Last week, the music gods were all like, ‘Whatever, we’ve got tons of time to get all those albums out before summer.” This week they woke up and went, ‘Holy crap, it’s the end of June already? Release everything NOW!’ Welcome to my world. And welcome to your plays of the week:
Aceves
Magnum Dopus
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Mark Aceves, longtime bassist of San Jose heavyweights ZED, breaks free and steps into the spotlight with his solo debut Magnum Dopus — a loud, unfiltered testament to loss, love, rebellion, and refusing to go quietly. Written fast and raw between January and April, Magnum Dopus captures the energy of a life lived with fists clenched and heart wide open. After losing both his bandmate Sean Boyles and his father within a year, Aceves poured every ounce of grief, fight, and hope into nine songs that don’t just demand to be heard — they demand to be felt. Magnum Dopus is messy, beautiful, and real — the kind of record you scream along to at 2 a.m. when the world feels like it’s ending and you’re still fighting anyway.”
Billy Allen + The Pollies
Black Noise
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “There is a ferocious Southern engine inside of Billy Allen + The Pollies’ debut album Black Noise. It thrums to life atop a classic rock chassis and expertly weaves in and out of gospel, grunge, funk and soul along its eleven-song journey. From the explosive top of the album to the spiritually haunting final track, Black Noise is a genre-defiant haymaker that lands. Listening to Black Noise feels like walking on the alien terrain of a new genre. It sounds like garage grunge by way of Jackie Wilson. The very same kerchief Allen uses to wipe sweat from his brow on stage could be carrying DNA from Wilson Pickett, Joe Cocker, D’Angelo, Ziggy Stardust or any of The Spiders From Mars. Theirs is a gritty and trailblazing sound. They are a band full of smiling time travelers, able to visit and draw from a multitude of eras and styles. Black Noise is an album that devastates you to the point of remembering why you love music. This is the type of band you root for. You can’t help it. They’re that damn good.”
BC Camplight
A Sober Conversation
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Every BC Camplight album has a backstory every bit as compelling as its music. A Sober Conversation is no different, as virtuoso songwriter and pianist Brian Christinzio documents the last two years of his life, finally confronting a shocking childhood trauma while embracing sobriety, to create his bravest and most revealing record. It’s an enthralling, sometimes haunting quasi-concept record marked by ruthless tragic-comedic purging and sublime, intricate melody, knitting lyrical screenplays to dazzling arrangements. It is BC Camplight at the height of his remarkable powers. “Around the time of (his 2023 album) The Last Rotation,” Christinzio says, “I realised I was living in this perpetual childhood, messed up all the time, trying to free myself from responsibility and all the bad thoughts I had. It led to a kind of existential crisis… I was craving meaning, thinking about having kids… I’ve been running away from stuff for a long time. You can either try and achieve milestones in life or chase a dime bag — you can’t do both. And I’ve decided not to let myself be defeated anymore.”
Cid Rim
Sprint
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “At the end of 2023, Clemens Bacher — otherwise known as Cid Rim — skipped Austrian winter for the first time in his life, opting instead for the sun drenched climes of Mexico. What emerged was his fourth studio album Sprint — a technicolour ode to joy and a study in leaving your comfort zone. True to its name, Sprint is always on the move. The album flies out of the blocks. The 12 tracks zip past in a multi-coloured blur of delightful earworms and big swings, drawing from ’70s jazz fusion and the playbook of pop; all of it underpinned by Cid Rim’s wickedly clever drumming. Bacher, who holds a degree in jazz drums from Vienna Conservatory, deliberately took a less engineered approach to the composition than in previous albums. “Writing pop is risky,” he explains, “I’m used to hiding a bit behind my technical ability… it feels scary to step out of that and be more to-the-point.”
