Quick Hits: March 21st, 2022
New and new-to-me music for your Monday morning.
Quick Hits from The Discover Tab is an on-going capsule-reviews series which covers music I’m currently listening to - short, and to the point for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!
Good Monday morning y’all.
As usual, I’m not going to spend too much time introducing the latest. It has been too long since I sent one of these out, but I’m still over here working through new releases every Friday, and often tweeting about them.
I hope you find something new to listen to, and I hope the nicer weather is working its way towards you. I can already feel my seasonal depression inching away (leaving some room for normal depression—lmao—but also room for sunnier walks and nicer weekend afternoons!)
Enjoy some picks from yours truly, let me know what you’re listening to over on Twitter and have a good week!
The Afterglows - The Sound of the Afterglows (2022, Self-Released)
Another ~beautiful~ one from Sam Cook-Parrott (Radiator Hospital) and Michael Cantor (Ambulars, The Goodbye Party). I love that these to songwriters can collaborate on records such as this one, where different textures and styles jut up against one another, and yet it feels absolutely like a singular cohesive work. That’s a testament to their strengths together, as well as apart, I think.
Mo Dotti - Guided Imagery (2022, Self-Released)
This one is 25 minutes of groovy, twee-adjacent shoegaze/dream-pop from California’s Mo Dotti. Dig the blurry synth lines on "All Dressed Up In Dreams." Dig the buzzing guitars on "Loser Smile". Dig the gorgeous melodies on, well, *gestures to all six songs*.
PLOSIVS - PLOSIVS (2022, Swami Records)
I’m a sucker for anything Rob Crow come in contact with. Ditto for John Reis. Between Pinback, Rocket From the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes and more, the two of them have worked on some of my all-time favourite records. Add into the mix Atom Willard (Against Me!, ex-Rocket from the Crypt), and Jordan Clark (The Frights, Tape Deck Mountain, Mrs Magician) and you’ve got a supergroup of epic proportions.
PLOSIVS sound like the perfect amalgamation of Jehu/Snakes shattered guitar slashes and Crow’s twisting, layered melodicism. They go together like peanut butter and chocolate. This album rules and will certainly be stuck in my heavy rotation for quite some time.
Island of Love - Songs of Love (2022, Third Man Records)
In 2020 I stumbled across Island of Love’s Promo Tape on Spotify and fell for their lo-fi indie power-pop-rock-and-roll. They seemed to be playing in a laboratory hidden under layers of fuzz and crusted gunk, mixing beakers labeled “slacker rock,” “power-pop,” “90s riff rock,” and “00s era blog rock” together with reckless abandon.
They’re back with a debut EP out on Third Man Records (!!) via their London arm, and the story goes that 30 seconds after they played a set they were given an offer to sign. On the Songs of Love EP they’ve wiped a lot of gunk off their production, but they’re still mixing up a nice brew. “At Home” opens with a Strokes-y number, title track “Songs of Love” will make you feel like you’re digging through indie music blogs for the next big thing all over again, and “Head Case” sounds like it takes equal inspiration from slowcore and the quiet-loud throwback dynamics of modern indie-emo scene.
I think through their promo tape and now their new EP, Island of Love have shown they are adept at whipping up beauty songs in a number of genres, and I’m incredibly intrigued to hear what they do next and wondering just what it’ll sound like.
Erupt - Left to Rot (2022, Cool Death Records)
Speaking of gunk, members of members of Sheer Mag, Geld and Gutter Gods put their heads together and came up with this brutally dusty Left to Rot EP, where extreme metal, thrashy tempos and punk rock attitude collide. This EP sounds like a cassette tape you forgot in a patch-covered jean jacket’s pocket for 20 years; it’s been run through the washer, rolled down dusty, rocky hills with a tall boy in its hand, and somehow it found its way into your cassette player just now. This shit rules!
Good Grief - Shake Your Faith (2022, Everything Sucks Music)
Noisy, poppy indie-rock jangle 'n' riffery abound on Good Grief’s Shake Your Faith LP out via Everything Sucks Music. There’s a definite streak of brit-pop influence in here, alongside the kind of poppy punk and 90s college-rock vibe that I always reach for. Very nice stuff, I could see this being a real sleeper hit in 2022.
Emapea - Dreaming Zone (2022, Hip Dozer)
“Lo-fi” instrumental hip-hop can be a fickle beast; there’s almost no current genre that can establish a mood and a vibe quicker than a few dusty keys over a stuttering beat. Unfortunately, the fact that this music is so often used as background music means there’s an impermanence built into the genre that can make “albums” by artists in the genre feel… forgettable. You know the deal, lots of 60-second songs with a couple vocal samples and they’re out the other ear by the time you’ve settled into them. Emapea sidestep this issue on Dreaming Zone, as their 13 songs feel like they are working together to build something a pinch more substantial than just some songs for a playlist. Emapea also add in some funkier vibes on songs like “Chilling In Ealing” that remind me of my Ninja Tune days.
Chat Pile - Remove Your Skin Please (2019, Self-Released)
Chat Pile’s bandcamp page reads “full length coming in 2022 thru the Flenser” and if you’ve heard their brand of sludgy, nihilistic noise-rock it might sound like threat. For those of us into this kind of thing, it’s worth marking your calendars for. I’m so beyond wildly stoked to hear what they do in the full-length format after my friend Alex tipped me off to their EPs and splits.
That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.