Ears Perk Up
Ears Perk Up
Experimental Hip Hop, Jazz Rap, Tontipop, Avant-Garde Jazz, Shimokita-kei, Power Pop and more.
Morning!
Timing this week is going to mean back-to-back posts between this one, and tomorrow’s new music Friday playlist. Let me know if that is annoying? I want to keep in mind that these end up in email inboxes.
Don’t forget that in the Substack app I am running an Album of the Month chat for all subscribers. This month is the underrated album Social Life by Koufax.
Last weekend we went for another short hike and ended up surrounded by birds. Clearly they get fed by other hikers, because they followed us around the whole time. It was almost like those cartoon birds that hover around people in a Disney cartoon or something. Moving out of the city means I want to appreciate these things when they happen.
Moving on, here’s what I’ve been listening to and logging lately. Let me know what you have been excited about, music-wise!
Icon legend:
⛏️ denotes picks of the week.
🌱 seedling denotes albums I liked, but may grow on me.
✨ means worth a look, if you like the genres listed in particular.
✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.
As always, please reach out on the hellsite, the better site, or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again. You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.
Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off. Read on the web for the full list of reviews!
⛏️ lulamoon - Opal (2024)
Genre: Southern Hip Hop, Cloud Rap, Conscious Hip Hop, Experimental Hip Hop, Jazz Rap, Boom Bap
This was nowhere on my radar until I found it in fifth position on the Esoteric list of Hip Hop albums from 2024 Rate Your Music chart.
I love the production on this, 90s boom bap influenced beats and samples but presented through blown-out hyper-esque fuzzy and glitchy digital textures. Great bars too ("Pay pal look like Elvira, it's got big stacks").
All around this feels like a truly modern take on the kind of casually experimental 90s hip hop albums that I fell in love with when first expanding my musical interests. It loses a little bit of steam entering the final third but otherwise this was really strong all around. Bonus points for a Ladybug / Digable Planets reference.
Girl Scout - Headache (2024)
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Pop
Girl Scout have a sound that is familiar - see also: Beach Bunny or The Beths - but they've been pretty consistent in releasing really strong EPs over the past year or two. Real Life Human Garbage was a solid, jangly set of pop tunes. Granny Music continued the streak with a bit more of an indie rock edge to their songs like "Monster". Their latest doesn't throw a wrench into their sound, but also continues their slow but steady progress. "Desert Island Movies" is a classic Girl Scout opener with really solid melodies. "I Just Needed You To Know" is the winner of the bunch, a major post-punky guitar pop tune with a cycling riff and great momentum. I think I'm still waiting for the band to really find the stamp on this sound that will make them unable to be confused for anyone else, but for now they're doing fine and their songs are strong enough to stand on their own.
⛏️ Ninth Cage - Ninth Cage (2024)
Genre: Emo-Pop
Melodic emo-rock/pop from members of Year of the Knife and Execute.
Crunchy hook-forward, with a very modern take on the power-pop influenced side of second wave emo stuff. This shows a lot of promise to me, I like really melodic mid-tempo emo-pop and that's exactly what this is. "I'll Never Know" also dips into that emo power-pop-punk sound of the late-90s early-00s too. Lots of little emotive melodic lead lines and dumping octave chords on top of everything. Includes the token acoustic number to round out the tracklist.
Reminds me of the kind of stuff you'd stumble upon in high school on MP3.com (non-derogatory.) Madison Watkins' vocals have a plain texture to them that reminds me a little bit of Crying in a satisfying way, though I could imagine that being a hurdle for some. Would really like to see what they do next with this sound.
🌱 Real Bad Man & Lukah - Temple Needs Water. Village Needs Peace. (2024)
Genre: Conscious Hip Hop, Abstract Hip Hop, Boom Bap, Jazz Rap
Real Bad Man came on my radar as a result of helping Kool Keith put out their first top-to-bottom strong album (Serpent) in years. On that strength alone I figured I need to check out more of their production work and so I reached for Temple Needs Water. Village Needs Peace. even though I'm unfamiliar with Lukah's output.
This is really strong stuff, hampered by the fact that it's an hour long. Really starts to drag coming out of the middle stretch, even if the rapping and production remain high quality throughout.
There's a 30 - 40 minute album in here that would land on my year-end list, because I really do think that this is a great pairing of producer and rapper. This sprawls out into some really cool areas production and vibe-wise, but I think on a songwriting level there's more of a varying level of quality. Still, even with this being too long I could see coming back to the material I really like on it again in the future.
