Tag: 2022

TRACK | Daughter Bat and the Lip Stings – chrissy dins

5/5 golden merles

More Love Songs was released on New Years Eve, maybe to spite the compulsive year-end-listers, maybe not. I think it’ll still make its way onto my 2022 set because it is deserving of praise. And, though it may try, the Gregorian calendar alone doesn’t dictate when or what we listen to.

Lots of formidable flux here, and it’s a little unnerving in it’s unfaltering shimmer.

Melody and tone are of paramount importance. But also up there in import is the character of the tones themselves, vocally and the instrumental accompaniment, which envelop a delirious kind of defiance, defiant but grotesque.

You can have it both ways, transformative between each line, the grave seriousness and the severed irreverence. It’s more fun that way, in fact, and richer. There’s a lot of value in taking either of these divergent impulses and honing them into a few heightened hooks which share a purpose. In that stylistic choice is a brighter/weirder future that maintains its sense of humor throughout the collapse.

TRACK | Cupid and the Stupids – Burn the Mattress

5/5 golden merles

Having featured these gentle giants on a previous mix and once earlier on this eternal tomb, I was excited to see the new album, 99 ways to fix a broken heart, appear in the Tremendo Garaje feed.

It’s a joyous and raucous set, tactile in that lo-fi measure that puts you in the room. 99 ways is 36 minutes of the fervent and the gushing. Recorded over three days, it really feels like it, or maybe even more like one afternoon of unsupervised pyrotechnics.

Mostly incandescent, its poignant haranguing is a lot of fun. Antithetical to most music that is built to bracket advertisements, it is built with a different purpose. And this almost seems like a mistake or misdirection within the current structures that determine what has value and why.

But, knowing the dominant alternative, it is a great relief to have access to this sentiment and viscera… particularly on this day of all days. I am of course referring to the fact that it is exactly 74 days until Arbor Day. Good luck out there, my friends.

TRACK | LAFFF BOX – We Hear You Talking

5/5 golden merles

Equal parts ripping and roaring, there’s not one Florida ounce in this track that isn’t a good time. Both terrorizing and playful, sort of reminiscent of the common era. Crooked and delightful.

There is a fine patchwork of influences that I have been culturally conditioned to respond positively to.

It has theatrical and melodic elements of Rocky Horror and belligerent/lacerating subsections of Kel Mason’s superb GEE TEE and DRAGGS. And, of course, all the fine roots of whatever compost fed those grubs to their formidable and resolute selves.

Never mind the origins of these things: Australia, US, UK, Germany, whatever; we all live together now more than ever in one another’s minds. And it’s crowded. And this is the result of that digital brain swelling, a fine and upstanding cesspool of innovation.

TRACK | Goon – Fruiting Body

5/5 golden merles

With Goon’s Fruiting Body, I haven’t heard such a fine widening gyre of a track in a fortnight or forty.

There is something to the incantations, the “blood red” mantra metering our absorption into the grand stream, a kind of cozy induction, in league with the frothing pool.

Gentle and elegant under the melted mix of lo-fi fixtures, it’s in the vein of Andy Shauf and Hovvdy. But also ends up stretching a bit more with the undercurrents into the psychedelic/experimental sort.

found some pink glass / buried under the deep end /
…say something untrue and kind

It is difficult to imagine fans of the genre not getting hooked on that guitar-lead harmony accompanied with this level of smoggy and vibrant utterance. Looking forward to the remainder of the release from the EP appearing February 25.

TRACK | Bnny – I’m Just Fine

5/5 golden merles

Coming off of 2021s Everything, Bnny moves from strength to strength with this remarkable single, “I’m Just Fine.“

In a few direct lines recounting a brief encounter, swiftly this microcosm extrapolates into wide avenues of longing and of unrealized eventualities. The subtext is immense. This moment, or it’s recollection, acts as a portal to the vast emotional ocean of undercurrent that undergirds our every interaction.

And, yeah, most songs should do this. And most try to, if sort of inadvertently. But rarely do they render this phasing of micro to macro as convincingly, or wed the everyday to eternity in a manner that allows for direct intellectual as well as emotional resonance. Rarely do you feel as though the ground has opened up beneath you. And, better yet, by design.

There is great refinement in the two guitar leads, the quiet chorus of backing vocals that swells late on, and the elegant drumming variance. Where most songs would put the full burden of focus upon one of these individual endearing elements of instrumentation, the glut of quality coalesces here into one hell of a stunning track.

TRACK | Young Prisms – Honeydew

5/5 golden merles

Ever since Jon at VariousSmallFlames reviewed Wombo this has become a fire talk records appreciation blog.

In their assessing and surveying I’m not sure they can do wrong? But I am afraid to investigate further. Why ruin a good thing? Let’s all ignore them going forward, maybe cut our gains for once.

Instead, Young Prisms grants us some shoegaze that hits like an icepick to the heart before melting conveniently away.

This is also very good. It is in that style of but also adding to the genre’s goods and greats like MBV, Lush, Wild Nothing, et al. And at their best, in the balance of the content and the form, quite close to the ones you already love.