Daisy The Great
The Rubber Teeth Talk
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “I think we play a lot with the feeling in your dreams where you don’t have that feeling of doubt, the ability to do things in dreams that you can’t do. I don’t know, I feel like in my dreams, I’m not — I mean, sometimes I am, which is concerning — scrolling on my phone in dreams. I think in dreams, we play a lot with that consciousness that’s like you just accept the things that are happening in dreams, even though they’re absurd. I think that the way that the dreams fit in, there are a couple of songs that are inspired by dreams — well, a few of them are dreams — and then one of them is like I went to the dentist and they gave me way too much laughing gas and I tripped out in my head. That whole experience is also in one of the songs, but I think that it feels like all confronting something unknown, and I think, in your dreams, that can feel like something really huge and imaginative and grand. Then in the smaller moments on the record, it’s like more life, things that are really real but feel scary or unknown or feel like there’s doubt or insecurity in that. And we are learning from our dream selves in moments how to show up for the moments that are more real in your real life. But I would say, confronting the unknown, dreams. We’re feeling quite playful on the record, so we’re really building worlds, song to song, and letting our imaginative side be free. At least while we were writing, it felt that way.”
Deadguy
Near-Death Travel Services
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Hardcore / metal legends Deadguy return after 30 years with their sophomore LP Near-Death Travel Services. After reuniting on stage to prove that a few decades of dust couldn’t keep them from tearing into audiences like old times, Deadguy innately understood how heavy and deranged a new album would need to be — and that’s exactly what they delivered. Simply put, Near-Death Travel Services absolutely rips. A deserved follow up to the highly influential, hall-of-fame-worthy Fixation On A Coworker debut, Near-Death Travel Services tears into 11 tracks with the same confidence and palpable fury of its predecessor. Instead of moving away from their sound, Deadguy dug in deeper, expanding their songs and giving vocalist Tim Singer more room to again show why he’s been one of the best vocalists in extreme music since the first Bush administration.”
Electric Citizen
EC4
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Seven years after their last release Helltown, Electric Citizen return with their fourth album EC4 — a powerful statement of renewal and raw energy. Written by Ross Dolan with contributions from the full band, the album was meticulously crafted over several years and recorded with Mike Montgomery and John Hoffman at Candyland Studio in Dayton, KY. The album was mixed by Collin Dupuis (Lana Del Rey, Black Keys) in Detroit and mastered by JJ Golden at Golden Mastering in California. The album art was created by Neil Krug (Lana Del Rey, Tame Impala, Weyes Blood), who the band worked with for their first album Sateen. Electric Citizen are ready to unleash their most potent work yet — a fusion of hypnotic grooves, searing guitars, and Laura Dolan’s mesmerizing vocals. EC4 is both a homecoming and a rebirth.”
Mollie Elizabeth
Dirty Blonde
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Imagine, for a second, a world in which all your girlhood dreams come true. Everything feels beautiful, glamorous, and light. This is precisely the world 21-year-old Mollie Elizabeth invites you into with her debut EP Dirty Blonde. Not unlike her Pinterest mood boards of soft pastel pinks and vintage silks, the Washington singer-songwriter curates an intricate and articulated world of feminine excess and joy. Mollie’s music isn’t just a fantasy; it’s a way to orient yourself in this cold world, to not just survive its cruelty, but to beautify it. “It’s hard and scary to be in the world right now,” she says. “It’s just so difficult to connect or even know who you are.” Her mother had introduced her to vintage legends early on, playing her Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney on an old radio at the family’s beach house in Oregon. Mollie associated their songs with joy, finding their sound far more compelling than modern pop. She carried the nimble sense of storytelling from their songs into her own. Dirty Blonde is full of both daytime splendor and torchy nighttime romance. It’s Old Hollywood glamour through and through. Mollie perfumes her music with a rare kind of chic, one that comes with a winking self-assurance and a genuine sweetness.”
Fishbone
Stockholm Syndrome
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “For decades, Fishbone have been an unstoppable force — genre-defying, politically fearless, and relentlessly original. Emerging from the Los Angeles punk scene in the early 1980s, the band became known for their explosive fusion of ska, punk, funk, and soul, blazing a trail through music history with a sound that was as energetic as it was uncompromising. Now, they are about release their long-awaited ninth studio album Stockholm Syndrome — their first full-length LP in over two decades. Packed with infectious melodies, raw honesty, and politically charged anthems, the album is a bold return that honors the band’s roots while pushing their legacy into the present. Fishbone’s creative fire is burning brighter than ever. Today’s lineup includes founding members frontman Angelo Moore (vocals, saxophones) and Christopher Dowd (keys, trombone, vocals) and the return of guitarist Tracey “Spacey T” Singleton, joined by James “Jimi” Jones (bass), Hassan Hurd (drums), John “JS” Williams II (trumpet). Stockholm Syndrome speaks to today’s fractured world with the wisdom, fire, and funk only Fishbone can deliver.”
