When Yellowcard disbanded after their self-titled album, I didn’t think that would be the end of making music for everyone in the band. William Ryan Key proved me right by releasing Thirteen. While I will always miss the combination of his voice with Sean Mackin on violin, this EP helps to fill the void that was left when Yellowcard ended.
West Thebarton are a new punk rock band from Adelaide, Australia who pride themselves on translating their high energy live shows directly into their debut record, Different Beings Being Different. Led by their fearless and extremely charismatic singer, Reverend Ray, the six other band members mesh well with the front-man’s demand for attention right from the first track. Leading off the set is their debut single, “Moving Out,” which sets the tone early for the type of frenetic rock to expect throughout this blistering LP. My first impression of this band reminded me of two other punk rock bands such as Anti-Flag (with a more polished approach and fewer political themes) mixed with the pop sensibilities of The Explosion (mostly from their great Black Tape record).
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The story behind how band members meet is typically an interesting topic of conversation when they are interviewed for a press release. This is no exception with Superorganism, as their story is incredibly unique, much like their dynamic brand of music. The group consists of eight members, spanning the globe from England, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. A large portion of the group met and formed a band called The Eversons, with now-lead vocalist Orono Noguchi finding the group from her YouTube recommends playlist, only to later submit vocals to an Eversons’ demo that the group collectively loved. With that, Superorganism relocated to London, England to form the majority of their debut, self-titled album.
With a recent stamp of approval from Sir Elton John himself and a shiny new record contract with Domino Records, Superorganism have crafted one of the strangest and mesmerizing debut albums to come out in quite some time. Featuring a blend of samples, programmed beats, heavy synths, and delicate vocals from Noguchi, the group is quickly making a name for themselves.
Live albums are typically used by a record label to either fill in the time between album releases by an artist, or to take advantage of when a band is at its peak popularity. With no shortage of catalog material, Cold War Kids have released their first live album entitled Audience. The band has released six studio albums to date, with very little lag coming in between each of the releases. Recorded on September 24, 2017 in Athens, GA, Audience capitalizes on the band’s live strengths, which is to keep the music flowing from song to song, all the while engaging the crowd in belting out each memorable hook.
Hidden Hospitals have cemented themselves as one of my favorite current rock bands. As I was listening through Liars, I was taken back to what got me into the band in the first place. Their 2015 album, Surface Tension, was a breath of fresh air. They didn’t sound like anything on the radio. They aren’t afraid to try new things when it comes to their music and with Liars they encapsulate rock ‘n roll in their own way.
Happiness Hours should go down as one of the great pop artifacts of 2018. It may not be suited for Top 40, but it checks all the boxes of a great pop album. Frontman Steve Ciolek has mastered the art of turning highly personalized lyrics into something absorbing and universal; like a DIY Matt Berninger, he possesses the songwriting ability to make anyone nostalgic for a specific time in their life while distinctly singing about his own. An exercise in duality, the album’s guitars are sunny and clean, except for when they go down a darker, more distorted path. Happiness Hours presents pop music in two different lights, equally as weird and ambitious as it is bright and polished, often within the same four minute song.
In a year full of promising debuts, Mighty’s self-titled LP stands out. It captures the gritty energy of the debuts by fellow southern indie rockers All Get Out and Microwave – look no further than lead single “Safe and Sound” – but with a charm all its own. Last week I had the chance to speak to bandleader Angelo Fiaretti about writing this album. The album is out this Friday and if you’re interested you can pre-order it through their label.
After listening to Illuminati Hotties’ first single, “(You’re Better) Than Ever,” it would be reasonable to assume the project’s debut album would be full of similarly jaunty vaguely-surfy indie pop songs. That’s maybe half-right. Kiss Yr Frenemies is about a fifty-fifty split of bright fuzzed-out jams and moodier, slow-burning ballads.
If the lead single represents the former category, then second single “Cuff” is probably most indicative of the latter. It’s ambient and atmospheric, and even its blown out chorus feels restrained compared to the loudest moments on the record, Sarah Tudzin’s voice never rising above a plaintive croon. It doesn’t even sound like the same band as “(You’re Better) Than Ever,” let alone like it belongs on the same album. And this is a trend throughout Kiss Yr Frenemies; nearly every single song brings something entirely different to the table. There’s an “ooh-ooh-ooh” backed chorus on the sugary gem “Paying Off the Happiness,” there’s a noisy, brassy climax to the meditative “For Cheez (My Friend, Not the Food),” there’s the raw singalong energy of “boi,” and none of it feels out of place.
Parker Millsap’s last record was Biblical. On 2016’s The Very Last Day, Millsap—just 23 years old at the time—wrote songs about Lucifer, the apocalypse, preachers, fire, and forgiveness. It was an intense, ambitious set of songs, and it only worked because of Millsap’s big hurricane of a voice. Here was someone with the kind of unhinged bellow that could sell a song about the devil trying to entice a pretty girl to climb into the front seat of his car. Here was a singer who could sell the desperation of a story where a preacher’s son had to come clean to his dad that he’d fallen in love with a boy. As a piece of writing and a display of vocal work, The Very Last Day was easily one of the most impressive albums of 2016.
