Heavenly reverb is suddenly shattered.
Jack Tobias loves ruptures. That’s clear from his work in YHWH Nailgun, where machine gunning synths burst through previously coherent sonic thoughts. On his solo EP Warm People, he pulls off the same trick, enshrouding the songs in ethereal production, then the hammer drops. We talked to him here on The Woodhouse.
The names in Fragile Wings suggest softness; tenuous and brittle.
And there is desperation in “Hopeless Magic,” “Three-Headed Moth” and, of course, the album title. But the album is anything but fragile. A deft mixture of progressive, death, and post-metal, Australia’s Cave Sermon delivers a rousing manifesto, in the same echelon as Deafheaven or Baroness, able to match impenetrable sludge with roaring beauty. We talked to Charlie Park on the Woodhouse.
Stockholm duo Alex Zethson and Johan Jutterström’s new album is a beautiful, minimal reflection on perfectionism and failure.
Through an intense and intimate recording process that picks up the clack of saxophone valves, and the humming of piano strings, It Could/If I refuses to let anyone forget there are two flawed, imperfect humans behind the music. The album reaches into melancholy and uncanniness similar to MK Velsorf & Aase Nielsen’s Opening Night, and meditates on how music is perfect while in the composer’s mind, and instantly blemished when it is played. We talked to them below.
A pyromaniac haunts Points of Origin.
John Leonard Orr, a serial arsonist who was also a fire investigator, shambles through Will Stratton’s excellent new album as a wayward grim reaper. But fire itself does not haunt Points of Origin. How could it when it’s the blazing heart of the album? From the former conman forecasting his propane-fueled death to the eon-spanning “Red Crossed Star,” which charts thousands of years of crimes and flames carving California, fire is all matter and all that matters.
Stratton’s story telling slots between the dirtbag ponderings of Warron Zevon and Hannah Frances’ rot filled meditations. His characters are lively, flawed, always running from themselves and the flames that threaten to take everything they hold dear. Song by song Stratton’s remarkable knack for crafting empathy grows deeper and deeper, ensuring we must see ourselves in these flailing and failing coots, and the fears that hold them.
<a href="https://willstratton.bandcamp.com/album/points-of-origin-2">Points Of Origin by Will Stratton</a>
“I’m a savage/I’m a sad bitch,”
slurs Quinton Barnes. He’s more the former than the latter on CODE NOIR. The Canadian rapper blends R&B, hip-hop, house, hyperpop, and anything else that would inject his beats with color and panache. There are moments of vulnerability, but Barnes is mostly here to celebrate and giggle. We talked to him below.
Supplication offers a path.
Christianity, heteronormativity, they promise a program. Follow us, do not question, and you will be rewarded. What happens when you stray?
That’s a core question behind Baths. Will Wiesenfeld’s electronic project has asked it again and again, especially on 2013’s brilliant Obsidian. And the uncertainty has come roaring back on his newest Gut. Gut refers to Wiesenfeld’s promise to act instinctually while crafting the album, allowing impulses to direct the music. And that’s clear from the throbbing beat on “Eden” (which is about having sex with an angel) or the cheery vocals yelling “that’s that!” after Wiesenfeld asserts that “carnal is a normal mode.” Wiesenfeld thrives in juxtapositions and situations that, at first, appear to be contradictions. Gut catalogues sex both as an annihilating, freedom giving act, destroying the anxieties of the body, but also views fucking as a normal, even inane. Wiesenfeld’s exploration of queerness refuses any path, spiritually, physically, sexually. And we’re all the better for it.
Ghosts litter Drinking Songs.
The damned drowned, dying soldiers, innocents packed onto a train before it explodes; there’s not a note on Drinking Songs that isn’t haunted. Released 20 years ago this year, Drinking Songs marked a foundational shift in Matt Elliott’s life. He abandoned his work in the drum & bass group Third Eye Foundation and found a different way to pedal dread. Elliott composed using a morass of phantom vocals, nylon guitar, off-kilter piano, wailing horns, and a pervasive sense of doom. His vision was a dour bar in some Eastern European barony, where the patrons haven’t realized they’re already dead.
