Annual Non-Metal Thread.

The Game, Big Hit & Hit-Boy released a super-compact 29 minute Hip-Hop album on New Year's Day that I am already really into. It's called "Paisley Dreams".

Hopefully Hit-Boy can do for The Game what he did for Nas which is push him to some form of critical resurgence. I remember really liking The Documentary when I was in high school. He has made some really awful corny albums since then.

Nicholas Craven & Boldy James dropped a new album replete with the Montrealer's tasty and lush production and Boldy's nocturnal and deep-felt musings. I fucking love it. "Fair Exchange No Robbery" stays in my replay and so will this one.

I agree. I think that Doctor's Advocate is a masterpiece, and then almost every album after was worse than the other.

https://sleaterkinney.bandcamp.com/album/little-rope

This is killer. Soulful, groovy. I dig it.

Slift the French space rock band released their new album.
https://slift.bandcamp.com/album/ilion

New Model Army - Unbroken

Already out there if you want it but officially released tomorrow.

Can't believe I didn't hear of that until today. Interesting song - a lot of slow buildup for an only 5 minute song. Folksy like some of their older stuff. Sounds good when they dip into the heavy garage-y parts.

edit - the NMA album is excellent. Brilliantly rootsy, raw, rock and roll with integrity.

New Model Army is one of my fav bands, but I can't say I really care about any albums they put out since 'Eight'. That's largely on the strength of Flying Through the Smoke, and if they're gonna do softer songs then I'd like to hear more as moody as Someone Like Jesus. I guess they just fell into a comfortable groove that doesn't quite grab me.

They did settle into a groove at some point, though 'High' and 'Carnival Redux' came out after Eight and those have a lot of high energy songs. Between Dog and Wolf is a brilliantly experimental album too.

New one's definitely not rocking the boat for them, but it sounds more inspired than the last few. Stronger, sturdier riffs, more direct songwriting that recalls the classics at times. Though, the last few have grown on me and are quite good for what they are - I love how intricate their writing and lyrics are.

It is funny on this new one how you can't really understand a word Justin is singing anymore. Seems like he's really coarsened with age... in a cool way though.

Sarah Jarosz - Polaroid Lovers
Retains some of the Americana / bluegrass feel whilst also taking a step towards a mainstream country sound (for this album she collaborated with people who've written with some big country artists). Some fantastic songs on this.

January was a fairly solid month of lots of ok releases but not much that super impressed. I don't see any of this stuff being in top 10 contention come end of year, but I did enjoy them.

Slift - Ilion - Space rock Elder. Really damn long but has plenty of highlights of noodly wank.

Kinoteki - Faith and the Vessel - As with last year Kinoteki introduces the year with a satisfying array of jittering breakbeats and general joviality.

Sprints - Letter to Self - We've had so much dour art post-punk poetry for the last few years that having a band lean into poppy alt rock hooks is quite a relief.

Diggin Alkaline Trio's newest album. It took a couple of spins for me to get it but once it did it's been on nonstop!

The Bug released part V of this Machine ep series. Crushing dub/illbient, for fans of heavy electronica.
https://thebugmusic.bandcamp.com/album/machine-v-2

Feb was another stocking stuff month for me with nothing I'm super excited about, but a few things I enjoyed well enough. Here are those:

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She - Metalhead approved non-metal easy mode activate. I think the songs cut off a bit too soon before they could get [i]really[/b] good, and I'd rather cut the three weakest songs and add two minutes onto each of the best ones, but it's still a good piece of industrial tinged pretty but dark stuff.

Sterling Bidler - Sound Waves Are Killing Me and I Love It - Kitchen sink spam of various noisy rock and adjacent things which actually rocks pretty hard a lot of the time. Overlong and needs an editor, but there's a lot of cool shit on here.

meth. - SHAME - A bunch of boring Primitive Man but lamer stuff brings this down, but in noise rock mode they're really chaotic and fun.

Grande Mahogany - As Grande As - Kinda doesn't have stand out hooks or tunes but it's got a funk groove to it that doesn't let up and carries all the mediocre detailing all on its own.

Hurray For The Riff Raff just dropped a REALLY great album called "The Past Is Still Alive". Indie/americana mixed with a bit of 90's nostalgia. Probably for fans of Angel Olsen, Waxahatchee and Neko Case.

Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold, Dream Unending) dropped his debut solo album earlier this month. It's entirely instrumental acoustic guitar and it sounds really good:

https://derrickanthonyvella.bandcamp.co ... ly-knew-me

Favorite track would have to Distract the Guards, and I also love how the acoustic lick from the middle part of Beg for Life by Tomb Mold shows up in the second track here. Overall, a very nice surprise.

I love this album (and this band in general):

https://cripplingalcoholism.bandcamp.co ... added-room

Their first album is better IMO if you want to try that:
https://cripplingalcoholism.bandcamp.co ... you-better

It's goth rock but with an Americana bent but not folk-y? Hard to describe but a lot of peopl have likened it to SWANS and Type O negative, but I don't know enough of either band to endorse that. Either way, it's great.

This is fucking great.

Just a couple of fun girlpunk noise rock things for me this month.

Mannequin Pussy - I've Got Heaven
I mean, I kinda gave it away saying they were both fun girlpunk noiserock hybrids didn't I?
Gouge Away - Deep Sage
Really just blew all my notes in the intro.

Here’s what I liked from Q1 of 2024:

Chelsea Wolfe-She Reaches Out To…
Dan Terminus-Gothic Engine
Habitants-Alma

Chelsea Wolfe has already been discussed frequently here. Not much more to add.

Dan Terminus’s album may be meat and potatoes darksynth, but it is meat and potatoes darksynth done right. Scratches a comfort itch, but is still excellently executed.

Habitants, a side project of The Gathering, is a super spaced out, mellow female fronted post-rock/trip-rock hybrid. A big step up from their first album.

I also checked out two other darksynth albums in Gost and Keygen Church.

The Gost is super weird, kind of hard to dig into. I respect him going out on a limb and adding new elements, but some of these songs are so structurally disjointed, it’s a real challenge to get through. Almost as if some of these songs are 5 micro songs mashed into one. I’m not a fan of vocals in darksynth/synthwave, so the BM styled vocals don’t work for me personally. I haven’t really clicked with an album of his since Possessor, and while none of them have been particularly horrible, this album doesn’t look to change things for me.

As for Keygen Church, add a church organ layer to Master Boot Record and it’s an entirely different project? I guess the two projects are thematically different, but the underlying instrumentation outside of the church organ is identical-this is a Master Boot Record album in everything but name only. And to that end, it’s a decent, somewhat middle of the road record, a bit overlong.

I've been listening a lot to "Skyllumina", the new album from experimental jazz bassist Ruth Goller, who has become one of my favourite musicians of the last few years. It inhabits the same general sonic landscape as her first 2021 album "Skylla"; delicate, abstract crystalline sound sculptures constructed from detuned bass harmonics, interwoven with haunting vocal textures, this time with the addition of exploratory drumming and percussion. This percussive aspect is mostly subtle, but here and there it hits a startlingly noisy intensity.

There is a rather unsettling, almost pagan folk-horror atmosphere to the whole record that would probably appeal to some of the more adventurous metal fans.

Hear it here:
https://youtu.be/gLZxntfSJjg?si=5_8AAVlBdG-6Ij3o
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/skyllumina

And Goller's first album "Skylla" can be heard here:
https://ruthgoller.bandcamp.com/album/skylla

8th and final album from UK punk legends Cock Sparrer out tomorrow 4/5

https://cocksparrer.bandcamp.com/album/hand-on-heart

Beyoncé's ACT II - COWBOY CARTER is a worthwhile album BUT....

I have thoughts!

Some of what I am going to write was articulated better by Mark from Spectrum Pulse who has some skin in the game, being the only prominent YouTube review channel that takes modern country seriously enough to write reviews. He routinely spotlights artists that are far away from the mainstream and gives their albums some due. I never care enough for country music in the strictest sense of the genre descriptions but I appreciate well articulated critiques that are neither pandering nor aimlessly vitriolic. This assessment of COWBOY CARTER achieves that:



So, this new Beyoncé continues in the vein of RENNAISANCE from 2022; curated, seamless transitions, glamorization of styles and sounds that are relegated to lowbrow status. While house music and disco which was Beyoncé's filter the first time around has always carried its own sense of time and place so securely, it was a ghettoized aesthetic with marginalized groups (queer, black) at its helm. Those who sampled its tricks for rock n' roll and pop did so in thankless abandon. Beyoncé acknowledging the setters of the original trends with her adaptation was a long overdue callout in the mainstream music landscape and the fact that it resulted in a masterpiece of an album (which it felt like she'd been building towards for a while) was a sorta grandiose fell swoop.

