The Second Annual Wolfies, Part 2
All of the albums you were worried weren't going to make the list still haven't, but here are some better ones
You can read Part 1 here. There is no Part 3. Part 3 is a lie. Best shows will go up early next year.
25.5. Albums I Forgot Because [flexing] I Only Own Them On Vinyl And I Didn't Check My Shelves Before Putting This List Together (My Brain Hasn't Worked In Years Records)
We've got to speedrun these blurbs because this post is about to go live, and I'm banging this straight into the CMS like a true degenerate. The rush feels so good. I'm huffing these typos like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet.
Daryl Johns - Daryl Johns (Mac’s Record Label)
From: Los Angeles, CA
Genre: jazz / pop
https://music.apple.com/nz/album/daryl-johns/1764415405
Half of this album sounds like The Romantics cutting a Steely Dan album, while the other is Pat Metheny making his debut on Windham Hill. All of it is then rammed through a wobbly dream pop filter. It sounds wonderful. Indeed, there is something dreamy about Daryl Johns, almost like these immense talents — Pedro Martins and Chris Fishman join Johns — shouldn't coexist on the same record, especially playing highly erudite pop tinged with a Paisley Underground sensibility in 2024. It's an anachronism, an impossibility, the result of a concussion, surely. But isn't that the stuff best music dreams are made of? "Crash," formerly "Gabriel," is the one to listen to first, a song that is still as beautiful as the dawn.
Pearl & the Oysters - Planet Pearl (Stones Throw Records)
From: Los Angeles, CA
Genre: pop
Speaking of impossibilities, how impossibly smooth is this album? Planet Pearl is very LA, name-dropping a ton of things only Angelenos would recognize — going out to "the Desert," eh? But the music is so good, it can easily break out of the City of Angels containment bubble. Utilizing the Doobie Bounce, Pearl & the Oysters cut a bunch of amiably danceable bangers that will also get the music theory centers of your brain whirring. Peerless musicianship. Peerless pop sensibilities.
Xeno & Oaklander - Viva Negativa (In the Doorway Light) (Dais Records)
From: Brooklyn, NY
Genre: minimal wave / electronic
You can almost think of these three albums as interrelated, perhaps representing the diurnal cycle. Daryl Johns is the morning, Pearl & the Oysters is the afternoon, and Xeno & Oaklander is the night. All three also have a dreaminess that is somehow incongruously propped up by bonkers musicianship. In the case of Xeno & Oaklander, that musicianship takes place on analog synthesizers. I mean, just listen to "Mercury Mind." That's like some Switched on Bach stuff but played in the pitch black of a vampiric goth club. Still, like everything else here, it's all about the hooks. That chanson vocal melody in the verses and bridge is next level, the perfect understated counterpoint to the synth wizardry.
25. Goran Kajfeš Tropiques - Tell Us (We Jazz Records)
From: Sweden
Genre: jazz
Don't say it sounds like Miles Davis. Don't say it sounds like Miles Davis. Don't say it sounds like Miles Davis. It kind of sounds like '70s Miles Davis fronting, like, a Tortoise-y post-rock band dead set on not using guitars? When it comes to comparison reaches that rival Sam Bowie getting snagged at number one, I'm not alone because the We Jazz RIYL for this one is crazy: "Alice Coltrane, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Pharoah Sanders, Laraaji, 'Crescent' era John Coltrane, Swedish psychedelic music, 'Kosmische Musik.'" OK. That's, like, someone's whole record collection. But once you dig into Tell Us's "hypno-jazz," all of that starts to make sense. There's the Steve Reich/Terry Riley repetition, the soulful sound enbiggenment of Pharoah Sanders, and the space-dusted drift of, like, Ashra, all of it condensed down into a modern jazz record. Goran Kajfeš Tropiques makes meditative music, and thus, you hear whatever is swimming around your subconscious whilst listening to it. For me, that's a parallel universe where In a Silent Way Miles Davis and band somehow got teleported to a recording session with Rachel's. Maybe I need to sleep more.