20 years on, Elliott has returned to Drinking Songs with a live, recomposed version of the original tale, the specters of the damned as lively as they were two decades ago. We talked to him about the best drink to pair with the album, the death of innocence, and the false promise of futurism on The Woodhouse.
The voice is an instrument. The voice is the narrative.
Flipping between at least four different languages, and darting across each others’ vocal ranges, Catalan duo Tarta Relena offer a confounding, exhilarating version of vocal-focused music. Drawing from Gregorian chant, autotune forays, and Drum & Bass, their newest album És pregunta, could’ve been a total mess, but Helena Ros Redon and Marta Torrella i Martínez’s strident voices serve as an awe-inspiring, unshakeable foundation. We talked to them below.
We open by discussing an Irish goodbye vs a French exit.
The phraseology is different but the outcome is the same; “Leaving the Party Early.” The first song on Trust Fund’s excellent Has it Been A While? and a perfect introduction to the introspection, paradoxes, and uncertainty all coming from a core human experience: terrified of being known, and knowing that’s the only way to be loved. Trust Fund ringleader Ellis Jones’ dexterous guitar work follows him through philosophical discussions entwined with urban decay and never ending construction. It’s easy enough to agree with Nietzsche when your city is covered in scaffolding, the local housing authority swearing it’ll be done soon. But just as many revelations come in small personal moments like a holiday shattered by grief (“In the Air”) or the contradiction duet of “The Mirror.” Has it Been A While? is Trust Fund’s first album in 6 years, and its beauty and natural curiosity feel miraculous. We talked to Jones below.
Wrestler, rapper, world champion, pharmacist.
Ahmed, With Love. might have the strangest resume of any MC alive. The Dublin-based rapper has joined a growing throng of Irish artist embracing a colorful, playful wave of hip-hop, influenced by ‘90s rap greats, but also a smattering mix of Brazilian beats, electronic silliness, and rave euphoria. We talked to him below.
Can you have a pleasant haunting?
Sanje thinks so. “You can be Casper!” he says with a laugh. The lead single from his stunning debut, De Repente Otra Vez, is “Buen Fantasma,” the story of a long lost soul following those it once loved. But Sanje doesn’t envision any Paranormal Activity shenanigans, instead, this phantom wants to dance, hug, and watch over those it was connected to. It’s a lovely thought, paired with a slamming Cumbia beat and a triumphant trombone-lead hook. Plucking influences from the warmest, most analog days of progressive-rock, Salsa flirtations, and pure pop pleasures, Sanje has crafted an impossibly self-assured debut. We talked to him below.
It’s autumn, and everything has changed.
Band members come and go, songs mutate, the seasons shift. There’s an acceptance, both in title and general mood, for Clasping Hands with the Moribund, another entry into the U.K.’s recent salvo of excellent folk-rock. And as these prog-infused songs suggest, acceptance through art is one of the few ways to survive meteoric changes. We talked to Lifter below.
Albums are not usually conversations.
Or if they are, they’re pretty one way. Not so for Scott Orr’s Miracle Body, a deeply comforting slice of jazz, new age, and sophisti-pop that melds together into one of 2024’s most welcoming records. With his fluttering falsetto Orr ushers us in, sits us down, and offers tea and conversation. We talked to him below.
Dumbasses, gimmick peddlers, conmen coned by their own bosses dot Famous Lunch.
Chris Acker isn’t depressed, he’s just disappointed. And his sighing country tunes, tasteful pedal steel and all, just need a nap. From the surprisingly pretty letdown “Shit Surprise,” to the deeply confused self-reflection “Don't You Know (Who I Think I Am),” Acker uses a rouges gallery as a mirror, a warped perspective that’s occasionally clarifying, often baffling. We talked to him below.
Singing at the edge of the world.
