Since I was a child, I’ve enjoyed plenty of summer days in New York City, but this was the first I experienced in Mamdani’s New York City. As I ate my way along a leisurely path from Penn Station to the Gramercy Theatre (a walking slice from Upside Pizza, noodles at 1915 Lanzhou Hand Pulled Noodles and a scoop at Caffè Panna), the city appeared to offer little resistance against his diabolical LGBTQ communism. Maybe the peculiar influx of discontinued Fisker cabs was his idea, too? The lack of wind-swirled street-garbage, sunburned/hungover Eagles fans and overt political cronyism left me homesick, but it was a taste of home that brought me here in the first place: Philly’s own Skrilla, celebrating the release of his new (digital-only) album, Z.
In my varied-yet-limited experience, live rap shows are often more miss than hit, which is odd because the music itself is indisputably America’s greatest cultural export. A mid-sized, all-ages Live Nation club venue just doesn’t seem like the place where the magic of hip-hop thrives, but I was willing to set aside my preconceptions (my personal disappointment beginning with a Jedi Mind Tricks show a quarter of a century ago) and see what this relatively youth-oriented billing could do. In case you live a lifestyle completely devoid of any contact with children, you might’ve missed that kids have been randomly yelling “six seven!” for the past year in pure adult-confounding bliss, a live-action meme originating from Skrilla’s breakout hit “Doot Doot (6 7)”. In our post sense-making culture, this makes perfect sense. About half of the people entering the club were actively smoking thick, cloudy weed, many of whom also sported big orthodontic braces on the teeth that sucked it in. Let’s get wanded, hand our leftover dumplings over to security, and head inside.
With a comfortable spot snagged up in the back-wall stadium seating, I was again reminded that the correlation between monthly Spotify listener metrics and asses in seats is unreliable at best. The show was originally booked at Brooklyn’s Warsaw; the last-minute move to the smaller Gramercy Theatre suggests underperforming ticket sales for this man of more than 640,000 Instagram followers. Virality alone doesn’t pay the bills! Nevertheless, a devoted crowd of a few hundred gathered toward the front of the stage and stayed put, their sporadic clouds of weed smoke and flashing orange embers resembling a pine forest smoldering the day after a ravaging fire. From my vantage point, I could see that the house engineer switched from a “Best of 2026” Spotify playlist to one more curated for the show, featuring multiple 1900Rugrat songs. The crowd got into the mood, singing along to “One Take Freestyle”, which would be played no fewer than three times throughout the night. By the third time, I couldn’t resist rapping along to the “booga suga” “coulda shoulda” couplet, but finally, look! Some guys quietly wandered onto the stage.
Announcing himself as Slumlord, Melly Frank$ kicked things off with little fanfare. His mix was bass-heavy yet quiet, a distorted jumble that contrasted poorly with the slickness of the preceding Spotify mix. Representing the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, I wished his music or performance came with the clarity it deserved, but the inexperience was self-evident; he just wasn’t there yet. Someone should’ve given his on-stage posse a pep-talk before getting out there, too – I’ve seen more energy in Group 6 of the American Airlines boarding line. Frank$’s allotted time was short, the same of which went for the next few performers. He was followed by an MC (whose name I still can’t figure out) whose performance shared a similar fate. (He kept referring to himself as “Don’t Call Me Lucky”, which the internet tells me is the name of a DJ Muggs album, so that can’t be it.) To that guy’s credit, he at least did a single dance move at the very end, which was the first time the crowd offered any sort of response. I thought the whole “no stage banter, don’t announce who you are, no audience reaction” thing was endemic of the disaffected Zoomer basement noise scene, but apparently this willful lack of crowd interaction has been spreading across genres like that new diarrhea virus.
Finally, some color: from the South Bronx comes Baby Osamaa, rolling with a crew of stage potatoes that looked like the guest judges on any given episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race: over-the-top hair and makeup, giant pants, shiny miniskirts, neon everything. They mostly just milled about and halfheartedly filmed on their phones, but Baby Osamaa’s voice cut through the muddy mix nicely, at once both gravelly and high-pitched. (Does that make her the Axl Rose of rap?) I pictured a filthy air-conditioner filter where her esophagus should be, but she buzzed and spat with the energy of a fully-charged Orbeez gun, enthusiastically running tracks back at will and excited to be performing on stage for a crowd. Her grinning, unscripted chaos was precisely what the room needed. During her performance, a man seated near me appeared to be rolling what was an absolutely gigantic joint, that is until my eyes gathered their focus in the dim club lighting and I realized it was actually a Nathan’s hot dog (sold in the venue) he was preparing to devour.
With a quick switch between laptops, Happy Dranker took to the stage, wearing an unsettling white smiley-face mask: imagine a Slipknot x The Purge Halloween collab sold exclusively at Spencer’s Gifts. As if the prevailing mix wasn’t bad enough, he had to contend with a layer of plastic and synthetic fabric between his mouth and the mic, but I’d say he did his best. Happy Dranker’s flow is fast and sporadic, an anxious, irritated mumble that comes across alluringly sinister on Soundcloud but fails to fully translate through a cordless mic on stage. Why not take the extra step and have the sound-guy add some of that distinctive Percocet filter to the live vocal track? Happy Dranker was accompanied on stage by a guy whose sole purpose seemed to be slow-rolling a joint while vaguely miming along to the lyrics. It’s a move that would’ve been dangerous and cool if it was Gang Starr in 1994 under the threat of possible arrest and jail-time, but far less so when the audience is already happily smoking the legalized plant like chimneys. Like every other artist on the bill, Happy Dranker rapped over his complete studio vocal tracks rather than the instrumentals, a sub-karaoke cheat-move now so commonplace that I start to wonder if I’m the crazy person. I wasn’t aware of this young Philly rapper’s existence prior to the show, but a live performance should be more than just a means of notifying an audience that one’s digital presence exists, right? If it’s time to pass me a cup of ginger tea and tuck me into bed with the rest of the elderly and out-of-touch, please turn off the light on your way out.