Seems she aimed to do the same thing with this follow up. The two birds to hit at once here being; reclaiming the erased Black roots of country music whilst contextualizing said legacy in her oeuvre. High ambitions indeed. She did her homework, as always, and when you listen to this (really long) album you come away marveling at the excessive effort geared towards realization. All the nods to folk, country, Americana, Tina Turner-esque rock'n'roll and slight blues turns cohere admirably with the ultra-modern glitz pop, R&B and hip hop that you expect from her. The production is wondrous and there's layers of vocals and instrumentation that weave in magical stylishness.

But.....it doesn't always work. The tones and moods drift further and further apart from each other and do not always land with the bigger picture. Beyoncé's hyper-capitalist lore of consume this, own this actually fits perfectly with the overt America displays (the album cover has her holding the flag) so there's no disconnect there (there's a song called "Desert Eagle" too). Beyoncé's other lore is the projected strength, pull yourself out of despair, triumph over the haters shtick which she loads all over "AMERIICAN REQUIEM" - a stunning opener that tries to straddle her pain at being ostracized with earnest pleas for America to look itself in the mirror. Lana del Rey did the same thing on "Arcadia". A bunch of songs pull in these opposing directions, not usually to their benefit. And that's not just lyrically. The aggressive bravado-fueled rapping on "Spaghetti" laid beside the hazy psychedelic vibes of "Alligator Tears" is a tad jarring. There's so many stylistic shifts that some of these maneuvers end up feeling performative and not as substantial as they pose themselves as.

When it's good, it is fucking GREAT though. The aforementioned "Alligator Tears" is such a left turn for Beyoncé that pays off. "Riiverdance" is a bop through and through and my vote for most danceable track here. "Texas Hold 'Em" I still find rather corny. The "Blackbird" Beatles cover is nicely conveyed and was such a worthy addition. Folks seem to forget why Paul McCartney wrote it in the first place but he has since set them straight for all those with unwelcome qualms;





The experimental nature of "Daughter" is amazing to behold. The operatic shifts are disarming and she pulls everything together with sheer command of voice. Her presence on this song is arresting.



There's other sublime moments sprinkled throughout. Some headscratchers too - can't for the life of me understand collaborating with Post Malone whose artistry qualifies for that disparaging "culture vulture" tag without question. Especially when the resulting song is a corny bag of cliches and what feels like product placement. Ugh. Pop stars make the strangest concessions. Don't care for Mylie Cyrus but that collab was at least worth its hype as far as two mega stars unifying went. "Ya Ya" is very Tina Turner influenced at its best but the campy bits sprinkled throughout? - yes, headscratcher. The more country-territory songs are sappy and about family and values and well, fuck that shit. Didn't expect Beyoncé to can those expected bits so this ends up being way too long every time. Act i -RENNAISANCE is still undefeated but this too is a masterpiece - albeit a flawed one!

New Vampire Weekend - they had the challenge of following up an absolutely flawless album. Listening now: https://vampireweekend.bandcamp.com/alb ... s-above-us

Frank Turner - Undefeated (May 3rd)

Yep. Very very good.

New Phosphorescent has AOTY qualities for me. My favourite songs are usually the ones where the artist can sound happy and heartbroken at the same time. This is one of the best recent examples of that in my memory:



This is already my favourite song of 2024 - any genre.

Apparently VW deleted their bandcamp. Weird - glad I grabbed the album there while I could.

Phosphorescent sounds good - nice, mellow and cathartic... this could be well up my alley for sure.

This isn't my kind of music, but I have a buddy that's gonna love this.

That new Phosphorescent was fantastic. The opening track "Revelator" was jaw dropping. Total Dawes vibe.

I've had a hard time getting used to Renaissance, and now she's switching genres again I feel the same is awaiting me (especially for the fact that there are covers... I'm not a fan of those unless : 1) the song being covered is an unknown gem 2) the cover is so good it was like destined to happen (Judas Priest - Green Manalishi perhaps?)

Now I really like Renaissance, but my favorite still is the S/T of 2013. I feel like that was the moment the entire indie scene was thinking: "Wait Beyoncé can be good?"

It's still a Beyoncé album. Her stylistic interpretations of country are addressed through certain hallmarks of her sound that it sounds comparable to Renaissance and complements it well, I find.

Since the S/T when she got really conceptual in that Prince tradition, she's not had any misses on an album level. This one continues that trend.