If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all. So sez Albert King‘s blues classic (fun fact: Booker T. wrote the music!). I can dig where Al is coming from. After all, if it wasn’t for Friday the 13th, I wouldn’t have a cheap, easy way to introduce the biggest and best albums arriving next week. Hey, you try writing these blurbs every week for years without running out of ideas. But before you do that, be sure to peep the newest plays of the week:
Bones UK
Soft
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Soft builds on the massive success of their 2019 self-titled debut, the unapologetically rebellious duo returns with a visceral, anthemic take on their future-rock mélange of swaggering guitars, gritty electronics, and love-yourself / think-for-yourself lyrics. The 11-tracks are bound by throughlines of massive hooks, bold stylistic cocktails, and empowering lyrics. “It’s everything you loved about the first record, turned up,” said singer-guitarist Rosie Bones. “Keeping things scrappy, raw and real, with enough electronic beats to keep our industrial dance-heads happy and enough heartbreakers to keep our romantics listening.” Written and recorded over five years in diverse locations including London, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Texas, the album reaches back to Stax and Motown influences, classic rock ’n’ roll, and ‘’90s electronica and song-based rock, Soft is a spirited “f*ck you” to the status quo.”
Chastity
Chastity
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Chastity is for the skids, the headbangers, the freaks. Chastity is for everyone who has suffered and survived the lethal combination of suburban overculture and mental distress. Chastity is especially for everyone who didn’t survive — the ones who didn’t get out. Brandon Williams did, luckily, and his work with Chastity has been to collect people like him, who got out by the skin of their teeth. Chastity’s first three records — 2018’s Death Lust, 2019’s Home Made Satan and 2022’s Suffer Summer — formed a trilogy that defined a four-year arc of the band’s contribution to outsider music. Each record was informed by Williams’ life, but each was also conceptual and interpretive, refracting his experiences through a level of remove. On Chastity’s self-titled fourth record, there is no such distance: Williams decided to write a fully non-fiction work. Chastity is a 13-track record about the things that have always run through the band’s records — struggle, death, despair, redemption, darkness, and light — but this time, the songs ascend to new depths of intensity and desperation, new heights of resolution and power. “It’s really about the first nosedive that I did as a young person,” says Williams. “It’s a record about struggle, about the missing years. It’s also a thank you to some people in my life.”
Cursive
Devourer
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Very few bands manage to last decades, and for the ones that do, it’s often easy to settle down and get a little too comfortable. But there’s nothing comfortable about Devourer, the explosive new album from Cursive. The iconic Omaha group are known for their intensity, ambition, and execution, and have spent 30 years creating a bold discography that’s defined as much by its cathartic sound as its weighty, challenging lyrical themes. And Devourer is as daring as ever. Full of intense and incisive songs, the album proves exactly why Cursive have been so influential and enduring — and why they remain so vital today. In the years since their 1995 formation, Cursive developed into one of the most important groups to emerge from the late-’90s/early ’00s moment when the lines between indie rock and post-hardcore began blurring into something altogether new. Albums like Domestica (2000) and The Ugly Organ (2003) became essential touchstones whose echoes can still be heard in new bands today. The pull of nostalgia can be strong over time, but Cursive’s work has often felt like a rejection of those comfort zones; the band has continually pushed themselves, with frontman Tim Kasher’s artistic restlessness steering them ahead. In fact, for Kasher, whose pointed observations always begin with looking inward first, it was an interrogation of this voracious creativity that planted the seeds of Devourer.”
Dale Crover
Glossolalia
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “As he began plotting his new solo album, Dale Crover realized he was starting from scratch. The Melvins, Nirvana and Redd Kross drummer, and Altamont singer-guitarist, was already more than 30 years into a world-renowned musical career when he started work on what became his full-length solo debut — 2017’s The Fickle Finger of Fate — so he had a backlog of songs and ideas to draw on. Likewise, he incorporated older material into Rat-A-Tat-Tat!, which followed in 2021. But this time around it was different: Just Crover and a Tascam eight-track gifted to him by Joyful Noise founder Karl Hofstetter. “I didn’t have any songs,” Crover says. “So I just went on this writing spree.” The result of that creative burst is Glossolalia, Crover’s third LP under his own name and arguably his most focused statement yet as a solo artist: 11 catchy yet eccentric tracks — demoed at home and later re-recorded with longtime Melvins engineer Toshi Kasai — that move from Nuggets-y garage rock to crafty proto-metal riffage and gorgeously hazy psych-pop, and feature Crover’s songwriting, vocals and multi-instrumental talents alongside a number of illustrious guests, from past collaborators like Ty Segall to none other than Tom Waits. “Just having everything kind of fresh,” Crover says of the project as a whole, “I got really inspired.”