24. Jenny Don't and the Spurs - Broken Hearted Blue (Fluff and Gravy Records)
From: Portland, OR
Genre: country / punk
"Unlucky Love" is the great sadsack, cry-in-your-beer country song of the year. Despite a number of titles pointing in that same direction — "Pain In My Heart," "Jealous Heart," "Broken Hearted Blue;" it's like a cardiology office up in here — Jenny Don't and her swingin' Spurs actually kick ass across most of these 10 tracks, delivering a rollicking, roll-the-windows-down brand of cowpunk. Having seen these cats live, I can tell you that's not just a studio affectation; Jenny's hubby Kelly Halliburton rides the hell out on bass live, a spectacle to behold when he's on a stage above you. Guitarist Christopher March is also worthy of plaudits, shredding through much of this material like a crack vet called upon in the middle of the night by worried Nashville suits to salvage records. But the heart of Broken Hearted Blue is Jenny, whose seen-it-all-but-still-sweet voice carries the day. The fact there's some fuck-you grit in there, too, is a masterclass in vocal charisma.
23. Fuera De Sektor - Juegos Prohibidos (La Vida Es Un Mus Discos)
From: Barcelona, Spain
Genre: punk / post-punk
What an absolute ripper. Fuera De Sektor plays a version of dance-punk that has the gleaming glassiness of Italo disco disciples (think the punks-staffed Nuovo Testamento) but with a high-energy punk nerviness that places it closer to something like X at its hardest. "Ser Una Más" is a marvel, a two-and-a-half-minute burner that's like a song the early Cure never cut because it was too aggressive. "Sabanas Viejas," too, bangs, especially those chiming The Sound guitars that are sped up to a sharp, razor's edge that slashes open the night sky. And the vocals are perfect: urgent yet detached, exuding the ultimate cool. I could listen to this all night. And I have.
22. Nicolette & The Nobodies - The Long Way (ArtHaus Music)
From: Guelph, Canada
Genre: country
Nicolette Hoang can wail. Listen to how hard she drives "Better Days," the smoker that kicks off The Long Way. Of course, The Nobodies sure ain't nobodies, more than up to the task of giving Hoang a rough and ready bed to wail over. That's no clearer example than the seven-minute-plus "Ready or Not," a hard-as-nails ballad that soon explodes into a dueling-thunderclouds solo outro. Nicolette & The Nobodies's Bandcamp bio says the band is "influenced by the songs and stage presence of 60's and 70's country starlets but retains the gritty rough edges of outlaw country." Does it ever. Even the more genial songs like "Didn't Know" have a sandpapery sense to them, like they'd rub off some skin if you got too close to them. Of course, Hoang's wail could do that, too.
21. Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown (Domino Recording Company)
From: UK
Genre: pop
https://music.apple.com/us/album/lives-outgrown/1728144209
When we writers write stuff like an album emanating a quiet strength, Lives Outgrown is what we mean. Beth Gibbons is working at a whisper here, but it's the same whisper you hear in the middle of the night telling you to stay alive. Here's the other thing: For a work so seemingly austere at first listen, my god is Lives Outgrown layered. "Tell Me Who You Are Today" is a song that somehow becomes a psychedelic smear the deeper you travel down its rabbit hole. The strings, the overdubbed voices, the echoes, the delays. (Shout out to Dave Fonseca: this is 1000 percent a speakers over headphones album.) Lives Outgrown also has a distinct avant-garde streak, such as the rhythmic breathing on "Floating On a Moment." Like, how do you even think of that? Instead of the inevitable Portishead comparisons Gibbons will always get, I think of Lives Outgrown like the folk Björk, just an endlessly creative work you could spend months listening to and never be able to unlock all of it. Like Björk, though, you always want to keep trying. It's inviting in its own quietly strong way.
20. Planes Mistaken For Stars - Do You Still Love Me? (Deathwish Inc.)
From: Denver, CO
Genre: rock
In the same way as the last Shellac album, this unintended farewell from Planes Mistaken for Stars, one of the great American rock bands of the last 20 years, is a tough listen. "Matthew is dead," Gared O'Donnell sings about former guitarist Matt Bellinger, who died in 2017, "and we all think we're next." He was right. O'Donnell died of cancer in 2021. But the lyrics are one thing, the performance is another. You can hear O'Donnell struggling with his cancer throughout, something that robbed a great singer of the power backing his raspy growl. I don't think Do You Still Love Me? takes on the self-obituary qualities of David Bowie's Blackstar, but there's something to the portent that's just devastating to me, a person who's been affected by cancer killing loved ones too many times. It's like knowing the end of a movie before the characters do. Of course, Do You Still Love Me? rocks because this is Planes Mistaken for Stars, a band that grew from a ramshackle emo unit into a snarling ass-kicker. What sticks with you, though, is the last line of this album, a final word that hurts so bad: "I don't have the shakes, the shakes have me/ Do you still love me?"
