Notable Releases of the Week (5/16)

I’m excited because this weekend I’m seeing Friendship, the new Tim Robinson & Paul Rudd movie that’s been called “I Love You, Man for sickos” and “a feature-length version” of an I Think You Should Leave sketch. Today also happens to be the release date for the new album by the band Friendship, and that’s one of the eight albums I review below.

Over in Indie Basement, Bill tackles Billy Nomates, The Gotobeds, M(h)aol, Grails, Ezra Furman, and Artificial Go, and this week’s honorable mentions include Tune-Yards, Pelican, Aminé, Chuck D (Public Enemy), Snoop Dogg (ft. Sexyy Red, Pharrell & more), Xzibit (ft. Dr. Dre, Ice Cube & more), Steve Von Till (Neurosis), Thor & Friends (Swans), Peter Doherty (The Libertines), Ben Frost, Erin Durant, Blood Monolith (Ulthar, Undeath, etc), Mares of Thrace, Triathalon, Wounded Touch, Kadavar, DRAM & Ellis Quinn, Chuckyy, Soot Sprite, Coffin Prick, José James, Death Before Dishonor, Duke Garwood, Yuno, Raging Nathans, Mourning [A] BLKstar, Tee Grizzley, Valee & Harry Fraud, Lecrae & Miles Minnick, Damiano David (Måneskin), Cautious Clay, Miso Extra, Water Damage, Sir Woman, Reuben James, Nicole Lawrence, Shanti Celeste, Spill Tab, Superdestroyer, Gold Dust, Your Grandparents, Makeshift Spirituals, Pretty Rude, Nytt Land, Ekkstacy, 100%WET, Buck-O-Nine, Robin Trower, Charlie Musselwhite, Ben Hackett, Dan Mangan, Matt Maltese, Milena Casado, MonoNeon, Slow Joy, Windser, Larcenia Roe, Alexandra Savior, Tyler Braden, Bryce Leatherwood, Sleep Theory, Bury Tomorrow, Sofi Tukker, MØ, Morgan Wallen, the Homeboy Sandman & Brand The Builder EP, the Youth Code EP, the Stress Positions EP, the Thanks For Coming (Rachel Brown of Water From Your Eyes) EP, the Sorry Mom EP, the Kilo Kish EP, the Bug Crush EP, the Swimming Bell EP, the Comet EP, the Fine Food Market EP, the Dandy Warhols remix EP, and the 10th anniversary edition of Gruff Rhys’ American Interior.

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

Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up (Merge)
Stirring storytelling meets hypnotic, earthy indie rock on the Dan Wriggins-led band’s latest LP.

As much as he has a knack for melody, Dan Wriggins is first and foremost a storyteller. On the followup to Friendship’s great 2022 album Love the Stranger, the band (whose members also play in 2nd Grade, Hour, and MJ Lenderman’s touring band The Wind) have a droning quality to their indie rock soundscapes, and Dan’s words spill out onto the proverbial page, in the spirit of artists like Phil Elverum and the late David Berman. Caveman Wakes Up doesn’t have “choruses” so much as it has occasional, subtle climaxes, and those can be even more effective. Like the aforementioned MJ Lenderman and Wednesday, Friendship gradually emerged as one of the brightest voices within DIY American indie rock, and they also share with those bands a knack for merging earthy Americana with classic indie guitar rock. And while we’re on the topic, two members of Friendship run Lenderman’s former label home Dear Life Records, Friendship used to be Orindal labelmates with Wednesday before both bands signed to bigger labels, and Dan Wriggins demoed parts of this album at Lenderman and Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman’s North Carolina home and wrote some of these songs on Lenderman’s classical guitar. I bring all this up not just for the fun facts, but also to say that Friendship are more than a band; they’re active members of a thriving community and you can really hear the way Friendship and their peers are influencing each other and growing in tandem. It’s no surprise that, as this new guard of DIY is getting bigger and bigger, Friendship are also getting better and better.

Caveman Wakes Up by Friendship

Arm’s Length – There’s A Whole World Out There (Pure Noise)
After building up a reputation for writing climactic, cathartic, goosebump-inducing emo songs, the Ontario band’s fine-tuned second album only takes that further.

They say you have your whole life to write your first album and six months to write your second, but especially for a young band like Arm’s Length, that’s only true if “your whole life” ends in your early twenties. The members of the Ontario emo band were still teenagers who had barely made it out of their hometown when they wrote the bulk of their great 2022 debut album Never Before Seen, Never Again Found, but now they’re in their mid twenties, they’ve spent three straight years touring all around the globe, and they’ve found that there’s a whole world out there. Or, as singer/guitarist Allen Steinberg puts it in press materials for their newly-released sophomore album, “I’m probably just a bit more mature, as my frontal lobe is developing as we speak.”

