Notable Releases of the Week (2/21)

There’s been so much nationally televised music this month that I’m starting to take it for granted. Since we last spoke, surviving members of Nirvana surprise-reunited on a national stage for the second time in two weeks (six days before what would’ve been Kurt Cobain’s 58th birthday). This time it was thanks to SNL’s 50th anniversary celebration, and two days after that, Paul McCartney did an Abbey Road medley on TV for the same reason, after stopping by NYC’s Bowery Ballroom for three incredibly intimate shows. Outside of The Beatles and Nirvana, this week also brought the exciting news of Superheaven’s first album in 10 years, Cap’n Jazz’s U.S. reunion tour, and the surprise first show in seven years from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Busy week!

On top of all that, I review six new albums this week, and Bill tackles five more in Indie Basement, including Q Lazzarus, Porridge Radio, The Murder Capital, and Trupa Trupa. And for even more, this week’s honorable mentions include Baths, Califone, Tim Hecker, Killswitch Engage, Scour, SpiritWorld, Pissgrave, Nao, Colin Self, Wrekmeister Harmonies, Sacrifice, Friends In Real Life (Pat the Bunny), The Pomps, Morray, Basia Bulat, The Stylistics, The Wombats, Sam Fender, Cash and Skye, Saya Gray, Smif-N-Wessun, Dave East & Ransom, Nardo Wick, SAINt JHN, Iann Dior, Pouya, BlocBoy JB, Kelora, Puma Blue, Max Frost, Gaytheist, Cici Arthur, The Young Mothers, Anna Shoemaker, Wren, IDER, Abdomen, Jules Reidy, Cristina Vane, Laurie Torres, Katy Pinke, Eem Triplin, Mandrake Handshake, Silverstein, Tate McRae, the Glixen EP, the Rafiq Bhatia EP, the Mongrel EP, the Blockhead EP, and Third Man’s expanded reissue of Ted Lucas’ 1975 psych-folk album.

Read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?

Youth Lagoon – Rarely Do I Dream (Fat Possum)
Dusting off some childhood home movies in his parents’ basement led to Trevor Powers’ most private, personal album since his first LP as Youth Lagoon

Childhood, family, and grainy nostalgia have been part of Trevor Powers’ Youth Lagoon project since the very beginning. On his 2011 bedroom pop debut album The Year of Hibernation, he sang, “When I was seventeen, my mother said to me, ‘Don’t stop imagining. The day that you do is the day that you die,'” and he’s carried that wide-eyed whimsy throughout his his career, despite some sobering realities that threatened to halt his musical output for good. On his latest album, Rarely Do I Dream, he returns to his childhood home and goes even further back in history. After wrapping up his tour behind 2023’s Heaven Is A Junkyard, Trevor found a shoebox full of home videos from his childhood in his parents’ basement, and those videos became a core source of inspiration as he began writing Rarely Do I Dream, which is peppered with audio samples from the tapes. The Year of Hiberation captured Trevor at the dawn of his twenties, surrounded by his bedroom walls, and with this new album, he says he “wanted to really make someone feel like they were inside [his] living room in 1993, but rearrange the furniture a bit.” With that goal in mind, he crafted an album that taps into the homey, nostalgia-inducing bedroom pop of his instant-classic debut, but warps it with the psychedelia, art rock, and Americana tendencies that he honed on Youth Lagoon’s three subsequent albums. Rarely Do I Dream is a musical reinvention, just like every Youth Lagoon album has been, but it also feels like Trevor is embracing a familiar comfort zone rather than pushing himself to get out of one, as he’s done in the past. These songs feel as natural and personal to Trevor Powers in his mid thirties as The Year of Hibernation did to Trevor in his early twenties. The latter was a coming-of-age piece driven by a character on the cusp of leaving home, and this new one embodies the feeling of stopping back in 15 years later, dusting off some old boxes, and seeing it all a little differently than you ever have before.