19. Indek - Yope (self-released)
From: Kent, OH
Genre: electronic
Even during Aaron Funk's extended absence, no one has been able to replicate the madcap energy of Venetian Snares, the electronic breakcore onslaught that's less like the audio equivalent of an impenetrably manic lit-fic book and more like someone firing a bazooka filled with keyboard keys at a wall. Indek, though, gets real close without sacrificing the project's identity. Here are the skittering beats and quick cuts of atmospheric aural color, like someone stabbing a kaleidoscope into your eye. I have to quote these lines from Rubber City Noise just to give my fellow writer daps:
Breakbeat cityscapes dot a landscape seen from the windows of a passing maglev, swollen synth mountains in the distance against a sky of fluorescing hues and modulated clouds. The train moves across bridges above wide water sprinkled with iridescent islands and bioluminescent algae blooming in beat. Down the car, robotic attendants push trolleys full of sequenced beverages, effervescent and still, while pitched vocals sing electric arias and something unseen yet vibrantly felt skitters and slides between the tapping feet of passengers entranced by the voyage.
lol, hell yeah. Like I was saying, even for all the Snaresisms and Aphex Twin-y structures, such as the "Rubber Johnny" laser slaps, Indek is often off on its own adventure, using those touchstones as a leaping off point to do, uh, swollen synth mountains. Anyway, I imagine this is how all of my music sounds to my pets.
18. Meat Shirt - Acid Dove (Phantom Records)
From: Saint Brieuc, France
Genre: punk
Metalheads take note: That's Meat Shirt. Punks take note: That bass. In the meme-iest tone I can conjure, how come all bands don't have bass like that? Meat Shirt is kind of like the snottier version of Les Lullies, the power punk band I fell in love with last year. Just with more synths. And muscles. And they probably hate you. And me. And that's just fine, because damn, this rules. Listen to the power this band pumps out. You can almost feel it rippling your shirt as you stand in front of a speaker. And it's all in service of angrily anthemic hook monsters like "Taxi Boi."
17. Aluk Todolo - LUX (NoEvDiA)
From: Paris, France
Genre: post-punk / post-rock
LUX is an album I learned to love through repetition. I actually thought Aluk Todolo was in a state of diminishing returns following Occult Rock, a statement of purpose that achieved the dual aims of penning its own genre tag and getting people to stop comparing the band to This Heat and Laddio Bolocko. And my initial impression of LUX was something like, Welp, OK, still doing Occult Rock. But then I kept listening to it. LUX is an album that seems to fit every situation because it reorients that situation around itself. I've listened to it on long drives, sitting in doctors' offices, and as aural wallpaper during Zoom meetings I didn't want to be in. It always seemed to fit, and I think that's because the songwriting is so strong it draws you in. The playing is also great, flexing a strong, ahem, Laddio Bolocko-y sense of time and space. But, man, these interconnected tracks are like little black holes for your attention. The only difference is that you want to keep getting spaghettified.
16. Aphex Twin - Music from the Merch Desk (2016–2023) (Warp Records)
From: UK
Genre: electronic
I think it says something about Richard D. James's hold over my life that, at the time I'm writing this, Music from the Merch Desk (2016–2023) has been out for less than a week, and it's my 16th-best album of the year. This collection of odds and sods sold at Aphex Twin sets is phenomenal, as always, obviously curated from decades' worth of deep cuts collecting dust in RDJ's personal cut-out bin. That this stuff wasn't worthy of an official release until now just speaks to how good this guy continues to be since it's better than most other electronic releases this year and probably the next four or five years, too. Word of advice: Hang tough. In the grand tradition of Frank Zappa sequencing, this one starts with two punishment tracks from the jump.
15. Roc Marciano - Marciology (Pimpire Records and Marci Enterprises) / Ka - The Thief Next to Jesus (Iron Works)
From: New York
Genre: hip-hop
https://music.apple.com/us/album/marciology/1737287335
https://music.apple.com/au/album/the-thief-next-to-jesus/1768721005
Besides collaborating and singing each other praises, Roc Marciano and Ka were two sides of the same coin, utilizing a relaxed flow that belied the density of their wordplay. I also think both records make for a fascinating whole, as if they're exploring different areas of the psyche.