🌱 The Bad Plus - Complex Emotions (2024)
Genre: Avant-Garde Jazz
Solid second album of their piano-less set-up from The Bad Plus, but feels like it's missing the juice a little bit. This is texturally interesting and was a satisfying listen but also worked a little too well as background music. Not sure I'll be coming back to this one as much as some of their more propulsive work, but I admire that they are diving into the new formation of their sound the way they are.
The Arrival Note - …Home Is So Far From Here (2024)
Genre: Midwest Emo, Post-Hardcore
This is Midwest Emo in the sense that it resembles the muscular acts of the second wave as opposed to either the twinkly-mathy ones or the power-poppy ones (TGUK, Promise Ring, etc.)
This is more along the lines of the post-hardcore influenced side of the 90s emo genre, and also resembles the stuff that eventually morphed into the strain of emo-pop with thicker riffs juxtaposing crystalized hooks ("Shine").
They sprinkle a sliiiiight bit of that soft-loud, sparkling emo on songs like "Based on a True Story" (or generally the back-half of the album) where they sound more "classically" Midwestern emo and start to bring to mind bands like Mineral's first record.
I think this succeeds in showing its influences and really specifically resembling the music that they are calling to mind. You could probably play a song or two off here on a cruddy boom box and people would think it was legitimately from the era we're talking about. But I don't think it's so memorable at a song level to work too much beyond that. It's impressive in its own right, but not sure I'll be running back to it. If you're a huge Texas is the Reason fan you'd probably enjoy checking this out.
Ritual Error - Dial in the Ghost (2024)
Genre: Post-Hardcore, Noise Rock
Noisy post-hardcore stuff, a little same-y for me but if you like this sound you can do a lot worse. I think there's a lack of memorable angles to these songs as they mostly pick one gear and then blast ahead with it.
Good guitar work here but it was all out of my brain by the end of the 32 minutes pretty much. A good start for a band and sounds like the kind of record you'd go back to in a discography and go "ah, they had a decent start but I liked where they went later more" kind of deal.
⛏️ Lucie,Too - Fool (2021)
Genre: Shimokita-kei, Power Pop, Twee Pop
Debut full-length from this Utsunomiya, Japan based power-pop/indie-rock band who have been releasing EPs since 2017.
There’s a dream-pop and jangle influence on tracks like “シワの種”. “Get Back” similarly cranks things into overdrive for just under a minute and thirty seconds and adds in some pop-punk-esque energy to their sound. The title track almost has a Teenage Dirtbag thing going on for a second (non-derogatory). The whole album is fizzy and addictive, the perfect crossroads between garage-y indie rock and sugary sweet pop hooks.
I think what appeals to me here is two-fold: a) their songs are short and to the point, but they also can't be too simply categorized because they're usually doing a few things well, and b) it's all above-average on the catchy scale.
🌱 Fishmans - LONG SEASON (1996)
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Dream Pop, Progressive Pop, Dub, Ambient Pop, Post-Rock, Post-Minimalism
Not sure what I expected but having heard of Fishmans vaguely in the past I think maybe I had them confused with another act. This is dubby, psychedelic and ambient stuff with pretty wild textures and some cool, almost percussive melodic elements. The further it gets out there in the middle stretch the more it starts to lose me, though mostly because of that stretch with the water sounds that bring to mind toilets (see also: Rate Your Music comment box.)
But otherwise this was fascinating, even if it's not something I'll return to again and again.
Malamute - Una gran decepción (2022)
Genre: Tontipop, Power Pop, Twee Pop
Power-pop indie-rock from Spain that sounds like The Rentals meets That Dog circa Retreat From the Sun with some beach-adjacent White Album vibes in there. Big time wee-oo-wee-oo synths. Makes me want to crack open a soda and sit in the sun while huge hooks, crunchy guitar riffs and earworm synths surround me.
Hit play on the album and within 15 seconds you’ll know what’s up. Almost too sickly sweet to take for much longer than 30 minutes but luckily that's how long it is.
✂ Pesadillas, Monopolio de la tristeza, Deshacer el hechizo
Zabutom - Resolution (2021)
I know the name zabutom primarily as a chiptune related moniker; I’ve mined some of their earlier work (and collaborations with personal favourite Dubmood) for my Chiptune genre-playlist. On 2021’s Resolution they pull a tough trick - make an IDM record for chiptune heads… or is that make a chiptune record for IDM fans??? Either way, it’s a terrific blend that has had me coming back a bunch, even at an hour long.
That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.