlong
Black Country, New Road
Progressive Pop
After the departure of guitarist and co-vocalist Isaac Wood in 2022, many thought BCNR to be a dead franchise. But not only have they integrated new members and taken to their new roles without a hitch, but their latest effort is still a winner. Full of complex, prog-inspired songwriting, and wistful, pastoral storytelling, Forever Howlong is a worthy addition to the band’s already stellar catalog.
Highlights: “Two Horses,” “For the Cold Country,” “Nancy Tries to Take the Night”
hexed!
aya
Deconstructed Club
If you like noise for noise’s sake, boy do I have an album for you. This second album by aya will scold and abuse you, taking the abrasive parts of deconstructed club greats like SOPHIE and Arca, and cranking them up to 11. But behind the highly textured veil of anger are songs full of impressive emotional range and impeccably detailed production.
Highlights: “I am the pipe I hit myself with,” “off to the ESSO,” “heat death”
Bunky Becky Birthday Boy
Sleigh Bells
Power Pop
With this new record, on top of 2021’s Texis, the mid-career slump of Sleigh Bells is officially over. Absolutely loving this ridiculously fun, hardcore, headbanging, power pop masterpiece.
Highlights: “Bunky Pop,” “Wanna Start a Band?,” “Life Was Real,” “Roxette Ric,” “This Summer,” “Can I Scream,” “Badly,” “Real Special Cool Thing,” “Pulse Drips Quiet”
Death Hilarious
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs
Stoner Metal
It’s loud, it’s sludgy, it’s psychedelic, it’s filled with heavy licks and vaguely funny musings on death. This is what stoner metal should always sound like.
Highlights: “Stitches,” “Glib Tongued,” “The Wyrm”
Happy listening!
