At this point is it even late if they’re always late? I swear I have a good excuse in that I’ve been writing literally hundreds of articles for my job lately and the prospect of staring at a computer screen to make words appear when I’m not getting paid for it is legitimately nauseating.
In any case, I had a little bit of energy today, so here’s a newsletter for you all. I hope you all find at least one album you like.
METAL ALBUMS
Blackbraid - Blackbraid II
Blackbraid II evokes in me a special kind of joy. Last year, the band took the metal world by storm with a return to the heavy roots of American black metal that nodded to their native roots, resulting in one of, if not the most American metal record of last year. But kicking the saloon doors of the hinges and winning the ensuing barfight are two separate endeavors. Well, Blackbraid II, uncreative name aside, sees the band emerge from the bar victorious, bloody bottle in hand. The album has all the heft and exploratory joy of a track like “Barefoot Ghost Dance on Blood Soaked Soil” and a tighter edge to all of it. What they’ve lost in the element of surprise, they’ve gained in technical proficiency and honed songwriting. In particular, the opening burst of “The Spirit Returns” and the central pillar of the album “Moss Covered Bones on the Altar of the Moon” contain some of the best passages the band has created. The songs have a palpable viciousness tempered by mourning melancholy. The complex emotional range of the tracks, delivered lyrically and instrumentally, makes this a rewarding relisten and a thrilling first go.
Sadness & Kenopsia - summerset streetlights
Sadness makes a lot of split albums, and I’ll cop to being biased toward the sadness half of the album most times. More often than not, this comes from wanting to highlight sadness’s musical output rather than ignore it because another band can’t quite hit his highs. With summerset streetlights sadness has finally found someone capable of holding their own against the weight of his musical capabilities. Addressing the sadness half first, this isn’t a new sound or approach from sadness, but it’s still the best possible execution of their depressive atmospheric black metal. Each note, even those found in the furiously screamed sections of blast beats and tremolo riffs, rings with an aching, dreamlike quality. The music of sadness is about searching and at no point during these two lengthy tracks are you allowed to forget it. Kenopsia then is the real surprise of this record. Predictably they sound a bit akin to sadness, inhabiting that same sad dreamy black metal space. But instead of leaning in the fast-paced thrills of black metal to balance the dour emotions, they pour a thickening sludge across the whole affair, leaning into more of a blackened doom space. This provides a stellar contrast with sadness’s brighter sound, and the second track “Heliopolis” in particular slows things to a deadening crawl, really forcing you to sit with the journey so far. Taken as a whole project, summerset streetlights is far more than just a split.
Trhä - rhejde qhaominvac tla aglhaonamëc
I was just about ready to bail on Trhä. The band had gone too long without putting out something amazing, and they had put out so many things (I am inherently skeptical of prolific bands for some reason) that it felt like Endlhëtonëg was just a fluke. But in a total inversion of my expectations, they put out three albums in a single week and all three were solid. Of the three, the shortest project, rhejde qhaominvac tla aglhaonamëc, best captured what I want to hear from Trhä. The band sticks in a propulsive drumming and tremolo space (it’s a good month for black metal, what can I say) with just enough variance that it sweeps you off your feet and into stunning mountain vistas every two or so minutes. What really separates this record from the countless other bands attempting the same thing is the vocal performance. While I can’t understand a word, there’s a passionate longing behind each note that bursts through the scream. Most impressively, the singer melodically varies their screams with enough power that it keeps up with the sweeping guitar sections, and often serves as the key melody, a trick that’s atypical for the genre. With this album and its two companions, Trhä has thrust themselves back into the discussion as one of the best and most ambitious black metal bands putting out music.
Honorable Mentions:
NON-METAL ALBUMS
ANOHNI and the Johnsons - My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
Listing ANOHNI’s strengths would take the rest of this newsletter, so I’m doing my best to limit myself here. The most striking portions of My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross of course involve ANOHNI’s incomparable voice, easily one of the most recognizable and alluring in music. Still, a great voice can only take you so far. The songwriting on this album allows her voice to flourish toward the front, buoyed by a bed of strings and soft drums, allowing us to focus intently on the messages and nuances of each track. Thankfully, ANOHNI also does an excellent job with the themes, deftly avoiding the traps of blatantly political statements by approaching every track through a personal lens.
Palehound - Eye on the Bat
Palehound just knows how to make a fun, weird rock album. We’ve got jangling, noisy guitars, slightly washed out vocals (with harmonies!) and occasional freakout moments. It’s a very ‘90s sensibility mashed with some of the more approachable production techniques of the modern day. It’s one of those albums where the appeal is so obvious when you listen to it, but they aren’t doing anything new enough that it’s easy to pick one selling point. If you want more noisy rock, but not full blown noise rock, listen to it.
Ana Roxanne & DJ Python - Natural Wonder Beauty Concept
Two of my great musical loves are ambient and trip-hop. I don’t talk about them much here because I find that a lot of ambient music is interesting but not especially great, and trip-hop is functionally dead. However, I received a lovely surprise in the form of Natural Wonder Beauty Concept, which combines spacey trip-hop adjacent vocals with alluring semi-ambient synth work and IDM beats. There’s plenty of variance from track to track (just go ahead and play “World Freehand Circle Drawing” back to back with “Sword”) with just enough sinew stitching it all together into a truly compelling journey.
Nas - Magic 2
At some point I decided to be something of a hater when it came to Nas. Looking back I can’t figure out why I did this. Something about his music didn’t click with me so of course it was everyone else who was wrong. Well, clearly that wasn’t the case. On Magic 2 Nas continues his recent run of success with a well-produced, thoroughly enjoyable record full of intricate rhyme schemes and captivating flows. The man’s legacy is set, and has been for around a quarter century, but running up the score never hurt anyone.
Sandwell District - Feed Forward
I’ve been continuing my journey of finding dance music that I love, and Sandwell District was an excellent step forward. The tracks are long and slowly evolving but never stagnant. Listening to one of the tracks from front to back, you might feel as if very little changes, but skipping from the first 20 seconds to the last 20 reveals a massive journey. This approach forces you into the zone and holds you there without boring you at any point. Of course, the sound selection and careful deployment of interesting noises and rhythmic patterns play a tremendous role here as well. The tracks constantly waver between dreamy and propulsive, and never in a way that frustrates. Feed Forward invites you to turn the world into your private club, and it’s not an invitation you can turn down.
Honorable Mentions: