The recently released single by Night Riots is a synth-laden and sonically expansive song called “Loyal to the Game.” The track comes from the band’s sophomore album New State of Mind that will be officially released on July 26th via Sumerian Records. The track is ripped right from the wheelhouse of electronica-styled bands such as The Neighbourhood and No Devotion, with mostly favorable results.
The Manchester-based indie rock band, The Covasettes come bursting onto the music scene with the brightly colored EP It’s Always Sunny Above the Clouds. With it’s Care Bear-styled cover art, I was initially unsure of what to expect from the band that I was introduced to. However, The Covasettes quickly won me over with the core influences of Arctic Monkeys, The Killers, and Coldplay that are felt warmly as they create a wonderful collection of songs. The four-piece band is comprised of lead vocalist/guitarist Chris Buxton, lead guitarist Matt Hewlett, bassist Jamie McIntyre, and drummer Matt Buckley, and their chemistry as a unit comes across undeniably on this record.
Philly indie rockers twentythreenineteen just released their debut full-length on Know Hope Records. It’d be easy to call XXIIIXIX an emo album, but that’d sell the band short. They pull from pop, electronic, and even ambient as much as they do emo and emo-adjacent music, and it makes for one of the genre’s most creative and refreshing albums in a long time. I recently had the pleasure of speaking to bandleader Sean McCall about the writing of the record, which is currently available for streaming and purchase.
I started The Podcast Worm with the intention of keeping it up regularly. The first one went live around 9 months ago now, so clearly, that didn’t happen. However, much like Halloween Unmasked, Inside Star Wars was a podcast that really caught my attention.
Mark Ramsey is the host, who has teamed up with Wondery for multiple series that dive into certain movies like Jaws and Psycho. I haven’t listened to those just yet (but I have plans to). With Inside Star Wars, I was able to learn things about the cast that I didn’t know before.
It’s crazy to think another mid-year list is in the books – the first six months of 2019 have flown by. Thankfully, there has been plenty of music for us to discuss, debate, love, and share. Once again, the Chorus.fm is an unique list – a diverse one that beautifully shows off the collective, eclectic taste of our staff and contributors. So without further ado here is our favorite twenty albums of 2019 thus far – we’re excited to see what the next six months have to offer.
Note: You can share your own lists in the forums and clicking the artist name and album title will take you to the album’s streaming page featuring quick links for all streaming services.
Tanya Batt is many things. First off, she’s a proud Gecko mum. Then, she’s a musician, an actress, she nannies, and she even works in a theatre. You wouldn’t know it by glancing at our table in the busy Melbourne café, The Hub, but Tanya Batt – who performs under the musical moniker BATTS – played a show in a packed Hamer Hall just a week earlier. Hamer Hall is one of Melbourne’s most beautiful venues, a room Tanya never thought she’d play in. Following a string of concerts as a special guest for Sharon Van Etten (“Sharon is the best. She watched my sets from the side of the stage”), Friday night saw Batt end her album launch shows with a special hometown performance.
On their fourth studio album Two Door Cinema Club fully embrace the 80’s synth and colorful pop that they hinted at on 2016’s Gameshow. False Alarm paints the Northern Irish indie rock band as a group that is willing to take calculated risks and have a blast while doing so. Whereas other artists may find their comfort in a familiar sound from album to album, Two Door Cinema Club have little issue with experimenting with a variety of new ideas and fresh takes on their songwriting.
In the birth of the internet, the ill-timed phrase, “this isn’t punk!” was uttered by way too many online accounts. Fast forward to today, and some people are still taking it to the web to defend against whether their favorite bands fit into one genre or another. The times have changed slightly as genre lines tend to be blurred as groups evolve and figure out their sound. Enter Russian Girlfriends, who make unapologetic, blazing punk rock that demands to be pumped through the speakers at the highest volume. For those unfamiliar with the band, Russian Girlfriends are a five-piece band from Albuquerque, New Mexico in the style of the melodic urgency of The Bouncing Souls, the political brashness of Anti-Flag, and the high-energy punk rock of The Explosion. Comparisons aside, In the Parlance of our Times is one of the better punk rock records to come out in the latter half of this decade.
