The Best

A wild mix of jazz, prog rock, dirty surf guitars, and solid stomping funk strung together with a concept about a woman left on Earth to wonder if her astronaut lover will ever make it home. The story is bolstered by real recordings from the Apollo missions, lending an air of credibility amongst all the ass-shaking.

It’s shoegaze, to be sure, and it’s very loud shoegaze, which is of course it’s own rough beast, it’s hour come around at last, as it slouches toward the internet to be born again. What a way with implied melody, though – the yearning that you can sort of hear through the A Place To Bury Strangers-level wall of gain really makes me miss the city, for some reason.

Alynda Segarra comes back around to folk music , turning their talents toward the breezy, wide-open skies of Americana. If you’ve followed their past few albums, this one can be deceptively gentle. The despair at the world is still there, of course – it’s hard to imagine a HFTRR record that didn’t address modern problems in some fashion – but it’s more laid back than usual.

Collab albums featuring The Body are usually on fire, but this one scorches a little more than most. It careens back and forth between hellish industrial doom and pounding death techno, presenting a collection of music that forces you to engage with it – or die.

Loud, biting, and unabashedly queer punk that takes aim in multiple directions at once and still makes it work – mostly because, at the end of the day, you can still dance to it.

The Rest

MGMT – Loss Of Life ★★★☆ (Mom+Pop) Aside from the wonderful “Bubblegum Dog” there’s really nothing here to capture TikTok lightning a second time, but it’s solid and well-crafted psych pop nonetheless.

Nadine Shah – Filthy Underneath ★★★☆ (EMI) Hard times, but the singer manages to frame them in a beautiful way, and even steps outside her usual bit here and there.

I Don’t Know How But They Found Me – Gloom Division ★★★☆ (Concord) Dallon Weekes continues to panic at the disco, offering up glammy pop rock for the midlist set.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum – of the Last Human Being ★★★☆ (AVANT NIGHT) Usually my line is that prog metal sucks, go dream your theater dweeb, but this is Weird, capital intended, and brutal in the right places.

Toadliquor – Back In The Hole ★★★☆ (Southern Lord) Yeah yeah, there’s too many goddamn stoner bands coming out of America, but sometimes you dig up a great one, and Back In The Hole is great, heavy stoner doom.

Allie X – Girl With No Face ★★★☆ (Twin Music) Diving into the 80s and coming up with bangers isn’t altogether new, but Allie X gets by on personality despite this.

Mary Timony – Untame The Tiger ★★★☆ (Merge) I would almost call her songwriting ‘standard fare’ – confessional, intimate – but her guitar playing sets it somewhat above the rest.

Elephant Stone – Back Into The Dream ★★★☆ (Elephants On Parade) I think maybe we all have a bit of PTSD regarding psych rock bands and elephants – at least, early listeners of Indie88 in Toronto probably do – but rather than lumber, these elephants swirl and soar.

Glitterer – Rationale ★★★ (ANTI-) Meat and potatoes alt rock, big hooks but not much stylistically.

Psymon Spine – Head Body Connector ★★★ (Northern Spy) There’s enough psych rock out there in the world today that you should point out when people do it competently well.

Jazmin Bean – Traumatic Livelihood ★★★ (Island) A story so far kind of debut, maybe not the sort of WOW factor you’d want from a major label released first record, but one to grow on nonetheless.

Real Estate – Daniel ★★★ (Domino) It’s Real Estate, now with 20% more world-weary ennui!

Nightlands – Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day ★★★ (Sonic Cathedral) Gothy shoegaze that might fill a hole if you for some reason really need more gothy shoegaze these days.

Persher – Sleep Well ★★★ (Thrill Jockey) Industrial tinged sludge, just perfect for doing hard drugs and going completely insane.

Merryn Jeann – Dog Beach ★★★ (Rescue + Return) The Australian singer’s debut is the sum of its influences, but those influences are pretty damn good – PJ Harvey, Feist, Caroline Polachek – so it’s a good one to build a better second record on.

Sadistik & Maulskull – Oblivion Theater ★★★ (Old Soul) Edgy and dramatic hip hop with an introspective bent, marred by overly safe choices and some muddy production work.

Erika de Casier – Still ★★★ (4AD) An album that manages to merge throwback 00s R&B with the too-up-close-and-personal ASMR vocals everyone and their mother loves.

Pyramid Vritra – Amber ★★★ (Bad Taste) Odd Future affiliated and solidly weird, this is apparently Vritra’s last release under the name, and it never quite reaches even the B-list heights of his work with The Jet Age Of Tomorrow, but it’s still a worthy addition to a fan’s collection.

Cuntroaches – Cuntroaches ★★★ (Skin Graft) The name really is the best part of the project, but if you’re into spring-reverb-soaked messy hardcore punk, have at ‘er.

Colouring – Love To You, Mate ★★★ (Bella Union) Cathartic, shimmering indie pop heavily indebted to the post-chillwave stuff from the mid 10s.

Remo Drive – Mercy ★★☆ (Epitaph) Mid-tempo emo-pop that doesn’t do anything new or do it particularly well.

Laetitia Sadier – Rooting For Love ★★☆ (Drag City) Broadcast, without the whimsical sound tweaking or the wondrous sense of melody

Amigo The Devil – Yours Until The War Is Over ★★☆ (Liars Club) Has Tom Waits heard this? Has he sued them yet?