For my money, and he has received a lot of my money over the years, Roc Marciano is the best MC right now. Marciology is another showcase for what makes Marciano great, including this absolutely ludicrous run that ends with a line that still makes me laugh just for its untrammeled audaciousness:
Left the counter wet like a pound of salmon
It's real, it don't just sound slick on the album
Six for the trousers, I'm just browsin'
The grouse is eleven-thousand
It's hard to stay grounded when you a falcon
In typical Ka fashion, The Thief Next to Jesus goes deep on its subject matter, exploring the complexities of Christianity and how it intersects with modern life. The backdrop of gospel samples is some of Ka's best work as a producer, and the relatively subdued, near-beatless openness of the sound design allows Ka to build these towering structures of references and allusions. Of course, in the wake of Ka's death in October, some of these rhymes take on another meaning, a perhaps fitting yet still cruel denouement to a rapper who packed as many layers as he could into his tracks. "Hope it's borrowed time when my time come," Ka says on "Borrowed Time."
14. The Fearless Flyers - The Fearless Flyers IV (Vulf Records)
From: All over the world
Genre: funk
Keeping with The Fearless Flyers's tradition, each member of the all-star funk quartet comes to play, pushing themselves to shred the utmost, 'you can't learn that in music school,' ear-popping funk nastiness. These grooves dance like the most disgusting slider thrown by a pitcher on the brink of Tommy John. Here's how filthy The Fearless Flyers are: IV will probably be one of the most "normal" releases on this list, the closest to something "mainstream," and yet it's still total sicko shit. It's a display of such absurd virtuosity, and it never fails to make me make the DeAndre Jordan dunk face (Google it). Still, it's incredible how restrained and understated The Fearless Flyers can be for people who hold such power in their hands. Sort of. I think the key to IV is a kind of subtle maximalism, of working within grooves but making sure every note is a star. To that end, the rhythm section of bassist Joe Dart and drummer Nate Smith are absolutely on one on this EP. There's a reason stadium audiences hum those basslines and pat out those beats on their chests.
13. Melt-Banana - 3+5 (A-Zap Records)
From: Tokyo, Japan
Genre: noise rock
I don't think anyone has ever been ambivalent about Melt-Banana. Either Yasuko Onuki and Ichiro Agata's chirpy insanity is your favorite thing or your final straw. I'd imagine Charlie has probably ended its fair share of relationships. That also means that, provided you've heard a second of the duo's music over the last 20 years, you know what you're getting on the Japanese outfit's ninth album (depending on how you're counting them). 3+5 is another blast of highly caffeinated, sugar high noise rock and hardcore with sprinkles of grind and pop. Again, if you're new, that description either makes you punch the buy button harder than Jim Cramer All of Me'd into Mike Tyson, or you've unsubscribed to this newsletter. Like its forebear Fetch, the 2013 career highwater mark for many (the Dave Witte-inspired Cell-Scape is the top of the heap for ya guy), 3+5 demonstrates Melt-Banana has grown more sophisticated with time, sneaking in a ton of smart stuff into the clangor. Listen to the rise and fall within the chorus of "Puzzle:" "Freeeee-fallllllll." Clever songwriting! To that end, the hooks have also been sharpened for maximum earworminess; I challenge anyone to extract the back-to-back of "Stopgap" and "Scar" from their head. Still, I think Melt-Banana is at its best when it indulges its weirder side, such as the extended middle of "Case D," which, after the woosh of the vacuum of space rushing in, synthesizes the background radiation of the cosmos. One of the year's best.
12. Cassie Kinoshi's seed. - gratitude (International Anthem)
From: UK
Genre: jazz
Twenty-one minutes and thirty-three seconds. Cassie Kinoshi packs an absurd amount into that comparatively truncated runtime. But I wouldn't call gratitude dense, at least not sonically. Sure, there are layers upon layers of big band timbres in the Stan Kenton/Sam Rivers sense. Gratitude's best trait, though, is how uncluttered it sounds, presenting ideas with a clean concision, not unlike International Anthem alum Makaya McCraven's In These Times. So, the reason why this suite commissioned for the UK composer's large ensemble seed. feels so all-encompassing, is the feelings. No matter the anthemic peaks or moody valleys, the swells or the whispers, there's a full-body thrum emanating from base emotions. In the liner notes, Kinoshi calls gratitude "a means of guiding my own healing," and you get the sense that this work is a meditation on mindfulness, of finding out how to navigate the chaos of modern life.
