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Kaytranada - Timeless
On Timeless, Kaytranada blends disco, electronic, R&B, hip-hop, house, and more for some sweet sounds. Appearing on the album are A-listers Childish Gambino, Anderson.Paak, Thundercat, Pink Pantheress, Don Toliver and Dawn Richard, all assisting in this album of romantic tension, instrumentals, and some dance floor BPMs. “Hot-handed to say the least, Kaytranada continues to refine his sample-laced mixture of house, hip-hop, and other cross-continental styles of dance music with Timeless” ~ Andy Kellman at
allmusic.com.
Hotline TNT - Raspberry Moon
Hotline TNT's third full-length and second on Third Man Records is the romantic and fuzz-tone-drenched Raspberry Moon. It's a shift away from the drum machine and one-man band approach that marked both 2021's Nineteen in Love and 2023's Cartwheel. Consequently, there's an organic grit and live in-studio immediacy to Raspberry Moon that seems to jibe with the band's tube amp and stomp-box energy. It's a throwback vibe, evoking the flannel-laden days of '90s underground pop guitar groups like Dinosaur Jr., Sloan, and Teenage Fanclub; unabashed touchstones for lead singer/guitarist Will Anderson whose work on Raspberry Moon believably lives up to the comparisons. Cuts like the opening "Was I Wrong?," "Julia's War," and "Letter to Heaven" are euphoric slacker anthems, full of romantic ennui and a screw-it sense of underdog decency that Anderson maintains throughout the whole album. It's a rapturous vibe he encapsulates on "Candle," proclaiming, "I wanna try/Get butterflies." With Hotline TNT's Raspberry Moon, it's all butterflies.
Turnstile - Never Enough
Turnstile's third album, Glow On, broke them out of the hardcore scene and into the mainstream, earning near-universal acclaim, a Grammy nomination, and prominent chart placements around the world. Arriving four years after Glow On and weighted with expectations is Never Enough, the group's fourth full-length. Produced by frontman Brendan Yates with assistance from hardcore specialist Will Yip, this is the sound of a band in their creative prime, undaunted -- and quite possibly ignited -- by the spotlight now trained on them. It's their first release without founding guitarist Brady Ebert, who is replaced by new member Meg Mills, and even if the change is subtle, Turnstile have turned a corner here. Without abandoning their hardcore roots, they embrace a definitively more melodic sound that visits all sorts of locales, from lush dream pop and electronica to pristine, funky alt-rock and thrashy nu metal, all of it played with confidence and finesse. satisfaction. ~Timothy Monger allmusic.com
Stereolab — Instant Holograms on Metal Film
On their first album in 15 years, Stereolab don't pretend that time stood still after 2010's Not Music. Instead, Instant Holograms on Metal Film presents a Stereolab fit for the era to which they returned. Yes, the album's quintessentially Stereolab title may come from a 1970 issue of Electronics Australia, and yes, some of its fondly familiar sounds echo the likes of Margerine Eclipse and Emperor Tomato Ketchup ("Immortal Hands"' pensive chamber pop could be a distant cousin of Ketchup's "Monstre Sacre"). More importantly, the band's energy is dynamic in a way that it hasn't been in some time -- a product of their steady touring that also recalls the charged atmosphere of their earliest singles. On each of Instant Holograms on Metal Film's billowing, exploratory songs, they rise to action, even if they don't do it in obvious ways. The morphing grooves and blasts of Ben LaMar Gay's cornet on the standout "Melodie Is a Wound," for example, come closer to the interplay between a jazz ensemble's members than a straightforward climax. Their pursuit of "higher frequencies" on "Transmuted Matter" is transportingly lovely, as is "Vermona F Transistor," a twinkling baroque-funk statement of empowerment where vocalist Laetitia Sadier declares, "I'm the creator of this reality." When she directs listeners to "explore without fear" on the finale, "If You Remember I Forgot How to Dream, Pt. 2," it sounds like a message of encouragement that an alien society sent from across the stars. Capturing the inspiring spark in bygone visions of what the future could be is one of Stereolab's greatest strengths, and the brilliant ways they do this on Instant Holograms on Metal Film don't just live up to their legacy -- they push it forward. ~Heather Phares, allmusic.com
Superchunk - Songs In The Key Of Yikes
Anyone wondering if maybe Superchunk was slowing down after over 30 years in the indie rock game will find those musings dashed against the rocks once the chorus of the first song on Songs in the Key of Yikes hits. "Is It Making You Feel Something" features all the hallmarks of what has made the band so vital over the years. Ringing power chords, gnarly guitar leads, pummeling rhythms, and above all the keening wail and ripped-from-the-heart lyrics of the seemingly ageless Mac McCaughan. It's a great opener for a record built around a batch of very intense, highly political, and intractable hooky songs. Most every track has the sing-at-the-top-of-your-lungs chorus one would expect, paired with Jim Wilbur's loose-wire soloing, and the powerful bass and drums of Laura Ballance and Laura King. Sounds like business as usual to be sure, but when the business is this personal, it's hard to say the band is going through the motions. It's a feat that's beyond rare for a group to still sound this plugged into the impulse that forced them to start a band in the first place, while also growing and evolving in very real, very human ways. Songs in the Key of Yikes is proof that Superchunk hasn't lost a step and remains a one-of-a-kind band. ~Tim Sendra allmusic.com
Chicago Underground Duo — Hyperglyph
Multi-instrumentalists, improvisers and electronicists Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor have been playing together since 1994, inside and outside their Chicago Underground Duo project. The 11-track Hyperglyph marks their International Anthem debut, and their first outing in 11 years. With engineer Dave Vettraino assuming the role of a Teo Macero-esqe presence in the studio, these men -- always creative in recording situations--employed the recording studio as an instrument. Post-production, always as an important part of their process, is on another level here. Hyperglyph is the first new album in 11 years from composer/trumpeter/synthesist Rob Mazurek and composer/percussionist Chad Taylor’s long-running Chicago Underground Duo project. Mazurek and Taylor have played music together in a multitude of formations over nearly three decades, including their ongoing partnership in Mazurek’s large-format-skyward-expressionism vehicle Exploding Star Orchestra, in the expanded Chicago Underground Trio, Quartet and Orchestra (all with guitarist Jeff Parker), as well as a plethora of other assemblages. The early albums by the Duo have proven to be embryonic blueprints for the avant-jazz / electronic / indie rock hybridizing of the time, making them majorly important moments in the articulation of the “jazz” dimensionality of the then-burgeoning "post rock" sound. That sound, of course, was being transmitted far and wide due to the success of these groups as well as the Mazurek/Parker project Isotope 217, and the Chicago Underground’s frequently-intersecting collaborators in Tortoise. Just as most of the still-working projects born of that era have evolved, reconfigured, and grown, the Chicago Underground Duo has undergone a number of musical moltings, with the project always in the background of disparate individual aural investigations. The concurrent personal evolutions of Mazurek and Taylor as the Duo project drops off and picks back up makes it a true reflection of their own lives and friendship.
