Red Mass

Kilrush Drive

Red Mass delivered the goods on Kilrush Drive, their first full-length album after a decade of prolific underground releases. Roy Vucino and Hannah Lewis present an art-punk encapsulation of where Red Mass stands in 2019. While rediscovering newly facelifted gems like Saturn and Terrorizer was thrilling, the wealth of new sounds gave Red Mass fans a reason to keep flipping the sides on this one.

Chocolat

Jazz engagé

Chocolat releases a double album that is a journey within itself, with self-referential lyrics and some of the best moments that this band has put down. A culmination of all our favourite flavours of Chocolat.

Karen O & Danger Mouse

Lux Prima

Lux Prima is the result of the intangible chemistry between Karen O and Danger Mouse. The record will burn holes into your night.

Kim Gordon

No Home Record

Kim Gordon has kept busy following Sonic Youth’s breakup releasing music as Body /Head with Bill Nace in 2013, another album with Alex Gnost under the name Glitterbust in 2016 as well as penning her memoir, Girl In a Band. Her new solo album, No Home Record is an uncompromising statement from underground’s Queen, reminding us that Kim Gordon is just as vital in 2019 as thirty years ago.

Comet Gain

Fireraisers Forever!

In case you thought music, in general, was retreating away from the grim realities around us, Comet Gain return with an album that reflects our current times while sounding like a lost manifesto.

Wilco

Ode To Joy

Jeff Tweedy pursues truths and restraints on Ode To Joy. The album leans toward Wilco’s quieter pallet than the songs found on the last couple of more experimental releases, revealing a meditative song cycle that is best listened to after shutting the door on the world for an hour.

Black Marble

Bigger Than Life

Brooklyn’s Black Marble latest release Bigger Than Life is dipped in the end of eighties synth pop that is still reverberating around the world today. It sits comfortably between your New Order records and modern contemporaries like Remi Parson and John Maus.

Tombstones In Their Eyes

Maybe Someday

L.A.’s Tombstones In Their Eyes’ freshly released Maybe Someday might be the psychedelic-tinged, slab of stoner shoegaze you’ve been craving. The album casts out wave after wave of distortion and subdued hooks, effortlessly pulling you in with each play. Hopefully, a tour in 2020 will pass through Montreal.

The Growlers

Natural Affair

The Growlers return with maturity in Natural Affair. While sticking with slicker sounding production, Natural Affair also feels more naturally like the Growlers. Familiar themes of love and relationships are in full exposure under the Beach Goth microscope. While the band might have been reaching for a greater audience with City Club, on Natural Affair they are surrounded by those most important to them.

Reckling

S/T

Kelsey Reckling’s debut album available on Burger Records, is a hook filled, pop-punk necessity. The sound of razor blades stuck together with bubble gum.

Diane Coffee

Internet Arms

Shaun Flemming returns as Diane Coffee with Internet Arms. Stepping away from the garage revival revue of past albums Everybody’s A Good Dog and My Friend Fish, for a conceptual synth heavy pop statement on our current state of tech addiction and the inevitable amalgamation between humans and AI. As with all Diane Coffee releases Flemming's voice soars.

Pixies

Beneath The Eyrie

With Beneath The Eyrie, the band pulled back the veil on their recording process with a podcast documenting the creation of the album with producer Tom Dalgety. This series teased at what the new album would sound like without giving too much away, the dynamic within the band and the importance of Lenchantin as an additional writer and arranger. Upon release, Beneath The Eyrie felt comfortably steeped in some of the art-rock shadowy hooks and crannies of past glories, like Joey Santiago’s stabbing surf guitar -work, and Black Francis’ penchant for gothic imagery but most importantly the album is a satisfying repositioning of sound that hits the mark. If my attention had slightly slipped since the reunion tour, they have my full attention now.

Kelley Stoltz

My Regime

Whenever San-Francisco’s Kelley Stoltz releases a new album, you know it’s going to be a good year. Each album, a gift. My Regime lands after Kelley’s stint as an auxiliary touring member for Echo and The Bunnymen and continuing on from past releases like 2018’s Natural Causes and 2017’s Que Aura, My Regime is awash in an English eighties new wave sensibilty compared to that of the Kinks and The Beatles of earlier albums. What is evident throughout his stellar catalogue of music, is that Kelley Stoltz is incapable of writing a bad song. My Regime like all of Stoltz’s album’s play without interruption from side A to B every time.