On the follow-up, called Other Arrangements, Millsap drives pointedly in the opposite direction. This record sheds the stakes, ambition, and Biblical themes of its predecessor for a straighter, simpler proposition: pop music, circa 1963. The average song length is less than three minutes, and the best tune on the record—the propulsive, infectious “Gotta Get to You,” clocks in at 2:03. Instead of shooting for larger than life, Millsap is trying to serve up small, perfectly honed nuggets of throwback rock ‘n’ roll glory.
Charlie Puth gained the attention of the world with his vocal contribution on Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again.” With songs like “One Call Away,” “Marvin Gaye,” and “We Don’t Talk Anymore,” he continued to give listeners goosebumps. His debut album, Nine Track Mind, was filled with love ballads and heart-warming hooks. Although, that lead to a monotony of similar sounds and less experimentation. However, one special finesse the 26-year-old continues to unswervingly flaunt is his voice.
Voicenotes is his sophomore album and was delayed because it had to be “perfected.” Whenever artists say things like that, they raise the bar a notch higher because all we’d want to hear is an album that has been perfected. After listening to this album, it is indeed worthy of being called a perfected album. Everything from the production, to instrumentation, to the mix is stirring.
“It’s quiet in the streets now/But it’s screaming in your head.”
Augustana frontman Dan Layus sings those words near the outset of Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt, his band’s second major label LP. He sings them in a low register, at a near-whisper. It’s the calm before the storm, both for the song (called “Hey Now”) and the album. Eventually, the song crescendos into a big anthemic burst of sound—one that suits Layus’s big, craggy voice perfectly. The album, meanwhile, delves deep into roots rock in inventive, versatile ways, twisting the threads of the genres under that umbrella in half a dozen different directions. From country to Americana to southern rock to the glossy pop-roots sounds of 90s radio bands like The Wallflowers and Counting Crows, Can’t Love, Can’t Hurt crisscrosses the heartland and comes back with rewarding treasures from every segment of the musical map.
When Underoath announced in 2015 that the band was getting back together with original drummer Aaron Gillespie in the fold, it was announced as a “rebirth,” as the band knocked out a couple of reunion shows over the following years. It’s an appropriate way to describe Underoath’s return since it’s been eight years since Ø (Disambiguation) and nearly a decade since the band’s last release with Gillespie in the fold. And obviously so much has changed within the metal scene and music community as a whole during the band’s hiatus; Underoath found themselves at a crossroads between pleasing older fans and drawing in a generation of listeners that may have never heard Define The Great Line. So while a level of musical reincarnation was expected, the extent of that remained unknown. Recorded in 2017 with producer Matt Squire, the band looked to deconstruct the idea of Underoath while incorporating all the moments of anxiety , betrayal, and struggles of the past decade. And ultimately these sessions resulted with Erase Me – the most polarizing heavy rock album of 2018.
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is the sixth studio album from indie rock superstars, Arctic Monkeys, and it is also one of their more polarizing releases to date. Front-man Alex Turner recorded most of the demos for this album at his Los Angeles home, and composed the majority of the songs on a piano, rather than a guitar. This curious approach to recording a highly anticipated follow-up to a successful record in AM, followed by a lengthy hiatus, just added to the mystery of the album as a whole. Additionally, the unique promotional approach of keeping the entire record under “lock and key” by not pre-releasing any songs prior to the street date only helped with challenging listeners to absorb the entire album, rather than a couple of singles taken out of context.
The general themes found throughout this album are of science fiction, self-reflection, politics, religion, and even technology itself. The sound that Arctic Monkeys have achieved here can be best described as modern “lounge pop,” reminiscent of stylistic artists such as Father John Misty and David Bowie. Even though the majority of these songs were written and composed by Alex Turner himself, and even though it was initially suggested by his bandmates he self-release the album under his own name — due the complexity of how to add the other instrumental parts around the piano/vocals — this is still an Arctic Monkeys album. The rest of the band has enhanced the piano-driven direction of this record by creating an album worthy of your full and undivided attention.
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It’s almost difficult to dislike an album as inherently positive as Be More Kind. In today’s draining political and cultural climates, Frank Turner not only believes that change is possible, but that it begins within each of us. In fact, if there’s an overarching criticism to be made about the album, it’s that these songs tend to veer into the brand of vague optimism that’s better employed lining the inside of Hallmark cards. But sometimes, even those messages can be refreshing to hear, and considering the relatively low energy on display, Turner’s heart, technical ability, and good intentions carry Be More Kind a considerable distance.
Slim Jxmmi is one half of the rap-duo Rae Sremmurd. Along with their third album, (SR3MM), he presents his debut solo album Jxmtro. The production on this album is mainly handled by Mike WiLL Made-It, and it includes features from Pharrell Williams, Zoe Kravitz, and Swae Lee, among others. During an interview with Rolling Stone, Slim Jxmmi said he wasn’t as comfortable singing as his brother, so he “came out spraying” for his album. He has always brought the rap flow to the team, so that’s whats to be expected on this album. Although many might worry about his sound without Swae Lee, who usually is the Hook-smith, Uncle Jxmmi is bound to show a few surprises with his absorbing lyrics.