Rarely Do I Dream by Youth Lagoon

Sunny War – Armageddon in a Summer Dress (New West)
The latest from Sunny War is a display of gritty Americana, with help from punk legends Steve Ignorant (Crass) and John Doe (X) and folk singers Valerie June and Tré Burt

Folk and punk have long gone hand in hand. They’re both music of the people, with a low barrier of entry; if you’ve got a few chords and something to say, you’re in. “To me it’s the same kind of music,” says singer/songwriter Sunny War. “Folk used to be very anti-establishment. Pete Seeger, union songs, Woody Guthrie—that’s punk rock shit. It’s all about being an outsider.” The shared DNA of both styles of music was a guiding light on Sunny’s last album, down to the title Anarchist Gospel, and she explores that space even more overtly on her new one, Armageddon in a Summer Dress.

Produced once again by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff, etc), Armageddon has four guest vocalists: two punk legends (Steve Ignorant of Crass and John Doe of X) and two folk singers (Valerie June and Tré Burt), all of whom make perfect pairs with Sunny’s own expressive voice. In her own words, she wrote these songs with “a badass five-piece band” in mind, and it’s brimming with a gritty full-band energy that her earlier records only hinted at. It’s an album that can be overtly anti-establishment (“Walking Contradiction” with Steve Ignorant), surreal (“Ghosts”), and personal (“No One Calls Me Baby”), and it all comes down to Sunny having those things that have always made folk and punk so timeless and powerful: a few chords and something to say.

Armageddon In A Summer Dress by Sunny War

Anxious – Bambi (Run For Cover)
A near-band-derailing experience led to an expansive sophomore album from one of the most exciting bands in emo/punk/hardcore

For Anxious singer Grady Allen, their 2022 debut album Little Green House and the endless touring that followed didn’t feel like the start of something; it felt like the culmination of everything the early-twentysomething had been working towards since he formed the band as a young teenager. He needed some distance from music so he enrolled in college–the kind of decision that could easily derail a band’s career. But for Anxious, it actually ended up saving them and it made them even stronger on their sophomore album Bambi.

With Grady needing space, guitarist Dante Melucci contributed more songwriting and stepped into a role that could qualify as co-lead vocalist. On songs like “Head & Spine” and “Bambi’s Theme,” Anxious have some of the most inspired emo dual vocals this side of Tell All Your Friends. Other songs, like the ballad-driven “Some Girls,” find Dante contributing some of the most personal songwriting he’s ever brought to Anxious. When Grady wrote his lyrics, the subject matter that came out was impacted by where he was at in life and with music too, he says, “whether that’s disillusionment with music/hardcore subculture, or my friendships, or intimate romantic relationships.”

Grady refers to his lyricism on Bambi as “more subtle” than on Little Green House, and Bambi is more subtle musically too. Like a lot of great debut albums do, Little Green House found Anxious with their foot on the gas almost the entire time, churning out banger after banger. On Bambi, Anxious allow themselves to slow down a bit and take some detours, whether that’s incorporating harmonies inspired by The Beach Boys and Animal Collective, or blurring the lines between louder-than-life rock music and a sentimental softness the way Jimmy Eat World did on Bleed American. The range of influences on Bambi is wider than on Little Green House, and the end result is something that sounds even more original. Bambi requires a little more patience than Little Green House did, and Anxious have earned it.

For much more on Bambi, read my interview with Anxious.

Bambi by ANXIOUS

Maruja – Tir na nÓg (Music For Nations)
The rising UK jazz-punks drop the “punk” on this new EP in favor of 25 minutes of immersive, spiritual jazz

Since 2016, UK band Maruja have been churning out a mix of art punk, prog, post-rock, jazz, and more that’s grouped in with the likes of black midi, Squid and Black Country, New Road (the Windmill Scene, if you will), but for their new four-song, 25-minute EP Tir na nÓg, they go all in on jazz. The EP was recorded live in studio and the band says it was fully improvised, and vocals only show up in the form of wordless chants–Harry Wilkinson’s usual speak-shouting is nowhere to be found. And before you write it off as just a genre exercise or a side project, it’s neither of those things at all. Tir na nÓg shows that jazz isn’t just an ingredient in Maruja’s art punk; it’s a style of music that they know inside and out. This EP carries the torch for Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders as much as their last couple EPs carried the torch at various points for Swans, King Crimson, and This Heat, and the members of Maruja feed off of each other in a way that would’ve made their spiritual jazz forebears proud. Too often, rock bands that flirt with jazz put the technical elements in the forefront. Maruja know it’s all about feeling.