Cool Sounds

More To Enjoy

Hailing from Melbourne Australia, Cool Sounds’ latest album More To Enjoy joins the ranks of amazing musical output from the land down under. With a bit of a musical underground renaissance going on in the last couple of years, Cool Sounds add to the mix with a reflective album of left-field, near Americana.

WURVE

Memory Bleach

Upon first hearing WURVE’s Memory Bleach I had to double-check that I hadn’t stumbled upon a lost batch of recordings by The Charlatans UK. Shades of very early BJM permeate throughout the album’s hazy wash of guitars and echo chamber warmth.

The High Dials

Primitive Feelings

Montreal’s High Dials release their latest irresistible collection of hip shakers and mind benders in two parts, Primitive Feelings Part 1 and Primitive Feelings Part 2, resulting in a perfect digestion process. Eventually, The High Dials drops both collections as one album and in the process releases a high watermark creatively and musically. The endless swagger and kaleidoscopic playfulness are sure to lure you to groovier spaces.

Levitation Room

Headspace

L.A.’s Levitation Room return with new album Headspace and present a soundtrack to melt away your winter blues and out a little strut in your step while your at it. Quintessential and psychedelically Californian in sound, Levitation Room basks in eternal sunshine and Headspace will take you there instantly.

Moon Duo

Stars Are The Light

Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada latest as Moon Duo bubbles and trickles over every auditory nerve with an almost dreamlike sense of wonder. Stars Are The Light has more breeze blowing through it than past releases, it’s the kind of experience that lays you back surrendering yourself for the journey downstream.

Fly Pan Am

C'est ça

After years away Montreal’s Fly Pan AM gift fans with a brand new album titled C'est ça. Without losing an ounce of the band’s sonic experimentalism, C'est ça delivers a thrilling sequence of sounds and left field sci-fi excursions. The image of being hurled through space, witness to the vast chaos of the unknown, fills my head every time, beautiful, abrasive and unpredictable.

L’Epée

Diabolique

After collaborating in the past on The Liminanas’ excellent 2018 album Shadow People, The Liminanas have finally teamed up as a proper band with Anton Newcombe and Ultra Orange vocalist/ actress Emmanuelle Seigner as L’Epée. Debut album Diabolique meshes all of the qualities that one would expect with such a collaboration. Sounding closer in sound to a Liminanas album, the release is adorned with songs ranging from french spoken word by way of Gainsbourg to sixties indebted Yé Yé and cavernous psychedelic walls of sound. Sexy cool rug cutters throughout..

´Tropical Fuck Storm

Braindrops

There are certain albums that betray their first listening experience. Such was the case with Melbourne Australia’s Tropical Fuckstorm. After my initial uneasy and frustrated run through of Tropical Fuckstorm ‘s Braindrops, I was left needing to go back. Every time I put it away, something kept calling me back. Braindrops is a wholly bonkers musical journey that I’m still navigating my way through. At times it feels like a mite crawling through a shag carpet, brooding, brutal and yet it exhibits a cheekiness and playfulness, like a good trip and a bad trip playing out simultaneously.

Oh Sees

Face Stabber

It’s hard to imagine a year that John Dwyer wouldn’t be featured in the best album’s of the year list, given his prolific rate of releasing albums, the quality his albums maintain and the intriguing sonic avenues he wishes to seek out and explore. Dwyer’s is a journey to new lands, not so much remapping old ones. I feel like, just as I digest a new album, another is dropped. Face Stabber continues Oh Sees endless output with an entry that splices free jazz and prog rock.

Royal Trux

White Stuff

White Stuff was the first new Royal Trux album in 19 years and throughout that time you never would believe that a musical reunion between Neil Michael Hagerty and Jennifer Herrena was possible. As it turns out it was short-lived. At least we have this collection of gonzo rock excursions, that although an easier digestible artifact than the more experimental releases of old, still offers new thrills and swagger.

Young Guv

Guv II

Ben Cook of Toronto’s Fucked up sidelines as Young Guv. Dropping his main band’s sound for effervescent jangle pop, power pop , new wave , synth-pop and bedroom AM nuggets, all of which are on the menu as both of 2019’s mini albums Young Guv I and II are married into one irresistible album.

The Stroppies

Whoosh!

