The Best

There’s always accusations floating around about this artist or that band being industry plants – music by nepo babies who pulled their connections, rather than their artistic talent, to get major record deals and plum gigs. That was the accusation leveled at Lana Del Rey early in her career and it was one that got thrown at London’s The Last Dinner Party as well. The truth of the matter is that there really isn’t such a thing as a nepo baby that is only consistently successful because of their connections. Sure, there are loads of people who get a leg up or some help because of who they are, but ask Ashley Simpson: if you don’t have the goods, eventually your name means precisely fuck all. I don’t know what The Last Dinner Party’s supposed connections are, but they have the goods, and then some. This is indie pop but it takes detours, plays with the structure of songs, embraces its own contradictions and comes up with some pretty damn good hooks while it’s going about its business. If this is an industry plant, maybe the industry should do some more planting now and again.

Speaking of nepo babies delivering the goods, consider: Danielle Aykroyd, daughter of Dan, recording under the name Vera Sola, bringing an early contender for Great Indie Folk Records of 2024. This is her second album; her first, 2018’s Shades, was equal parts dusty and glimmering, a folky concoction of scratchy old girl group sounds arranged in new ways. This time around, she goes bigger: more musicians, an external producer, more ambition. She still delves into older musical forms – once the ‘oldies’, now even older, like the music of the 1930s was to the generation that grew up in the 1990s – but keeps a contemporary eye on it, making a set of songs that seem out of time, maybe even timeless.

Every 5-10 years or so there are systems by which independent artists can, through dint of hard work and talent, grind their way into indie stardom. The MySpace era gave us Fallout Boy and Arctic Monkeys. Soundcloud gave us twenty million cloud rappers, including Lil’ B. Bandcamp made stars out of the self-released work of Mitski, Car Seat Headrest, and Alex G. We are between those systems now; MySpace is long since dead, Soundcloud is a shell of its former self, and a series of sales and acquisitions have likely mortally wounded Bandcamp. As such, it’s a real treat to see a group like Liquid Mike come across seemingly every social media feed at once, simply because of how great the songs are. The Michigan band deals in pulse-pounding three-chord power pop songs, the kind that have been in vogue forever whether or not they win Grammys or get on Spotify playlists or generate major buzz. Do you like catchy songs with power chords? Remember old Weezer fondly? You wanna rock? Liquid Mike is here for you.

While the project never quite received the scrutiny of fellow Korean shoegazer Parannoul, Asian Glow was a great example of how shoegaze had broken international containment and was now everywhere. They first came to my attention on Downfall of The Neon Youth, a nifty little gaze collab that paired the two Korean artists with a Brazilian, put together by a label being run out of a dorm room in Michigan. It was, at the height of the pandemic and it felt like the flow of music through the internet like water really was going to be the next wave of art. Maybe that’ll still happen, but it’ll happen without Asian Glow; the moniker is being retired and who knows what comes next for Gyungwon Shin – Unwired Detour hints at hyperpop laced into the vacuum-laden guitars, so there’s that. As a farewell record, this one is fitting: while it doesn’t blow any of their previous music out of the water, it does sum up everything that made Asian Glow great, and it ties a neat little bow on the project. Will be missed.

A union of jazz and prog rock with crunch Orange Crate Seventies guitars used as a glue between the two. Moves from dreamy to white-water intense and settles back into dreamy with a deftness not seen outside of the best math rockers – and this is a debut!

The Rest

Meth. – Shame ★★★ (Prosthetic) Stoner sludge, with none of their energy their name implies.

J Mascis – What Do We Do Now ★★★☆ (Sub Pop) What’s the difference between this and a Dinosaur Jr. record? No, I’m asking you.

Enterprise Earth – Death: An Anthology ★★★ (MNRK) I’m naturally suspicious of deathcore but this is better than your average.

Kirin J. Callinan – If Only I Could Sing ★★★ (Worse) Man, if only.

The God Fahim & Cookin Soul – Supreme Dump Legend: Soul Cook Saga ★★★ (Cookin Soul) Background rap, devoid of any interesting flow but with words and beats that fulfill the mandate of being “okay”

Eliminate – Get Off The Internet ★★☆ (Create Music Group) Starts off strong but gets pretty snoozy quickly thereafter.

Vijay Iyer Trio – Compassion ★★★ (ECM) A lot of jazz tends to be big swirls of off-time piano and some quiet noodly soloing. Compassion is one of those records.

Lightbreather – Nothing/Light ★★★ (THE E/SCAPE) There’s feeling and meaning buried in here, but I don’t have the time to spend weeks digging it out.

Big Scenic Nowhere – The Waydown ★★★ (Heavy Psych Sounds) Big Seventies hard rock and psych, with the requisite hard ballad.

Same Side – Oh No ★★☆ (Pure Noise) Garage pop that maybe should have stayed there.

Slope – Freak Dreams ★★ (Century Media) We’re not stopping to get RHCP, we got RHCP at home. The RHCP at home:

Florence Black – Bed Of Nails ★★ Music for people who still say “why are you listening to crap I mean rap?”

topographies – Interior Spring ★★☆ (Dark Entities) Synth rock so indebted to the Eighties that it’s dodging collection agencies

Cower – Celestial Devastation ★★★ (Human Worth) Not exactly replete with hooks but a worthy noise/goth project nonetheless

Reconciler – Art For Our Sake ★★★ (Smartpunk) In bygone days, Reconciler would have been a draw on the side stage for Warped.

The Paranoid Style – The Interrogator ★★★☆ (Bar None) A fun little collection that borrows liberally from The Mekons to create some great off-kilter poppy punk (but not ‘pop punk’)

Den Der Hale – Pastoral Light ★★★ (FatCat) Ominous and dark, a rumbling collection of post-rock from the Swedish winter.

Litosth – Cesariana ★★★ (Personal) Great production and good musicianship is buried under an avalanche of mid-tempo drudgery.