11. Lanark Artefax - Metallur (AD 93)
From: Scotland, UK
Genre: electronic
The new age of IDM continues to fascinate. Lanark Artefax is kind of like if action figures of Drukqs-era Aphex Twin, Arca, and Oneohtrix Point Never were left on a car dashboard on a hot day and melted together. As expected with those comps, Lanark Artefax's sound design is so engrossing; Metallur is the record that justifies the expense of top-notch headphones. But the songwriting is just as neat. "With club-orientated music, it's quite hard to have that human element because there are formulas and structures that are necessary to the way that it works and the language it uses," the producer told Mixmag in 2017. "More abstract and deconstructed music lets you pick all that apart, and you can do something else with it." Be that as it may, despite the disarmingly Autechre-ness of it all on its surface, Metallur is far less abstract than expected underneath its armor, especially on the title track, which has an almost Boards of Canada-esque knack for tapping into a rich vein of hazy childhood memories, albeit if those memories were soundtracked by a skipping Barker CD.
10. Water Damage - In E (12XU)
From: Austin, TX
Genre: "krautpunk"
Just a good hang. Austin's Water Damage is kind of like if Hawkwind absorbed John Cale at his most aggressive and then cut a classic krautrock album. Each of these sidelong jams builds to blown-out reveries over steadily pulsating bass and the slap of an always-on-time snare. I've whiled away many a workday with this punkish stuff ringing in my ears, and its hypnotic sway has dislodged things like the first Pharoah Overlord album from my list of boredom-slaying zone-outs when I need to disappear into music.
9. Blind Girls - An Exit Exists (Persistent Vision, Secret Voice, Life.Lair.Regret)
From: Gold Coast, Australia
Genre: screamo
This year, screamo had the same bell curve as brutal death metal: a lot of decent things but few good things. Blind Girls's An Exit Exists is one of the good things. Channeling the Witching Hour screamo of yore (never using the term "emoviolence," don't care), these Australians absolutely bring it, grindingly blasting and devastatingly judding through a set of songs burning with blinding fury. Still, An Exit Exists is heavy on the feels: "Despite our timely effort the world won't stop for us," Sharni Brouwer screams on "Dissonance." While we're on the topic, "AI Generated Love Letter"? Pretty good song title. Anyway, Blind Girls exerts an immediacy, a force of will, through its utter desperation for change. This isn't the woebegone melodrama people mistake screamo for. No, Blind Girls demonstrates a resiliency just by dint of the fact that it's still raging. So, it's closer to the mark to say this album is the internal monologue of someone chafing against the sandpaper friction of the modern world, the seeming impossibility of finding absolution and love against a dealer with a stacked deck. An Exit Exists, but can we even take it?
8. Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, Tyshawn Sorey - Compassion (ECM)
From: New York
Genre: jazz
https://music.apple.com/us/album/compassion/1718608802
Hard to go wrong with a piano trio featuring three of my favorite modern players on their respective instruments: Vijay Iyer, piano; Linda May Han Oh, bass; and Tyshawn Sorey, drums. Naturally, I find Compassion to be warmer than 2021's Uneasy, the last time these three convened. Now, I'll note: I tend to lean toward the predecessor because that's just how my brain is wired — there's an, ahem, uneasiness to Uneasy that feels like when you catch yourself clenching your jaw. Love it. Still, this is like arguing over whether Magic or Bird was better. Doesn't matter — both great. And, on a musical level, what made Uneasy engaging shows up again on Compassion. Iyer subtly stretches and contracts shimmering piano runs seemingly on the fly like he's accessed the fourth dimension. Likewise, Tyshawn Sorey — whose own piano trio released a great album this year that barely missed this second post because it is long as shit and I have death metal to listen to — is a master of timing, prodding, pushing, and pulling these songs while always driving them ahead. Linda May Han Oh is simply blessed with this intuitive sense of what needs to go where; nothing seems to test her range. The opening one-two of the title track and "Arch" showcase what this trio is capable of, the quiet airiness of the former and the melancholic, Bill Evans-y, poetry-through-fingers lilt of the latter.