Yet another album from Melbourne Australia indicating that I really should get a plane ticket down under before the well runs dry. The Stroppies are a combination of members from various Melbourne bands including Dick Diver, The Stevens and Boomgate. Kitchen sink jangle-pop shelved next to your favourite Flying Nun artifact.

Modern Nature

How To Live

After the breakup of Ultimate Painting, Jack Cooper assembles Modern Nature and starts anew. How To Live is a beautiful opening statement, whose pace and sequencing drops the listener into a world running on motorik percussion, bubbling electronics and lingering horns. At times Coopers songs on How To Live remind me of later era Wilco and Tweedy’s sometimes hushed vocal delivery. Although initially bummed about the breakup of Ultimate Painting and the shelving of their last known album, I’m glad to see Cooper has presented us with a new project to get excited about.

Shrouded Strangers

Night Prancing

Upon hearing that Shrouded Strangers come from Big Sur California, I had a certain idea about what the band’s sound would encompass. What emerged from the speakers when first hearing Night Prancing lay closer to indie underground’s heyday than say the Beach Boys, although they are surely buried into the band’s DNA next to a strand of Guided By Voices and early Flaming Lips.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples

Anxiety Art

Glenn Donaldson of Skygreen Leopards and Art Museums releases Anxiety Art under the name The Reds, The Pinks and The Purples. It’s a master class collection of jangle pop confessionals.

Amyl and The Sniffers

S/T

Amyl and The Sniffers prove that the current flash of bands out of Australia aren’t all jangle. 2019’s self-titled release is a banger of an album, filled to the brim with some hairy ass punk rock. Sits well with fellow Aussie’s, POWER.

Purple Mountains

S/T

The silver lining is that David Berman left us one more album before taking his own life, just prior to starting a 2019 tour in support of his latest project Purple Mountains. After retiring from music for a decade, it looked as though this would mark a new beginning for Berman, with a new name and a new band consisting of members of Woods, this reintroduction to Berman’s unique poetic songcraft would become his swansong.

Doug Tuttle

Dream Road

Doug Tuttle’s Dream Road perfectly captures the beauty and songcraft that Tuttle has been managing to lay down on his last couple of albums. A former member of Massachusettes’ psych band Mmoss, Tuttle’s Dream Road dispalys some of his best compositions to date displaying light psychedelic ballads that burn as bright as autumn leaves.

Possible Humans

Everybody Split

Possible Humans’ album Everybody Split was one of those albums I just couldn’t stop playing. It was Familiar yet mysterious and new. With shades of influences ranging from post-punk, the early eighties underground like R.E.M. to contemporary antipodean game-changers Total Control, the album exhibits a heaviness or urgency in feel, that necessitated repeated plays. An album that wraps it’s world around you. With Australian underground fixtures, Alex MacFarlane and Mikey Young producing and mastering the album only adds to the magic.

Weird Night

This Is Weird Night

Southern California and staple Burger Records band Weird Night lay down a fun collection of pogo worthy poppers on This Is Weird Night. Whether you are skateboarding through the parking lots of the night or cutting the rug in your room, Weird Night cuts the boredom like that overactive friend of yours from your childhood that you just don’t nearly see enough of anymore…

Telekrimen

Culto a lo Imbecile

Mexico City’s Telekrimen return with their first album in seven years titled Culto a lo Imbecile out on Musica Para Loco/ Slovenly. It seems the kinetic musical energies stored up during the band’s seven-year hiatus has manifested itself into eight tracks of pure garage adrenaline, dipped in fuzz and washed out in the surf. Fernando, Omar, Edwin, Daniel and Alfredo have bottled an impressive collection of nuggets here, that runs a serious risk of bringing the walls down.

Mattiel

Satis Factory

Altanta’s best kept secret Mattiel Brown follows up her 2019 EP Customer Copy with Satis Factory. Brown had stated that this release captures the sounds that she has been striving for since her 2017 Burger Records debut. It’s a superb showcase for a young artist with a wholly unique voice sounding fully arrived. With a cracking live band, Mattiel’s performance at Quai Des Brumes prior to the album’s release was revelatory, and indicated that Satis Factory was likely to shine a bigger spotlight on Mattiel and her music. Cant wait for the next one.

Clinic

Wheeltappers and Shunters

Longtime favourites Clinic has a habit of reappearing just as suddenly as they disappear. Luckily, they rematerialized in 2019 with Wheel Tappers & Shunters, the band’s most bizarre, dizzying and imaginative album that is sure to expand the senses.