In just around four months, it’ll be ten years since Baroness released their breakthrough second album Blue. A critical darling through and through, the twelve-track album explored a sound beyond metal that few if any bands could match – then and now. Over the course of their sixteen-year career, Baroness have transcended multiple styles ranging from sludge to proggy psychedelics while maintaining the aggressive sincerity that’s attracted so many passionate fans. Never a band to rest on its laurels, the Savannah, Georgia quartet once again look to reinvent their sound and re-contextualize what a metal record can be with their boldest and most triumphant effort yet – Gold & Grey.
The list of accolades that Bastille have accrued over just three studio albums is what most bands can only dream of when they start their career. With over 9 million records sold to date, several number one singles, and many major music awards added to their impressive resume, Bastille should be able to kick back and celebrate a bit. Coming off of a successful sophomore effort in Wild World, that was packed with content surrounding the changing world around us, political ramifications, and dense metaphors about how the world as we knew it was spiraling out of control, it only made sense for their follow-up to be called Doom Days.
The hype surrounding this particular release was at an all-time high due to the success of their Top 40 crossover smash with collaborator Marshmello in “Happier.” Everything was lining up perfectly for Bastille to deliver their landmark album in their discography since they appeared to have so much going in their favor. Doom Days chronicles their rise to fame, as well as what the band described in a recent interview as a loose concept album regarding “the importance of escapism, hope and the preciousness of close friendships.”
Earlier this month, I was able to catch up with Hannah Joy (singer/guitarist) of the indie rock band, Middle Kids before they played a sold out show at the legendary 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. During our conversation, Hannah shared the band’s approach to creating a memorable set of songs for their live shows, the process that goes into writing their music, as well updates on the progress of their second full-length album. Middle Kids recently released New Songs For Old Problems on Domino Records, and the EP is available for purchase wherever music is sold.
My memories surrounding the seventh studio album from the Red Hot Chili Peppers are flooded with great moments spent with this classic, late-90’s record on many Summer evening drives back and forth from the beach. Californication came at a time when my sixteen-year-old self was rapidly veering away from the pop that was dominating the airwaves of the radio, and I vividly remember when I purchased a CD copy of this album that I still hold in such high esteem to this day. As I look back on the 20th anniversary of this classic, I remember how I was immediately drawn into the world the band was describing in ways I never thought that I could be. I was transformed within an album from the very first notes. While my younger self may not have fully grasped all the themes that were being tossed around in the lyrics such as: death, suicide, globalization, and traveling, I could still appreciate every ounce of blood sweat and tears that the band had put into the classic LP.
New wave emerged in popular music during the late 1970s and reached maximum popularity in the early 1980s. Icons of the genre, such as Blondie and Talking Heads, grasped the sunnier side of pop music while adopting sensibilities of punk. In the 2000s, bands like The Killers, The Strokes, and Interpol were seemingly reviving post-punk/new wave, largely in thanks to their hugely melodic pop songs contrasted with themes of disillusionment and heartache. Now, Parquet Courts and Public Practice have taken the mantle of Talking Heads-esque post-punk, Preoccupations fill the art-punk void, but where’s the poppier side of the spectrum?
Enter Lust for Youth, the Danish new wave duo comprised of Hannes Norrvide and Malthe Fischer. Their new eponymously titled album presents eight tracks ready to be consumed on the dance floor. Seamlessly integrating contemplative balladry and voyaging through 90s Europop, Lust for Youth have crafted a superb collection of tracks that rightfully likens them to legendary new wave acts New Order and Depeche Mode.
Let me introduce you to Mike Frazier, an ultra-talented singer-songwriter from Virginia who has a knack for showcasing the wide range of emotions that go into telling captivating stories through his music. Frazier wastes little time getting to the point he wants to get across in a brief, 9-track album called Where The Valley Kissed The Sky. The collection is a very loose concept album of Frazier’s time spent traveling from town to town and working different jobs in the valley. A lot of his observations through this album’s lyrical content show a changing economic landscape and how it impacts the average person living in these rural areas of the country.
Expectations can mess with your mind as a music fan. We all have favorite bands, but there’s a weird sort of contradiction where those favorite bands are also the ones most likely to disappoint us. Hearing a new record from an unfamiliar artist and having it blow the doors off your mind is a wonderful kind of madness, but it’s also impossible to replicate. Loving an album means accumulating baggage with it—the baggage of years and memories and emotions entwined with the songs. When the next album from that same band comes along, it’s easy to feel let down. Even if the record is good—even if it’s great—expecting it to recapture the magic of the first time is a recipe for disappointment. Virtually every band or artist that has ever made a beloved album contends with this cycle eventually, and it’s part of the reason why most bands don’t last very long. It’s also why maybe the only thing more exciting than having that lightning bolt moment with a new band is hearing one of your favorite artists raise the bar, change the game, and shatter every expectation you had of what their music could sound like, circa right now.
