Brand New Music
Grouper | Grid of Points
With her eleventh(!) LP, Liz Harris has managed to capture emotion and deliver it in it’s purest form. Written and recorded in under two weeks time, this album is stripped down to its most utilitarian elements: voice, piano and the sound of the room it was recorded in. Raw, economical and gorgeously articulated, Grid of Portraits is further evidence of the dark arts that Harris clearly practices, a sort of haunting impressionism of which she really has no peer.
Speedy Ortiz | Twerp Verse
Arguably at their most refined and accessible, the band attempts to make the best out of a turbulent modern world. Although most of the majority of Twerp Verse was written previous to Sad13’s solo record Slugger, you’ll still find the middle ground between the two styles sticking out. Succinct, wry, and hitting the context directly on the head, there is a lot to unpack. This is easily the groups most direct album, but rather than making things easier to digest they’ve simple removed anything that could have gotten in the way of getting their message across. Ortiz has this way of sugar-coating their music with hooks and chaos resulting in an effect that is occasionally disorienting, and while there’s hints of that aesthetic here it’s their clarity of purpose that they’ve expressed here that brings their grimy pop energy to the forefront.
Half Waif | Lavender
Lavender is an album in motion. Nandi Rose Plunkett – the mastermind behind the project – has made name for herself as an artist who delicately yet deliberately searches for home. Lavender continues this journey through 12 tracks that are fantastically in flux. She’s always been a powerful performer, but she’s nailed the careful art of crafting an album with Lavender; its stories, themes and tunes echo each other powerfully. Versatile and precisely put together it’s both a funeral song for life before the chaos that seems to plague the world today and an attempt to inspire life within it. While it can be an emotionally turbulent listen that continually returns to the fracturing of the self and the breaking apart from others, this is also an album that is deeply arresting and vital, a reminder that these ruptures are a part of the rocky terrain of life.
Forth Wanderers | Self-Titled
It´s the type of record that makes you want to separate all the layers, just to enjoy each instrumental and vocal arrangement individually, then put it back together and bask in the way it all comes together. This is a peach of a record with a host of alarmingly effortless attractions. Throughout it’s bursting with the uncontainable energy of glorious garage rock from a band confident in approach and growing into their sound. Forth Wanderers have managed to produce a record that’s of a piece, made in a way that reflects how we interact in modern times.
Also Out Today..
Post Malone | Beerbongs & Bentleys
Okkervil River | In the Rainbow Rain
Dylan Carlson | Conquistador