Foreign Diplomats

Monami

Foreign Diplomats dig deep and go big on Monami. New wave pop confessionals that will surely get you moving, where crooning vocals mix it up with anthemic musical pulses. Throughout Monami, the weightiness and tension are pulled back and forth like an elastic band, with enough upbeat and effervescent moments to light up the dance floor.

Boogarins

Sombrou Dúvida

Brazilian psych outfit Boogarins’ Sombrou Dúvida double as a heat generator in the coming moths of winter, an immersive and playful collection of mind benders and richly textured daydreams.

Filthy Friends

Emerald Valley

Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Corin Tucker (Sleater Kinney), Scott McCaughey (The Minus 5,Young Fresh fellows, R.E.M.) Kurt Bloch (The Fastbacks) and Linda Pitmon (Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3) keep the super group vibes alive with album number two, Emerald Valley. Brains, heart and courage abound throughout.

Cate Lebon

Reward

Welsh artist Cate Lebon’s latest album Reward is the result of time off spent learning new trades, namely woodworking. Through learning to design and build furniture, a new process of pursuit was absorbed, one that takes time, repetition, a physical and mental exertion. Lebon’s return following that hiatus is now everyone’s reward.

Black Mountain

Destroyer

If you are one of those people that might complain that there just isn’t enough car themed worthy rock n’ roll music anymore, Black Mountain has got your back. Destroyer is named after a car and loosely themed around a road trip rock n’ roll odyssey looking back at a time were metal and punk first met.

Rose City Band

S/T

Ripley Johnson assembles Rose City Band anonymously and releases another project to exercise his psychedelic pursuits, this one with a slight americana warmth.

The National

I Am Easy To Find

Following The National’s career has been an exercise in receiving constant rewards. While the tale of the tortoise and the hare might best apply to The National’s rise to success, one that was built with patience and rebirth, one where the outside world eventually comes to you, on your terms. I Am Easy To Find is part National album, part experiment. One that sees various female guest singers either replacing Berninger entirely or dueting with him thus changing the dynamic that this band has had on dislplay since the begining. With heavy contribution lyrically from Berninger’s wife similarly refreshed the proceeding with a female counterpoint. Absolutely beautiful, this will surely be hard to follow.

Pottery

No.1

Pottery’s No. 1 slips and slides with a perpetual groove. Channelling late-night energy and garage space sonics will get you sweating while remaining cool, this collection of songs should have you moving the furniture permanently.

Operators

Radiant Dawn

Operators’ Radiant Dawn follows up nicely from 2016’s Blue Wave. With a slightly more streamlined pop sensibility, the songs imbue a sinister pulse. The first ray of light breaking through fallout.

The Mystery Lights

Too Much Tension!

Wick Records Mystery Lights have managed to keep the need for a follow up to 2016’s S/T debut album by touring relentlessly. Was it the pressure of a sophomore slump or maybe the need to completely exercise those first batch of songs from their system? Too Much Tension! emerges from the same shadowy corners of the garage as their debut, sounding authentically nuggets. If There was tension going into the making of this album, The Mystery Lights have harnessed that stress into a tightly wound, soulful burst of release.

The Gooch Palms

III

Answering the call for ambassador’s of Australian pop-punk, New Castle’s gonzo duo The Gooch Palms have always stood out. What stands out on III is Leroy’s ability to write hook after hook. With singles being slowly released over many months, each one arrived displaying new sounds for the guitar/drums duo, incorporating bolder strokes within their brand of distortion and backbeat. Collected together makes III a go-to for sunny days filled with fist pumps.

Drugdealer

Raw Honey

Drugdealer has managed to capture that 1970’s studio warmth on Raw Honey. Nostalgia hits hard but does not detract from Raw Honey’s decades old sound. Wyes Blood pops in to share in the trip.

Boy Harsher

Careful

Atlanta Georgia’s Boy Harsher’s album Careful fits like a glove. A black leather glove filled with glitter and drenched in sweat. With Careful , Boy Harsher heads out under the cover of night, looking for new doorways to rooms unseen. I deeply regret not picking up tickets to see them when they came through town in October.

Altin Gün

Gece

Dutch/Turkish psychedelic-rock band re-interpret folk standards with captivating results. Altin Gün casts new light on Turkish folk on their second album Gece, creating an exhilarating A-Z experience. Between the bravado of the guitar work and the mesmerizing enchantment of the keyboards, Altin Gün has just cast a pretty heavy spell.