7. Álvaro Domene & Tom Law - Warning Bells (Iluso)
From: New York
Genre: experimental / dark ambient / jazz
I should play people Warning Bells when I first meet them. If you get this, you get me. Anyway, this album is another feather in Álvaro Domene's cap, one of the most exciting artists currently working in experimental music. The big brain multihyphenate is joined by Tom Law on Max/MSP. Warning Bells reminds me a bit of Iannis Xenakis's electroacoustic work, particularly the groundbreaking "Concrete PH." As I've written previously, it has a similar 'photons spinning around one's head' sound design. But Warning Bells has its own thing going on, too. Like, I don't know what kind of sorcery allowed the incredibly enveloping sonic depth and negative-space expansiveness to exist within the same song. That Warning Bells was apparently recorded in a single day blows my mind because it goes so many places and plays with so many ideas. If you've got an hour to spare, sink into "Across Hardened Landscapes." The song is 10 minutes, but you're going to need the whole hour. It's the kind of soundscape that Autechre would put shoe-in-dryer skittering beats over, and I mean that in the best way possible. Keep in mind: Domene is playing a guitar on all of this stuff. Wild. In between blasts of brutal death metal, this is the sound inside my head.
6. The Necks - Bleed (Northern Spy Records)
From: Australia
Genre: jazz
We're back to 40-minute songs, baby. The Necks, the 'not your dad's piano trio provided your dad had a piano trio' piano trio returns with Bleed, a longform composition that explores the negative space like only The Necks can. The song begins with Chris Abrahams letting notes ring out on his piano, a very Morton Feldman approach to minimalism. Then, light, strident tones — how about that for a Necksian contradiction — enter, courtesy of either drummer Tony Buck (mallet rubbed on cymbals?) or bassist Lloyd Swanton (bow plus effects?). From there, "Bleed" doesn't build but quietly exists, the piano trio equivalent of ambient. It is very on-brand for The Necks and very unlike most other works that could be considered "jazz." The PR copy says Bleed deals in the "unspeakable beauty of decay and space." Sure. I guess during its running time, I am also decaying as I move through space. Still, the music. Damn. Sometimes, it is what happens between the notes, I guess. And sometimes, the heaviest albums are the quietest.
5. Chaser - Planned Obsolescence (Decoherence Records)
From: New York, NY
Genre: noise rock / no-wave
The interior picture of Planned Obsolescence, the NYC noise rock quartet's second album, features a velvet-gloved hand holding cherry bombs over a piece of a shattered mirror. Y'all nailed the visual. And the band nails the sound, too. Snotty and snarling is a good place to land on the noise rock Venn diagram, and Chaser is so successful it earned a Weasel Walter co-sign. The guitars scream like an anthropomorphized comet sent to vaporize the planet. The bass buzzes like an ungrounded generator sitting in standing water. The drums have a Cramps-y pound to them while executing the heck out of the complex ups and downs that probably look like a line graph tracking the fear levels of an out-of-towner taking a cab in New Delhi. And the vocals have this detached, above-it-all air that's on the brink of a manic break. My dream bill right now is Couch Slut, Chaser, and Guck, and if I have to be the promoter to make that happen, so be it. Let's throw all of my money into the money pit. Anyway, I have to additionally note that one of my cats "sings" along to this album sometimes. It's not cute.
4. Hurray for the Riff Raff - The Past is Still Alive (Nonesuch Records)
From: New Orleans, LA
Genre: folk / singer/songwriter
A record there for you in your toughest hours; even when it doesn't rock, it can still be your rock. The fact that the first lyric is "You don't have to die if you don't want to die" is all there is to it. Hurray for the Riff Raff's Alynda Segarra could always spin a good line, but The Past is Still Alive is their best set of music, a blend of indie rock and country-leaning chords and instrumentation that gives the album a rustic rootsiness, a feeling you'd only be able to find during a cross-country drive while doing some deep heart-searching and soul-mapping with some of your closest compadres. Segarra's voice is a marvel, this multifaceted instrument containing multitudes; the way they project strength while embodying a wounded quaver is just...incredible. It's so human, the totality of life wrapped up in a melody. But The Past is Still Alive comes back to the incredible lines for me, those "you don't have to die" bombshells that get chipped into your mind like epitaphs. "I'm becoming the kind of girl that they warned me about." "I know that it's dangerous, but I wanna see you undress/ Wrap you up in the bomb shelter of my feather bed." "Then the moment's over, and/ Suddenly, a boulder is just sand/ In an hourglass." "Your dreams are not your dreams/They're only visions of what you need/You're not the person you thought you'd be/ But I still love you." "I used to think I was born into the wrong generation/ But now I know I made it right on time/ To watch the world burn." The rare sing-along album that's as devastating as it is anthemic.