The wisdom, life experience, and musical experience that only comes with time and effort is all over There’s A Whole World Out There, which improves upon Never Before Seen, Never Again Found in just about every way. They continue to carry the torch for early/mid 2010s-era Hotelier and Pianos Become the Teeth–who they unabashedly consider two of their biggest influences–and the new album also finds them embracing folkier stuff like Bon Iver and Phoebe Bridgers (two songs have banjos!) and bringing in pop sensibilities informed by a love affair with Porter Robinson’s 2024 album Smile. In fact, Allen says that one of the banjo-infused songs, “You Ominously End,” was written to sound like a pop-punkified version of Bon Iver’s “Holocene,” and if that sounds interesting to you on paper, then Arm’s Length are exactly the kind of band you should be listening to. Arm’s Length also share The Hotelier and Pianos Become the Teeth’s knack for turning grief, loss, and trauma into powerful, climactic, goosebump-inducing songs, and There’s A Whole World Out There tugs at the heartstrings at every turn. When a band’s as dead-serious, deep, and genuine as Arm’s Length, the catharsis is inescapable.

There’s A Whole World Out There by Arm’s Length

The Callous Daoboys – I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven (MNRK Heavy)
The Atlanta band’s third album is home to some of their heaviest material yet as well as straight-up pop music, and a whole slew of unpredictable things in between.

If you’ve ever wondered what a cross between Mr. Bungle and The Dillinger Escape Plan would sound like and then realized that kind of exists but still weren’t satisfied with the answer, you may be looking for The Callous Daoboys. Even more so than their first two albums, I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven carries the mathcore torch for the latter while embracing the whimsical frenzy and the fucked up pop sensibilities of the former. It’s home to some of their heaviest material yet as well as straight-up pop music, and a whole slew of unpredictable things in between. If heavy music had a place in mainstream culture the way it did in the ’90s and 2000s, The Callous Daoboys could be the new System Of A Down–a deeply strange, heavy rock band with nearly-inexplicable crossover success. The razor-sharp funk-pop of “Lemon” could be their “Drive” or their “Fly,” and if it was, it would draw listeners in to an even-more-shockingly-metal band than those songs did. This record leaves me feeling nostalgic for a bygone era without making me feel like I’ve heard anything quite like this before, and that’s an unusual feat. This week in particular has been a good reminder that music critics can’t control what passes for mainstream metal these days, but I’ll leave you with this: there is obviously still a huge audience for the weird, abrasive music that ruled the airwaves at the turn of the millennium. If you or someone you know wants more of that music in your life, it’s right here.

I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven by The Callous Daoboys

Rico Nasty – Lethal (Fueled by Ramen)
The Maryland rapper’s Fueled by Ramen debut channels everything from her new label’s punk history to the sweeter, brighter sounds of her trademark “sugar trap.”

Maryland rapper Rico Nasty has joined the historically pop punk label Fueled by Ramen, and it’s a pairing that makes quite a bit of sense–her music is often more traditionally “punk” than a handful of other artists who joined FBR in recent years. Her FBR debut Lethal backs this claim up; its lead single “TEETHSUCKER (YEA3x)” is a Beastie Boys-style rap-rock rager, “Crash” sounds like New Order by way of blink-182, and “Smoke Break” is just a straight-up punk song by any metric. But Rico hasn’t bent her sound to fit her new record label’s catalog. Lethal is one of her most wide-ranging projects yet, from her rock-oriented abrasion to the sweeter, brighter sounds of her trademark sugar trap, to dark, moody rap songs done in the way that only Rico Nasty can. Lethal makes just as much sense on Fueled by Ramen as it would on anything from TDE to 4AD–Rico is really in a lane of her own, and that lane is highly versatile.

Ken Pomeroy – Cruel Joke (Rounder)
The rising Oklahoma singer/songwriter’s second album offers up atmospheric country-folk hybrids that could stand tall next to the likes of Emmylou Harris, Townes Van Zandt, and Gillian Welch.