Cass McCombs

The Tip Of The Sphere

Cass McCombs Tip Of The Sphere continues the hermetic songwriter’s impressive expanding catalogue. Settling into a more AM sound as first heard on 2016’s Mangy Love, has perhaps grown McComb’s profile somewhat, but he continues his journey chasing the song on his own terms.

The Tough Shits

Burning In Paradise

Hailing from Philadelphia, The Tough Shits have a blue collar sensibility to their brand of pop garage that doesn’t overstuff or over complicate things. Burning In Paradise may conjure the energy of midwestern ghosts like The Replacements, ripping out heartstrings through ragged anthems.

Patience

Dizzy Spells

Roxanne Clifford, formerly of Veronica Falls returns as Patience, new album Dizzy Spells requires none. Dizzy Spells nod/nostalgia for the 1980 sound impeccably fresh and her tales of regret and heavy hearts will make your mascara run while dancing in the dark.

The Cowboys

The Bottom Of A Rotten Flower

Indiana’s The Cowboys follow up 2017’s self-titled album with The Bottom Of A Rotten Flower. Short and sweet might best sum up this collection of songs, with sixteen songs clocking in at thirty-four minutes. The Cowboys seem to have invested in the principle of never having too much melody. The Bottom Of A Rotten Flower will sit next to your favourite post-Black Lips garage contenders, but the Cowboys incorporate a slightly more jangly, rockabilly sound at times and this collection exhibits wistfulness that betrays the album’s title. Giddy Up!

The Coathangers

The Devil You Know

Sometimes you just got to let it out. Atlanta’s The Coathangers came back this year with their sixth album, The Devil You Know, a revved punk rock exorcism for these trying times. Exhibiting a Pixies quiet/loud dynamic the Coathangers straddle that fine line between menace and melody.

Shana Cleveland

Night Of The Worm

Last year’s Floating Features album by La Luz was a favourite from 2018 so it was a little surprising that frontwoman Shana Cleveland had a new batch of solo songs for 2019. Night Of The Worm Moon is a beautiful and somewhat haunting Californian folk album that would see Cleveland transition into motherhood.

Anemone

Beat My Distance

Anemone’s Beat My Distance displays some fine and breezy sun kissed pop. Like lapping rainbow waves for days when you just need to step back and smell those flowers in the air.

Wyes Blood

Titanic

Wyes Blood’sTitanic builds the singer’s slow and steady pace of seducing the masses. Timelessness is not an easy point to achieve musically speaking, but something tells me Weyes Blood has dropped her long term standard, which will inevitably be compared to whatever she does from this point forward. Having collaborated with Drugdealer this year as well as Ariel Pink in 2017 for a Marfa Myths EP, Wyes blood inches her way closer to greater audiences.

Spellling

Mazy Fly

L.A.’s Spellling (Tia Cabral) pulled me in deep with her latest album Mazy Fly. Pop, vocal R&B, experimental dalliances and synth pop are rollled into one gloroiusly unique sound, resulting in an album that creates it’s own time and place.

Pale Lips

After Dark

Somethings are just better in the dark, Pale Lips make this case with their 2019 entry After Dark. A Rock n’ Roll party stuffed with the band’s brand of backbeat sock-hop fury that will have you asking how long can I keep this hip-shaking going? Thirty-one minutes as it turns out until you push repeat.

Chai

Punk

Being a favourite band of the boys over at Burger Records is always a good excuse to press play. Chai is a band from Japan that kind of defies description, incorporating every sound under the sun including J-Pop, Punk, Dance, Disco, Metal etc… into one incredibly bonkers whole. I’m not sure why I let Chai’s 2017’s album Pink drift by, upon hearing Chai’s latest album Punk I had no excuse to go back and check out the fuss.

The Resonars

No Exit

Tuscon Arizona studio Wizard Matt Rendon turns in another psychedelic gem with No Exit. One man band pulls out another banging collection of garage nuggets that prove Rendon’s abilities to be endless.

Wolfmanhattan Project

Blue Gene Stew

Mick Collins and Kid Congo keep all ingredients raw in Blue Gene Stew. There could be a lot of anticipation when two underground legends team up, thankfully Wolfmanhattan Project is a no-frills cohesion of these two talents. Blue Gene Stew boils and bubbles over with abandon, guitars scratch and shuffle along with kitchen sink percussion.

