Notable Releases of the Week (4/4)

April is here, which means that not only did we run down the best punk songs and best rap albums of March, we also put together a list of 25 of our favorite albums of 2025 so far and a list of 50 albums we’re anticipating this spring. This week is full of great albums too; I highlight nine below, and Bill tackles another seven in Indie Basement, including DJ Koze, Black Country New Road, Miki Berenyi Trio (Lush, Moose), The Waterboys, Anika, Mekons, and Heaven.

On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include David Longstreth/Dirty Projectors/Stargaze (ft. Phil Elverum, Steve Lacy & more), Skrillex, Sleigh Bells, Elton John & Brandi Carlile, Boldy James & V Don, Shoreline Mafia, Duendita, Mizmor & Hell, The Ophelias (prod. Julien Baker), Yann Tiersen, Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals, Glare, Corbin, Chy Cartier, Penelope Trappes, Sarah Mary Chadwick, L.A. Witch, Luh Kel, Ant, Marlon Williams, Index For Working Musik, Sister Ray, Chris Conde, Babe Rainbow, Σtella, Barker, Buffet Lunch, Will Johnson, Djo, the Rachel Chinouriri EP, the Homeboy Sandman & Yeyts EP, the Commoner EP, the Perennial EP, the Dowsing/Camp Trash split, the Soul Coughing live album, and Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello’s NYC covers album (ft. Karen O, Thurston Moore & more).

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

Scowl – Are We All Angels (Dead Oceans)
One of the hardcore scene’s buzziest bands makes a full pivot towards catchy grunge-punk as they join the ranks of Phoebe Bridgers and Mitski on Dead Oceans.

Scowl’s 2021 debut album How Flowers Grow clocks in at 15 and a half minutes and delivers an onslaught of one fast, vicious hardcore song after the next. But there’s one song on the album that suggested Scowl’s musical ambitions went beyond hardcore, “Seeds To Sow,” a dreamy indie rock song with soaring clean vocals from vocalist Kat Moss. Similar to Turnstile’s “Blue by You,” the song was an outlier on the album but, in hindsight, it’s the turning point that put Scowl on the path they’ve been on ever since. The band’s 2023 EP Psychic Dance Routine was split between hardcore punk and ’90s-style alt-rock, and now they dive headfirst into the latter on Are We All Angels, their sophomore LP and first release for Dead Oceans, the indie rock-oriented label that’s also home to Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, and Wednesday.

Psychic Dance Routine also marked Scowl’s first collaboration with producer Will Yip (Turnstile, Title Fight, Mannequin Pussy, and all your other favorite punk bands), and Will’s built up a reputation for being the kind of producer that encourages bands to take whatever artistic leap is in their hearts, regardless of how “risky” it might seem from an outside perspective. And though Are We All Angels is by far their most commercially viable release to date, it’s also their riskiest because of their roots in the too-often-close-minded hardcore scene. In just about every interview they’ve recently done, they’ve had to answer some version of the question: “Are you still a hardcore band?” But for a scene that’s supposedly built on non-conformity, what Scowl’s doing should be seen as a lot more punk than pledging allegiance to an established sound and aesthetic of hardcore’s past.

Scowl’s trajectory continues to remind me of their Bay Area forebears AFI, and Are We All Angels has about as many common hardcore signifiers on it as Sing the Sorrow does–which is to say, not many. Instead, it finds Scowl banging out the kind of catchy grunge-punk anthems that you’d find on the Angus and Clueless soundtracks, and Kat’s clearer delivery only makes their words hit harder as they navigate the bullshit that surrounds all of us. The Psychic Dance Routine EP already proved that Scowl’s alt-rock stuff often leaves even more of an impact than their more aggressive material, and Are We All Angels keeps that going, with a handful of songs that already feel like some of their best. The album does start to hit a wall at times, not because it isn’t “hardcore” enough but just because it goes a little too all in on one thing. Psychic Dance Routine had more variety in 1/3 of the runtime, and Scowl are at their best when they constantly keep us on our toes the way that EP does.

Pick it up on green vinyl.

Are We All Angels by Scowl

Florist – Jellywish (Double Double Whammy)
The Brooklyn group’s latest album mixes gorgeous, gentle indie folk with existential dread.