Ken Pomeroy has always sounded wise beyond her years. The Oklahoma singer/songwriter released her first album and two EPs before turning 20, and they found her developing a gentle country/folk hybrid that could sit comfortably between Emmylou Harris and Townes Van Zandt. On her sophomore album and Rounder Records debut, Cruel Joke, she only sounds even wiser and more impactful. These are primarily bare-bones acoustic songs, with the occasional embellishment from pedal steel, banjo, or some light drumming, and they’re cut with a subtle, melancholic atmosphere that might bring Gillian Welch’s collaborations with David Rawlings to mind. It features just one guest vocalist, John Moreland, who also has a knack for conveying big emotions atop minimal arrangements, and the album also comes ahead of a tour with the similarly somber Iron & Wine. Cruel Joke fits in perfectly with both of those artists, and I haven’t seen Ken live yet, but I have a feeling she shares their ability to bring an audience to pin-drop silence.

Cruel Joke by Ken Pomeroy

Lido Pimienta – La Belleza (ANTI-)
The shapeshifting Lido Pimienta’s first album in five years is a sharp left turn towards orchestral, modern classical music.

For the followup to her 2020 cumbia-infused art pop album Miss Colombia, Lido Pimienta has made a surprising pivot towards orchestral, modern classical music. “The thought of making ‘classical music’ never occurred to me before,” she says in press materials for the new album, “but making experimental electronica on Miss Colombia was not premeditated either. All I create is a natural evolution of my curiosity and stubbornness.” She also adds that part of this creative left-turn came from feeling frustrated with how her music tends to be categorized. “If no matter what style or genre of music I make, the result will always be relegated to the World Music aisle—in stores, in the algorithm,” she said, “then why not create something no one would ever expect from a Caribbean woman?” She made it with producer Owen Pallett, who has a long history of mixing classical with non-classical, and the two of them arranged the music that was then performed and recorded by the 60-piece Medellín Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s an album with dramatic strings, delicate harp balladry, Gregorian chant, Lido’s soaring Spanish-language vocals, and only brief flashes of the Caribbean rhythms that fueled her earlier work. Calling this “world music” would be way off base even if that phrase wasn’t tone deaf to begin with, and the move that Lido makes with this album is as badass as Ethel Cain’s noise album and as conversation-starting as Beyoncé’s country album. It’s always cool to see an artist challenging their audience like this, and even better when the music’s as grand as La Belleza is.

La Belleza by Lido Pimienta

John Galm – River of Blood (Count Your Lucky Stars)
The emo revival pioneer embraces his somber indie folk side on his first proper solo album in 11 years, and one of his best albums yet, period.

Emo revival OGs Snowing are back for what’s turning into their longest reunion run since their 2011 breakup, but when it comes to new music from singer John Galm, he’s turning his attention back to his solo career. River of Blood is his first proper solo album since he released his solo debut Sky of No Stars over a decade ago, and it finds John putting his spin on the somber indie folk of artists like Sufjan Stevens, Iron & Wine, and Elliott Smith. It’s a sound that suits him at least as well as mathy Midwest emo, and I might even straight-up say it suits him better. A somber solo album like this one is a great place to get personal and vulnerable, and that’s exactly what John does. It explores his recent path to sobriety after years of heavy drinking, and it also wrestles with the idea of “home.” John grew up in Pennsylvania’s suburban and rural-leaning Lehigh Valley before moving to Philly as a young adult, around the time that Snowing was taking off, and River of Blood finds him very literally going back to where he was raised. The song “Darktown” is named after a small riverside part of the Valley that’s frequently fallen victim to flooding, and even sounds of the river were captured by John and used as field recordings on this album. River of Blood tells a story in more ways than one, and it feels like one of the most cohesive, complete projects of John Galm’s 20+ years of making music.

River of Blood by John Galm

Full of Hell – Broken Sword, Rotten Shield EP (Closed Casket Activities)
A brief but musically-diverse EP from the impossible-to-pin-down metallic hardcore band Full of Hell.

Full of Hell remain ridiculously prolific. Last year they released two albums and then two more by one of their side projects, and now they’re back with another EP (ahead of a tour with Harms Way, Kruelty, Jarhead Fertilizer, and Clique). The EP is just seven songs but it feels as hefty as Full of Hell’s full-lengths, with a mix of grindy fury, noise/ambient tracks, and some slower (than grindcore) songs that dive into sludge and dissonant death metal. The run this band has been on lately has been incredible to witness, and Broken Sword, Rotten Shield suggests they haven’t lost an ounce of their urgency.

Broken Sword, Rotten Shield by Full of Hell

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Billy Nomates, The Gotobeds, M(h)aol, Grails, Ezra Furman, and Artificial Go.

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

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episode with Pelican about 11 albums that influenced their new album Flickering Resonance.

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.