3. Yambag - Mindfuck Ultra (11pm Records, Convulse Records)
From: Cleveland, OH
Genre: hardcore / fastcore
I'm a sucker for whenever a hardcore band lets loose a well-timed "woo!" Yambag's Mindfuck Ultra feels like an entire album of that, one big fastcore "woo!" that could blow Ric Flair's hair back. Ultimately, think if Void were Intense Degree; there's your sonic ballpark. And just like how reaching over the fence to catch a foul ball in said ballpark should be a crime, a writer should see jail time for going long about an album this thrillingly short. So let's not. Play it once and then again and again and again. Woo!
2. Hannah Frances - Keeper of the Shepherd (Ruination Record Co.)
From: Chicago, IL / Vermont
Genre: folk / prog
My dad once told me when he went to his first Al Stewart concert, he was convinced there'd be a second guitarist. Nope, just Al. You don't need overdubs when you're Al Stewart. That's what I experienced when I saw Hannah Frances. Out came Frances and the rest of her trio. Where's the second guitarist? Nope, just Hannah. And Frances absolutely slayed those songs with an economical grace. Her wrist barely moved, but the entire venue was filled with these fluttering sparrows of notes. That Frances also sings while this is happening is incomprehensible. You can't trust your eyes, only your ears. And your ears are flooded with that voice, an incredible instrument that can sound like a fleet of trumpets or a single keening cello. Here's the other thing, the thing I've been burying under a metric ton of live show plaudits: The songs are good. The songs are great. The title track has a fantastic bounce to it that I've likened to a wagon crossing the plains. "Floodplain," with its strings, makes me want to invoke the name of legendary folksters — you know which ones I'm talking about — but that would do the song a disservice because it has the sturdy backbone to stand alone. (Frances also sounds absolutely wrecked during that final pass. Is it dusty in here?) And "Bronwyn." My god, "Bronwyn." The harmonies. Last thing, because I could spend all ding-dang day writing about this album: I own the vinyl, but I also burned the album to CD. Here's the fun part: I burned the tracks out of order. Still works! The songs are that good. It doesn't matter. They'll create their own context. I can't think of higher praise than that.
1. Cosey Mueller - Softcore (Static Age Musik)
From: Berlin, Germany
Genre: post-punk / synth-punk
She did it again. The last time a band/artist topped my non-metal list was The Men, and I hope Cosey Mueller's career turns out far better. Softcore isn't that different from its predecessor, Irrational Habits, but it is tighter, darker, and a lot more fun, using that album as a springboard to write even more earwormy hooks. Like, here's what I wrote about the last one:
Sometimes, you know from the jump when a record will take over your life. Cosey Mueller's Irrational Habits was that album for me in 2023. Part coldwave, part Grauzone, part proto-techno crafted on the fly in a dingy '80s club in the heart of Berlin. It triggered one of those rare epiphanies: "Oh, if I made music again, it would be this." And so I listened to it to understand its rhythms, drive, and melodies, all in an effort to appreciate its power over me.
All of that remains. And, yes, I still want to make music like this so badly that I'd be willing to burn an entire monkey's paw's worth of backfiring wishes to get there. The difference is that the Cosey Mueller of a year ago wouldn't have released a song like "Fremdträume," a big, throbbing goth club banger. I think there's this rising sense of confidence that will lift her out of the low expectations of lofi into a different stratosphere. I can't wait to see where Cosey Mueller goes, and I hope like hell it's back at the top of this list.
Check out Wolf's other garbage: https://linktr.ee/wrambatz
Want to help me buy more music? Drop us a donation on Ko-fi