Patterson Hood – Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams (ATO)
The Drive-By Truckers co-founder sits down at the piano and gets help from Waxahatchee, Wednesday, Lydia Loveless & more on his first solo album in 12 years

Drive-By Truckers have been in the air lately. Their classic 2004 album The Dirty South got an acclaimed, comprehensive 20th anniversary reissue in 2023 and the band is regularly cited as an influence on the current indie-country boom (including on MJ Lenderman, who recently joined them on stage), not to mention former Drive-By Trucker Jason Isbell continues to spread the band’s gospel by playing some of his old DBT songs on tour to his crossover audiences. And now, co-founder Patterson Hood has released his first solo album in 12 years, which includes guest vocals from two leaders of the indie-country boom, Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield and Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman, the latter of whom he refers to as “my favorite new band.” There’s also a duet with new-gen country rocker Lydia Loveless, producdtion from The Decemberists’ Chris Funk, and contributions from Kevin Morby, Brad & Phil Cook, Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin, David Barbe, Stuart Bogie, Patterson’s DBT bandmates Brad Morgan & Jay Gonzalez, The Decemberists’ Nate Query, and more.

Like his last solo album, 2012’s Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance, a lot of people play on Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams but it very much feels like a solo album. As a solo artist, Patterson often tones down the harder-edged Southern rock elements of DBT, and this time he did that by trying out something new: writing the album primarily on piano and recording the piano parts himself. He’s also got some gentle acoustic guitar, the occasional fuzzed-out electric, horns, vintage analog synths, and some sweeping string arrangements, and he came out with a collection of gorgeously melancholic songs that could fit on early ’70s Neil Young albums. Patterson refers to it as sort of an unintended concept album revolving around themes of his youth, and you can hear a sense of nostalgic longing in his voice, which sounds wearied and wide-eyed all at once. The timely guests will probably help bring a little more attention and maybe a new generation of listeners to the album, and if that is in fact the case, Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams will introduce any curious newcomers to what DBT’s diehard fanbase have been wowed by all along: one of the most consistent songwriters in 21st century Americana.

Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams by Patterson Hood

Spy – Seen Enough (Closed Casket Activities)
Six songs and less than 10 minutes of raw, fast, no-frills hardcore punk

There’s been some talk these past few years about how the hardcore scene is currently more dominated by metalcore than by punk, and whether or not that’s 100% accurate is up for debate but I’d say there’s at least some truth to it. One notable exception, though, is the fast-rising Bay Area band Spy. If Spy hit the scene a decade earlier, they’d probably be regularly playing fests like Chaos In Tejas and New York’s Alright alongside other raw, garagey punk bands like Glue and Hoax, but today they’re bringing that energy to LDB Fest, Outbreak, and Sound & Fury. Their Closed Casket Activities debut Seen Enough is a six-song EP that clocks in at under 10 minutes, and it feels like a classic hardcore punk EP, the kind of thing that would fit in next to anything from Nervous Breakdown to Ruined. Recorded with Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Jeff Rosenstock, etc), it’s fast, raw, and topped off by vocals from Peter Pawlak that are genuinely vicious. It’s nothing groundbreaking (not that I assume any member of Spy would claim otherwise), but it’s nice to hear a prominent hardcore band injecting the current scene with this kind of high-speed intensity.

Seen Enough by SPY

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Q Lazzarus, Porridge Radio, The Murder Capital, and Trupa Trupa.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive.

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