Mother Nature, the fifth LP from The Dangerous Summer, is that kind of album. It takes a band that previously felt like a faded version of its glory days and breathes immense new life into their sound. It makes you excited for this band again, and for what their path might look like going forward. It creates spine-tingling moments of pure catharsis, but in a different way than this band did on their previous beloved albums, 2009’s Reach for the Sun and 2011’s War Paint. And it immediately makes reservations for whole lot of windows-down, sunny-day drives this summer. It’s the right album, at the right time, from a band a lot of people had written off or counted out. And it feels fucking great.
The opening verse of the new EP from Middle Kids sets the tone for what’s to come on this thrilling record: “We accept all beliefs and prayers/But if you don’t agree, you can sit over there/Express yourself with personal flair/But first check that it fits with the kids upstairs.” These lyrics stuck with me since it in many ways encapsulates all that goes into today’s society of expressing yourself, but not impeding on others beliefs. At times we can be so ingrained into what we believe to be morally right or just, that we may forget that many others don’t think the same way as us.
Coming just a little over a year from their debut full-length LP, Lost Friends, Middle Kids expand upon their sound in exciting ways on New Songs For Old Problems. Whereas their debut album found the Australian band figuring out their sound, this new record finds them at their most accomplished and confident.
On March 17th, 2017, Washington, DC’s indie rock/emo pop band, The Obsessives made their mark on the scene with an already dense and musically packed debut record. Fast forwarding to today, the band has re-released their debut LP with an additional ten tracks for a more complete picture of their recording process during the self-titled sessions. Citing musical inspirations from bands such as Weatherbox and The Pixies, The Obsessives waste little time in putting their stamp on their re-imagined record.
The process of growing up and figuring out this crazy thing called “life” comes in phases for a lot of us. First, there is the transition from being a kid to a young adult (with moderate changes in responsibilities), and then a young adult to a full-fledged adult (with major repercussions and changes all across the board). These transitions are messy, awkward, and at times too much to handle on our own. AJR come to terms with the latter transition on Neotheater semi-gracefully.
Most of the lyrical content and story-telling is thru the lens of lead vocalist, Jack Met, who is only 21. AJR is comprised of two other brothers, Adam and Ryan Met, to round out the multi-instrumentalist band that changes styles, genres, and tempos whenever they feel the need for it. Jack sums up the process of growing up on the opener “Next Up Forever” by stating, “I know I gotta grow up sometime, but I’m not fucking ready yet.” Many of us can relate to this situation of taking on newer roles and responsibilities as we age, yet Jack tends to take most of this in stride as we navigate through the LP.
Alex Lahey ‘s brand new album, The Best Of Luck Club, couldn’t come at a better time. Released on the eve of the Australian federal election, Lahey confronts the pains of millennial struggles through her universal approach to songwriting. She seamlessly integrates the personal and couples it with anthemic, searing pop-punk melodies. Like her stunning debut, I Love You Like A Brother, Lahey demonstrates that she holds numerous smashing hooks under her belt. The Best Of Luck Club picks up where Lahey left off, but races forward. There’s more ballads, unexpected instrumentation, and the lyricism we’ve come to know, and love is even greater.
Setting the stage for a memorable introduction, Philadelphia’s own, Big Nothing, showcase some great punk and driving melodic rock on their debut LP, Chris. With three band members (Pat Graham, Liz Parsons, and Matt Quinn) sharing vocal duties, they are plenty of bright spots to be found on this collection of songs that fit together snugly over 11 tracks that clock in just over 30 minutes. Drummer Chris Jordan (formerly of Young Livers) rounds out this band that has no shortage of musical experience or talent. The themes of emptiness, the search for meaning, and desire to be accepted are apparent even as each band member brings their unique songwriting approach to Chris. Right down to the album artwork depicting a lonely restaurant with very few patrons, it’s apparent that Big Nothing is unafraid to embrace the uncertainty of starting anew and building from the ground up.