Deadletter
Hysterical Strength
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The world is brutal, but there are cherry trees in blossom. This is the philosophy that underpins Deadletter and their bruising, beautiful debut album Hysterical Strength. “It’s punishing but there’s also fucking beauty out there,” explains frontman Zac Lawrence, who, with life-long friends Alfie Husband and George Ullyott, along with Poppy Richler, Sam Jones and Will King, may just have turned in one of 2024’s most urgent and vital listens — a record that, right down to its title, relishes the contradictions of modern life. “Being able to take something disgusting or disgraceful and make it sound nice through the power of music, that juxtaposition appeals to me,” Lawrence adds. The result is 12 tracks of motorik rhythms and angular guitars, adorned by smoky saxophone and baritone-belted lyrics about flickering television sets and dilapidated town centres decked with decapitated bodies. Its strengths are hysterical indeed.”
Foxing
Foxing
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Beneath the audible progress of Foxing’s 13-year career — from the chamber emo of debut The Albatross to the art-pop of 2021’s Draw Down The Moon — has been a gradual movement towards self-sufficiency. Appropriately, the quartet of vocalist Conor Murphy, guitarist Eric Hudson, drummer Jon Hellwig and bassist Brett Torrence (who recently joined after years as a touring hired gun) chose to self-title their fifth LP. The album was entirely produced by the band and mixed by Hudson. The cover art was created by Murphy and Torrence, and it is being released on the band’s own label. It is fitting that tension is at the core of Foxing, an album that balances hopefulness and nihilism, the pastoral with the tumultuous. Whether oscillating between visceral noise rock and intimate bedroom cassette experiments on opener Secret History or cruising at the edge of collapse on Barking, the dramatic dynamics that have long permeated Foxing’s music have never felt so extreme. Five albums into a discography defined by its own restlessness, Foxing is a document of a band finding comfort in their own chaos.”
Chilly Gonzales
Gonzo
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “After 12 years of instrumental albums (ranging from a pair of solo piano albums, chamber music, collaborative albums with Boys Noize, Jarvis Cocker and Plastikman and even a best-selling Christmas record), Chilly Gonzales has a lot to get off his chest. The notebooks that sat unfilled since 2011’s orchestral rap opus The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales started to fill up again in early 2022 after ending a lengthy decade of psychoanalysis. Coincidence? Hardly. Behind the wordplay and name-dropping (Ron Jeremy, Marie Kondo, Genghis Khan and Phillip Glass, to cite a few) the songs that made it to the new album reveal an ongoing tension between persuasion and confession, delusion and self-awareness and finally, gratitude. The tension between creativity and commerce also continues to be a career-long exploration for Gonzo. But is this truly a rap album? Instrumental pieces such as the Stravinsky-esque Fidelio or the tearjerking Eau de Cologne will remind listeners of Gonzo’s extravagant musical-genius persona, as the words and rhymes from previous verses settle into their ears.”
Hello Mary
Emita Ox
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On Emita Ox, New York City’s Hello Mary — the trio of Helena Straight, Stella Wave and Mikaela Oppenheimer — unleash their emotions through their alt-rock anthems like flaming weapons and wield them like proud trophies of their collective strength. Since forming in 2019, Hello Mary have ripped into prominence with their fuzzed-out sounds, establishing a darkly playful edge all their own. Possessing a sound that pushes harder into heavy distortion and psychedelic dreamscapes, Emita Ox sees Hello Mary building out their singular universe of gutsy, virtuosic alt-rock. The band co-produced the album alongside Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Snail Mail) in Asheville, N.C. On Emita Ox, Hello Mary push harder into heavy distortion and psychedelic dreamscapes, as they build out their singular universe of gutsy strain of rock. The LP’s labyrinthine production reflects how the band’s musical tastes have expanded from Elliott Smith and Radiohead to encompass experimental post-rock acts like Black Midi and Swans. “This album encompasses a lot of our inspirations,” says Oppenheimer. “It also shows what we’re like as a trio, collectively.”
