New Music Friday: Waffle House Rock, Frog Slam
July 10 releases include Ultra Lights, Hew, Baby Rose, Sad13, Snag, Frog Mallet.
The water main on the street behind our home is constantly busted. This past week, the asphalt finally gave up and a service truck from the city suddenly found itself halfway down a sinkhole (see photo). Never a dull moment in D.C. Anyway, a great release day! There's something for everyone. You might notice more tracks on the New Music Friday mixtape, which includes songs from the albums highlighted below, but now also a few singles that caught my ear this past week.
Elsewhere… I'm on a Best Albums of the Year (So Far) episode of NPR's New Music Friday, getting kinda emotional about what I'm pretty sure will be my AOTY: An Undying Love for a Burning World by Neurosis.
Stream the Viking's Choice Guide to New Music Friday mixtape. Follow me on Bandcamp and check out previous mixes via Buy Music Club.
Ultra Lights, Pleasure's All Yours
Swaggerin' riffs, scraggly vocals and an after-midnight, Waffle House joie-de-vivre. The Strokes and Pavement comparisons are unavoidable, but these folks have enough chips and bruises to stomp their own ground.
Hew, Your Version
A cozy quilt in album form. The new emo band from members of football, etc., has familiar moves, but adds a bit more heft and heave to the twinkle. Forever in love with Lindsay's voice, which sounds even more self-assured here.
Snag, All the Cages Holding Us Will One Day Turn to Dust
Milwaukee screamo trio makes good on a (presumably) bigger budget, but still sounds hungry. Speedy drums, whiplash riffs and yelly twinkle remain, but slows down to a folk-punk twang when the chaos swirls too much.
Speaker Music, Synoptic Audio
Does the whole room seem like it's bending? Wrapped in exquisite sound design, skittering techno beats swirl and collide with obsidian drones — the intense reward is a dubbed-out delirium.
Sad13, 1331
This is pop slop [complimentary]. Thirteen overblown, first-thought-weirdest-thought, one minute-ish pop songs that could only be made by the glitterbomb chaos that is Sadie Dupuis.
No Cure, It Is Going to Get Dark
Metallic hardcore so mean that I just got psychically crowdkilled. Everything's surgically ignorant: buzzsaw HM-2 riffs, slammy gated snares, overblown bass, unnecessary strings of growled f-bombs. No fun, not ever.
Baby Rose, YEARNALISM
Good lawd, that voice is just deep, Southern-dipped sweetness and sadness, wafting like magnolia perfume on a muggy day. Some subtle updates to the neo-soul sound, but my jam is when the arrangement steps back to revel in her magnificent instrument.
Hadley Roe, Beauty Weeps
How has there not been an ambient release with that title? This short EP offers a dreamy coda to The Inner Garden, leaning into rippling guitars and smeared synths. A wordless Cocteau Twins.
Tony Jay, Faithless
Dreamy, drippy and jangly. Inspired by Japanese cult faves Les Rallizes Dénudés and Shizuka, this blown-out-but-blissful psychedelia kisses sweetly between the sheets. Vinyl reissue of a tour-only tape.
Frog Mallet, Consumed by Frogs
A jokey slamming frog death metal album that croaks above its blorp. Standard slamz, for sure, but experimental doom and noise seep through the swampy sewage.
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