Right from the artwork and title, you get a sense of what to expect from Florist’s new album Jellywish: wonder, whimsy, surrealism, kaleidoscopic color. There’s an escapist element, but it’s also all grounded in a sense of realism. Over the gentle, gorgeous folk guitar of “Levitate,” the album opens on a note of existential dread: “Every day I wake, wait for the tragedy/Imbalanced humanity.” By album closer “Gloom Designs,” nothing has been resolved: “Humanity, what have we done to this? Is there nothing left?” It gets dark, but the music’s hypnotic serenity suggests maybe there’s always a way to find a little peace amidst all the madness.

Jellywish by Florist

Jane Remover – Revengeseekerz (deadAir)
Jane Remover’s surprise new album is a whiplash of post-genre maximalism.

Jane Remover’s having a busy year. They already released a new album as Venturing in February, and today they surprise-released a new album under their usual moniker. The Venturing album is pretty much a straight-up shoegaze album, but Revengeseekerz is all over the place, with elements of trap, shoegaze, emo, rave, dubstep, drill & bass, and more, plus a rapped verse from Danny Brown who fits perfectly within all the post-genre weirdness. It’s a maximalist whiplash that tosses you in all kinds of directions, and it’s a great listen.

Craig Finn – Always Been (Tamarac Recordings/Thirty Tigers)
The Hold Steady leader recruits members of The War On Drugs for a collaboration that’s as perfect in execution as it is on paper.

For a certain type of rock fan, an album-length collaboration from The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn and The War On Drugs is so perfect that it’s almost too good to be true. Both are masters at bringing Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and other heartland rockers into the realm of indie rock, and both were doing it before the whole “indie-heartland rock” thing became cool. They’re the ones who made it cool. And when Craig Finn announced that his new solo album Always Been was produced by War On Drugs leader Adam Granduciel and made with a band that includes Adam and other members of TWOD, that aforementioned rock fan immediately had an idea in their head of what Always Been would probably sound like. And yes, “The Hold Steady meets The War On Drugs” is exactly what Always Been sounds like, and it’s even better in execution than it is on paper.

Always Been ranges from propulsive guitar rock to “Dancing in the Dark”-style heartland synthpop to melancholic Americana balladry to an airy spoken word song (“Fletcher’s”) that ends up being one of the album’s most arresting moments. The music is often “War On Drugs-y,” but the vocals couldn’t be the work of anyone besides Craig Finn. His delivery is unmistakable, and his lyricism on this album is at its most vivid. To quote Craig from his recent interview with Steven Hyden for UPROXX, it’s Craig’s contribution to the heartland rock pantheon of “middle-aged records,” the ones that reflect the “certain complex adult sadness that comes from something that you thought was going to work out, that didn’t work out,” marriage or otherwise. In a genre where most of the greats are old souls to begin with, it only makes sense that with more wisdom and more life experience comes one of Craig Finn’s best records yet.

Always Been by Craig Finn

Record Setter – Evoke Invoke EP (self-released)
The Texas emo/screamo band’s first lengthier release since their breakthrough 2020 LP picks up where all the passion and catharsis of that album left off.

Since releasing one of our favorite albums of 2020 with I Owe You Nothing, Texas emo/screamo band Record Setter took it relatively slow, releasing just two songs on a split with Home Is Where and one on Touché Amoré vocalist Jeremy Bolm’s Balladeers, Redefined compilation in the years that followed. But now, Record Setter are finally back with a slightly lengthier new release, the six-song Evoke Invoke EP, and it finds them sounding as impassioned as ever. The EP tackles issues like grief, familial struggles, and personal trauma with so much goosebump-inducing honesty that it’s no surprise Touché Amoré have taken an interest in them. And like that band, they toe the line between aggression and beauty, with vocals that are throat-shredding but full of clarity and leave you hanging on every word. Record Setter may not be the most prolific band, but every time they drop, they re-emerge with total catharsis.

Evoke Invoke by Record Setter

Florida Man – Plastique (The Ghost Is Clear)
The Charleston, SC post-hardcore band meet the moment in more ways than one on their first album in six years and best yet.

Florida Man emerged in the late 2010s (with two members of the now-defunct Gifts From Enola) and started picking up speed with 2019’s Tropical Depression, but then the pandemic hit, members moved to other cities, and the band ended up in pause. Finally, in 2022, they started writing and recording ideas remotely, and now they’re back with their best album yet. The past five years of unrest have clearly struck a chord with Florida Man, as Plastique contains their most pointed political commentary yet (look no further than song titles like “Cost of Living” and “Dot Gov”). The vitriol in Jim O’Connor’s voice is undeniable, and the increased lyrical conviction is matched by the most adventurous music Florida Man have ever written. Plastique kinda falls somewhere between the sludgy sarcasm of The Jesus Lizard, the polyrhythmic shuffle of At the Drive-In, the experimental hardcore of Time & Space-era Turnstile, and the anthemic barks of Militarie Gun/Drug Church. It calls back at various points to almost every era of post-hardcore, while entirely meeting the moment in more ways than one. I hesitate to even call it a comeback, but this is how you make one: by using the time away to propel yourselves towards a giant leap forwards.