The Minus 5

Stroke Manor

After suffering from a stroke, Scott Mcaughey (Young Fresh Fellows/ R.E.M./ Baseball Project) was fortunate enough to fully recover and we are all luckier for it. Stroke Manor is McCaughey’s document of life’s left turns and the headspace of recovery.

The Comet Is Coming

Trust In The Lifeforce of The Deep Mystery

The Comet Are Coming’s The After Life is a pulsating slice of psychedelic jazz for the mind’s eye. This six-song suite conjures cosmic landscapes.

The Fat White Family

Serf’s Up!

The Fat White Family have always seemed like they conjure their songs through a meta- union between their drug trips and living on edge of society hi-jinks. Well perhaps for this year’s Serf’s Up, higher-quality drugs have been procured. The band’s weirdness, anxiety and darkness remain but the ideas have gotten bigger.

Chacal

Peter Said It was Problematic

Whatever the actual problem was in the studio, that inspired the title to Chacal’s album, Peter Said It Was Problematic luckily didn’t translate onto the album. What we do get is their best collection of songs yet for this Montreal by way of Québec City band.

The Good Ones

Rwanda, You Should Be Loved

Beautiful collection of folk music by Rwandan band The Good Ones. The band keep good company on Rwanda, You Should Be Loved with guests including Tunde Adebimpe (TOTR), Nels Cline (Wilco etc..), Corin Tucker and Kevin Shields.

Snapped Ankles

Stunning Luxury

Snapped Ankles may look like mounds of moss onstage, but the music they generate couldn’t sound less organic. Stunning Luxury sounds as though it arrived from the future. Post-punk paints a broad stroke and does no justice to the bizarre and captivating variety of sounds contained within the album.

Tim Presley & White Fence

I Have To Feed Larry’s Hawk

For Tim Presley, White Fence has always been a project free from rules. Just as you thought White Fence albums adhered to a certain curriculum of endless four-track recording paired with what can only be an overwhelming process of elimination and editing, White Fence would slip seamlessly into bigger production without sacrificing a sliver of the mystique and intangible rock n’ roll purity. This phase too would only go so far, and with I have To Feed Tony’s Hawk Tim Presley slows it down and changes it up considerably preferring the piano this time around and continues to push the envelope, heck he’s set fire to it.

Lightbulb Alley

Lights and Shades

Light Bulb Alley latest, Lights & Shades is drenched in gasoline and maintains a mainline straight to the adrenal glands. The instrumental breaks between songs are brief sonic explorations, using percussion and drone elements, that effectively add more mood and texture to the album as a whole, allowing the transitions from light to shade to be musically cohesive.

Brian Jonestown Massacre

S/T

After Anton Newcombe moved to Berlin and started his own studio, The Brian Jonestown Massacre effectively entered a new phase. Stepping back from the garage-psych revival sound that is now synonymous with the band, Anton pursued post-punk, house, dub and sound and collage while continuing to open portals musically, all the while releasing some of his best and most creative work. 2016’s Third World Pyramid once again returned to something approaching the classic psych sound of earlier work, as would 2018’s Something Else. 2019’s Brian Jonestown Massacre continues the hot streak and almost thirty years in, it’s an opportune time to reflect back on a true rock n’ roll institution.

Jenny Lewis

On The Line

Jenny Lewis puts down a stellar collection of songs with On The Line. Former Rilo Kiley frontwoman sounds like a legend throughout her tales of loss and heartbreak and a life lived. It bites as hard as it burns bright.

Garcia Peoples

Natural Facts

Garcia Peoples bring the sun once again with Natural Facts. Kicking back may be a side effect from Garcia Peoples brand of rock n roll abandon, so let it all go before letting it all go.

Fruit Bats

Gold Past Life

There’s a perpetual sunbeam shining through the golden strums of sound on Fruit Bats 2019 release Gold Past Sounds. AM breeziness, finger-picked balladry and piano confessionals all meet somewhere between the Nashville sound and the California coast.

Quichenight

Dork In The Dark

I can’t believe that I had never stumbled upon Quichenight prior to the recently released Dork In The Dark. An album that is an irresistible, unhinged and ramshackle rock n’ roll document, one that leaves no stone unturned. While guitars rip endless solos, the drum kit takes flight. I was thrilled to find this album released in early December to see 2019 out with a bang… and now to the back catalogue.