Robyn Hitchcock
1967: Vacations In The Past
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “For me, 1967 was the portal between childhood and the adult world, where these songs flickered in the air to greet me like hummingbirds,” says Robyn Hitchcock. “They’re full of saturated colour and melancholy, just as I was charged with hormones and regret as one part of me said goodbye to the other. Perhaps I peaked then — at the supernova of boyhood — the black hole of the grownup world awaited me with its dwarf-star mentality, all beige and hell and compromise. By coincidence, the world was changing as fast as I was, and music embodied that change. The world grew hair, became infused with new desires and crawled out of its grey nest to test its fresh, multicoloured plumage. We all crash eventually, but at least some of us take off first: If we are left only with sullen cravings and a sense of loss, well, so be it. 1967 is a phantom heart that glows inside me, lighting me up like a lamp on a good day. “So long, Mum! Thank you, Dad! I’m off to infinity! Please leave my dinner in the oven.”
Jade Hairpins
Get Me The Good Stuff
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On Get Me The Good Stuff, Jade Hairpins — Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk of Fucked Up — waste no time fulfilling their second album’s titular demand. From its harmony-drenched opening note to its baroque-anthemic conclusion, Get Me The Good Stuff is positively loaded with musical ideas, an absurdist buffet of sound and aesthetic that comes with one hell of a floorshow as the Hairpins stack those ideas higher and higher, almost daring them to crash to the floor. Instead, those elements — punksploitation, power pop, baggy, funk, and Italo disco are just some touchstones — are not only held aloft, they defy gravity and convention.”
The Jesus Lizard
Rack
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In the jade-cultivating climes of online rock journalism, the angle of ‘band has new album’ is about as interesting as watching Instagram reels of your brother-in-law’s recent bathroom remodel. But when a band decides to follow up their last album from over 26 years ago? That’s high on testicular fortitude and as dumb as fidget spinners. Yet, when that band is The Jesus Lizard, everything in your pathetic cultural dystopia suddenly falls away and the air smells like Heaven… Their seventh studio album Rack, produced by Paul Allen, features 11 tracks of brisk guitar rock you haven’t heard since… the last time The Jesus Lizard took over a stage in your town. The Jesus Lizard — vocalist David Yow, guitarist Duane Denison, bassist David Wm. Sims and drummer Mac McNeilly — have returned with a record teeming with the kind of madness needed to beat down today’s AOR mediocrity and piss-perfect pop drivel alike. On Rack, The Jesus Lizard have returned reconstituted, refreshed and positively revving. No tepid, bland tracks to show how they’ve “matured” as songwriters. No inane detours into unnecessary genre exercises. And definitely no weird moves into experimental realms that come off just as contrived and calculated as the top of the charts. The Jesus Lizard might not be young, but they will never, ever get fucking old.”
Joyce
Voyce
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Voyce is the kaleidoscopic debut album from Joyce, fronted by Jimmy Watkins — formerly of Future Of The Left, and current founder of worldwide running community Running Punks — featuring members of The Cure, Big Special, God Damn and Adwaith, with a portion of all proceeds donated to charity. Voyce was produced by Thom Edward (God Damn) at KK’s Steel Mill, the studio founded by legendary Judas Priest guitarist Kenneth “K. K.” Downing, Jr. The album is a true kaleidoscope of sounds, exploring the musician’s large array of musical influences, from up-tempo indie pop bangers, to moments of contemplative spoken word, alongside hits of blown-out noise rock.”
Allegra Krieger
Art Of The Unseen Infinity Machine
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On the ground level of an apartment building in Manhattan’s Chinatown, multiple lithium batteries combusted in an e-bike shop. It was just after midnight when songwriter Allegra Krieger awoke to a banging on her door. She made it out, fleeing down eight flights of stairs and a “wall of grey smoke,” which she recalls in her song One Or The Other. Throughout the song, Krieger cradles gratitude and conjures a universe in which she responded differently to the fire. Ultimately, she leaves us with two questions: “What do we know about living? What do we know about dying?” It was in the months following the fire that Krieger wrote much of Art Of The Unseen Infinity Machine, a collection of 12 songs that pick at the fragile membrane between life and death. Krieger’s existential meditations remain on Art Of The Unseen Infinity Machine, however her meandering melodies have taken on a stronger sense of direction. She narrates candidly and assertively; the full-band arrangements never overpower, only offer a robust platform on which Krieger’s voice reaches new heights. In Art Of The Unseen Infinity Machine, Krieger invites us to a place where transfiguration is not only possible but actively happening. From this place, the beautiful and the banal and the terrible are all laid out before us. And Krieger asks us not to look away. Instead, she invites us to stare down the beautiful and terrible in the world, and to realize that sometimes the only way out is through.”