Frankie Cosmos
Different Talking
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Different Talking, the sixth and, so far, best album by N.Y.C. indie-rock four-piece Frankie Cosmos, seems to exist across time and space, as we all kind of do. It’s a collection of fragments and memories, remembered places, and reinterpreted feelings that adds up to a lucent, humming whole: A sturdy, worldly indie-rock record about aging and the passage of time that nonetheless manages to feel sharply current. Lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter Greta Kline has long been heralded as one of contemporary indie music’s most deft and most necessary writers, but on Different Talking, her lyrics soften out slightly, the wry cynicism that defined recent records now giving way to an acknowledgment of the awesome, and necessary, fallibility of the human brain and heart. To classify Different Talking as a return to form, or at least a return to the lush directness of earlier Frankie Cosmos records, would be rude but also wholly incorrect: as Different Talking makes clear, you can never return to the comfort and bravery of your early 20s, but that person always kind of lives inside you, no matter how much you change. Different Talking is about finding that person, honoring them, and learning from them. “A lot of the album is about being grown up and figuring out how to know yourself — like, ‘What is moving on?’ ” says Kline. “How do we move on when we’re addicted to a cycle of haunting our own past? Writing songs is just the way through that.”
Durand Jones & The Indications
Flowers
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Durand Jones & The Indications are in bloom. After more than a decade of music-making, the trio have blossomed as a unit and are basking in their successes. On their aptly titled new album Flowers, The Indications unfurl their true colors — embracing all their roots and influences, maturation and confidence, and share them with the world. “We spent the last 10 years building this house and now we’re living in it,” says Blake Rhein. Flowers reflects DJI’s growth and conviction: It’s grown and sexy, fit for cruising and kissing, and delights in the softer side of soul and disco. “All of these songs touch on such mature topics, things that we never got to sing about before,” says Durand Jones. “We are all in our 30s, have all been through ups and downs in our personal lives and professional lives, and flowers are a sign of maturity, growth, spring, productivity.”
Lammping
Never Never
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Lammping is a Toronto psych project led by composer/producer Mikhail Galkin and drummer Jay Anderson. Galkin has a diverse background, having produced for hip-hop legends like J-Live, Boldy James and People Under The Stairs, as well as releasing a critically acclaimed solo album as DJ Alibi and working as a film/TV composer. Anderson is a seasoned figure in the Toronto indie scene, playing in bands such as Badge Epoque Ensemble, Biblical, ROY and many others. The two first connected after seeing each other perform in different projects and bonding over their shared love for ’90s New York hip-hop, skate videos, DIY culture, Beach Boys harmonies and everything between. The project was born from their desire to create music without limitations — driven by a spirit of exploration, embracing all kinds of genres, sounds, and influences under the Lammping umbrella. The result is a uniquely eclectic project where anything goes, as long as it feels true to their creative instincts. The live version of the band is a five-piece, with Toronto musicians Colm Hinds, Scott Hannigan and Matt Aldred lending their talents on vocals, guitar and bass.”
Late Night Drive Home
As I Watch My Life Online
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Late Night Drive Home have never known a world without internet — without access to the endless stream of joy, sorrow, and titillation that we all tune in and tune out to on the daily. In many ways, the guys can’t extricate themselves from that reality, but they’re trying to grapple with it. The culmination of that, then, is the buoyant yet ominous As I Watch My Life Online. “The record is a critique and a meta representation of the current online landscape: A whole new world or giant united country that connects us between cities, forcing us to be online. Instant gratification is at our fingertips — likes, follows, and entertainment a click away,” says guitarist Juan “Ockz” Vargas. “It shows the listener how we grew up in the early days of peak internet — how we saw it all unfold. We want to give our perspective on the internet while creating art alongside it.”