Plastique by FL MAN

Panchiko – Ginkgo (Nettwerk)
The back-in-action, bigger-than-ever UK cult band are more adventurous than ever on their second reunion album. And don’t call it shoegaze.

If you’re unfamiliar with cult band Panchiko’s stranger-than-fiction backstory, here’s a refresher: They were originally around from 1997-2001 and broke up amidst obscurity, but then their 2000 debut EP D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L went viral over 15 years later after being uploaded to the internet by a 4chan user who found a copy of it in a charity shop. The surprise interest led to the band reissuing D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L and releasing the Ferric Oxide (Demos 1997–2001) comp in 2020, returning to the stage in 2021 for the first time over 20 years, and releasing their first-ever full-length album Failed at Math(s) in 2023. Now the band is a genuine sensation who have over a million monthly Spotify listeners and consistently play shows to people who weren’t born yet when Panchiko first broke up, and they’re moving right along with a second new album, Ginkgo.

The newfound interest in Panchiko has been associated with and assisted by the resurgence of shoegaze, but Panchiko were never really a shoegaze band and Ginkgo is definitely not a shoegaze album–though it does have a few hazy moments that shoegaze devotees will appreciate. It’s overall more similar to Radiohead-style art rock, with songs that range from dreamy and loungey to earthy and acoustic to out-there and synthetic to fuzzed-out rockers. They’ve also got NYC underground rapper billy woods on there (on “Shandy in the Graveyard”) and he fits right in. It’s not often that a band is given the kind of second chance that Panchiko have been given, and they’re clearly using it to make some of their most adventurous music yet.

Ginkgo by Panchiko

Ursula – I Don’t Like Anything (Indecision Records)
The debut LP from this West Coast hardcore band asks, “Is crust infused metalcore a thing?”

Apple Valley, California hardcore band have been figuring out their sound (and lineup) across a series of EPs that date back to 2018, and now they deliver their razor-sharp debut album, I Don’t Like Anything. Recorded with veteran punk producer Paul Miner (Thrice, Terror, etc), it finds the band splitting the difference between fast hardcore punk and riffy metallic hardcore. Indecision Records’ bio asks “is crust infused metalcore a thing?”, and that should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect too. Throughout it all, vocalist Whitney Marshall sounds as pissed off as possible–about the personal, the political, the social, and everything in between–and her shrieks are as vicious as they are tuneful. It’s a quick and dirty LP with 13 songs in 20 minutes, and it ends on a very fun note: a gritty punk cover of Green Day’s 1995 classic “J.A.R.”

I Don’t Like Anything by Ursula

Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky (Polyvinyl / Lucky Number)
The California-bred band returns with a new LP of road-trip-ready ’90s rock revivalism.

Scowl aren’t the only band with a new album out today that sounds like it could fit on the Clueless soundtrack. Longtime friends and collaborators Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten are back with a new album as Momma, which sounds straight out of the mid ’90s but takes place in the summer of 2022, when Momma were on their first-ever tour. More than just chronicling the breakups and new romances of that time period, their best songs shimmer with summer’s potential and immediacy, pairing easy harmonies with the punch of slacker rock. They also expand their sound into other cornerstones of that era, delivering shoegazey riffs on “Last Kiss” and hushed acoustic tenderness on “Take Me With You.” Welcome to My Blue Sky is an album that’s easy to like, and even easier to imagine blasting on a road trip with your best friend sitting shotgun. [Amanda Hatfield]

Welcome to My Blue Sky by Momma

Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including DJ Koze, Black Country New Road, Miki Berenyi Trio (Lush, Moose), The Waterboys, Anika, Mekons, and Heaven.

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

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episodes with Turnover and Bayside about the 10th anniversary of Peripheral Vision and the 20th anniversary of Bayside self-titled, respectively.

Pick up the BrooklynVegan x Alexisonfire special edition 80-page magazine, which tells the career-spanning story of Alexisonfire and comes on its own or paired with our new exclusive AOF box set and/or individual reissues, in the BV shop. Also pick up the new Glassjaw box set & book, created in part with BrooklynVegan, and browse the BrooklynVegan shop for more exclusive vinyl.