Staring into the cold Atlantic, watching the waves crash all around, and seeing only the pale blue of the horizon must be sublime. And sublime in its original meaning, something that invokes awe with a touch of terror. There are few moments that remind humans of their smallness like staring into the void of the sea. Sangre de Muerdago aims to grasp that feeling with every release. Using a fusion of traditional instruments and folk-stories from their native Galicia, the band replicates the feeling of sailors from a past time, looking out into the infinite expanse, humbled. Sangre de Muerdago’s newest, A Ilusão da Quietude, is a momentous effort, something that appears like an archeological artifact, fully formed from a world we barely know. We talked to Pablo from the group below.
Is “crushing joy” a thing?
That’s the only way I can describe And So I Watch You From Afar and, especially, their newest album Megafauna. There are few bands as loud as the Belfast boys, but the chords that fall down like an Everest avalanche are all major, the electrifying guitar lines soar and crunch with equal ferocity. Megafauna is getting punched in the face and smiling. But that’s what ASIWYFA have done their entire careers. What this record truly does is balance the difference between their moments of miraculous joy and all out brawls. Two part rager “Mother Belfast” is as seismic as anything they’ve ever done, but comes right before “Years Ago,” a nostalgic ode to every bar the band’s ever played, which sounds like a beer soaked lullaby. That’s the duality of the world’s best rock band. We interviewed Rory from the band here on the Woodhouse.
“I wondered lonely as a cloud.” Emphasis on lonely.
Troubadour, vagabond, carpenter, folk-singer Peter Oren broke out in 2017 with his mythological heavy Anthropocene, with themes as crushing as his rumbling bass-baritone voice. Seven years on, Cloud Song finds him wrangling with both physical troubles and existential dread. In his view, the old Wordsworth poem can be played as an individual briefly drifting through life, untethered, for better and worse, from the earth. Beautiful and pensive, Oren’s Cloud Song lingers long after the first listen. We talked with him below.
And So I Watch You From Afar are as joyous as their name is ridiculous.
Like an energy drink being shoved into your soul. Like the world’s happiest mosh-pit. Like punching god in the face after climbing Mt. Everest. The ebullient drubbing produced by ASIWYFA has no musical comparison, just impossible physical feats that barely glimpse the improbability of this color-strewn noise.
Math-rock, post-rock, the labels don’t really matter. What the Belfast quartet has always done is extolled the brilliance of heavy music. Heavy music, albeit, with gratuitous major chords, chain-gang vocals and playfulness encoded in its very DNA. And this sort of inspiring insanity is exactly what landed them here.
Two of their albums, 2013's All Hail Bright Futures and 2017’s The Endless Shimmering made the list, along with Heirs cut “Animal Ghosts.” Read our blurbs below, listen to our interview with ASIWYFA founder Rory Friers and hear why we think they’re the best of the 10s.
“I’m a huge believer still in the idea of an album and the feeling of you get to know it really intimately and it becomes a companion and a friend.”
— Rory Friers
There are glitches in the system.
And Kill Bill’s one of them. The southern rapper is a founding member of the internet label/collective EXO music, popping up in the early 2010s with his gravelly, Lil Ugly Mane-esque flow.
But simple nerd-rap this ain’t. Using a kaleidoscoping mish-mash of references from N64 heydays to Matrix breakdowns, Bill explores mental illness, self-identity and the larger world of rap. So, listen to our interview, read our blurb on “RPG” and see why we think it’s one of the best of the 10s.
“I really like nostalgia and I like the whole escaping from this particular time I wanna be anywhere but right now feeling. ”— Kill Bill
“Dumbfounded, downtrodden and dejected/Crestfallen, grief-stricken and exhausted.”
All hail the king of anxiety. Pop-punk legend Jeff Rosenstock mutated his career for the…at least third time with a wallop of hyper-catchy, hyper-depressing albums. Anthemic to the core, POST- was the grandest of them all, a personal and political dissection in the wake of Trump’s election. No one gets out unscathed, especially not Rosenstock.
It’s hard too say if there’s hope ringing out of the album, but at the very least it’s one of the finest albums to scream along to this decade. So listen to our interview with Rosenstock, read our thoughts on POST- and see why it’s one of the best of the 10s.
“‘Aw yeah that was the best!’ No it wasn’t! I was sad then too!”
— Jeff Rosenstock