Throughout the evening, paper-and-string versions of Skrilla’s trademarked face-mask were passed out to attendees and sported by many – such is the timeless joy of free promo swag. The effect was appealingly jarring, as people wore them behind or on the sides of their faces, resulting in the sense of being stared at by awkwardly-angled faces in the crowd. How would you feel if the back of some guy wearing a Geese t-shirt’s head was staring you down all night?? After even more 1900Rugrat on the house system, Skrilla emerged from the deepest posse of the night, and ostentatiously so, sporting a white button-up, black tie and American-flag version of his mask. Get the man some platform boots and he could’ve been up there kicking Twiggy Ramirez in the balls on the Mechanical Animals tour! With his sea of masked devotees ready to go off, Skrilla was rambunctious and magnetic, a far cry from the barely-coherent, drug-coma’d persona presented on YouTube. Under what was clearly an AI slop-vid of Playstation 5-style zombie horror, Skrilla ran through prior hits like “Blahdahdahdahdah” (my personal favorite) and material from Z, their fractured, dystopian, downright mournful beats disturbed into physicality by the enthusiastic phone-holding crowd. Compared to the opening acts or otherwise, Skrilla’s star-power was undeniable, blathering between songs good-naturedly, shouting out friends, and even bringing out Doodi Babby, the young Philly rapper who credits Skrilla with helping him escape street life. That’s not to be confused with The Doodie Baby, the queer Indian DJ and streetwear artist based out of Brooklyn. Two Doodie Babies!? This is the future that Mamdani wants.
Concentric Circles isn’t any old obscure-reissue label, it’s Jed Bindeman’s obscure-reissue label. As far as record freaks go, he’s consistently ahead of the curve – it’s happened more than once that I went looking for some specific weirdo rarity on Discogs that I thought only I was aware of, and there he is, quietly minding his business, the sole American with a copy for sale. His lust for outsider music of the highest caliber is a public service, and one that you can subsidize by buying a copy of this truly unknown Binaural Prototype 1 album. From what I gather, this find is particularly out-there: it’s impossible to authorize and thusly unauthorized, as the material came from a random unlabeled cassette he found at an audiophile’s estate sale, the project name conjured by Bindeman from writing on the tape in lieu of any further clarifying information. I love the idea of “found” tapes – random answering-machine break-up calls pulled out of a dusty bin otherwise filled with Herb Albert and Barbra Streisand – but the nutso beauty of this one is that the music is actually worth your time. It’s a wild headphones affair, with presumably high-end electronic gear used to create synthesized library music, bizarre for its time (the early ’90s?) and ours. The pre-recorded vocal snippets recall the madcap sampling techniques favored by Chris Korda and Philip Brophy; along with dazzling, audiophile-friendly electronic patterns, the whole thing is eerily compelling and fresh, like Mark Mothersbaugh and Seymour Glass running wild together on some new dystopian sci-fi Apple+ show. A Bindemanning of the finest order.
Tomothy is a record label and recording studio in Los Angeles, its name a portmanteau of owner-operators Tom Pinkava and Timothy Waldner. The two of them also record music together as Celebrators, and Deliberation airs out their reels, collecting twenty-one songs from 2021 through 2025. Joined on most tracks by drummer Josh Duron (sorry Josh, they’re not going to start calling it Jotomothysh), the Tomothy crew is much too excited to remain seated on the sidelines recording and distributing other peoples’ music. It’s safe to file Celebrators under the dance-punk umbrella, though they seem to bring a new concept to each track, even if the mood generally hovers between skittish and frantic. Some songs remind me of that initial connection between Black Eyes and The Rapture, others pogo with the zest of early Zickzack singles, and there’s at least one that sounds like John Maus fronting Blank Dogs. That’s the beauty of having your own actual studio – there’s no need to hurriedly maintain the same guitar tone and drum-kit if you have the keys the place. Why not try to remake Marquee Moon and Duty Now For The Future in your own image, with a borrowed synth, a vintage mic from the swap meet and an enthusiastic friend with just as many ideas? 
When you actually, truly deconstruct post-punk from its orderly shackles, the results are not going to be pretty. The music will not be dance-ready: anti-grooves will happily set up camp where grooves normally exist, and casual fans will find themselves alienated and confused. Those of us who appreciate upended expectations will rush to the front of the room (now with plenty of available space), and hope that the band is Debt Rag, Olympia’s self-described “adult punk band” who behave like neither typical adults nor typical punks. Working with a taped-and-puttied drum / bass / keyboard formation (and a modest heap of horns, noises and auxiliary percussion), Debt Rag take the concept of no-wave and thrust it into this 2020s dystopia that no 1979-era Arto Lindsay or Sumner Crane could have conceived. Marissa Magic’s bass offers mutant-funk lines not unlike Erase Errata and The Contortions, though it’s the only element that provides the comfort of a typical ‘real band’ feel. Around it, songs play out in ways both primitive and unintuitive, emerging as naturally as a protest chant; someone feels compelled to repeat a shouted phrase and those in agreement join in. There’s a moment of what could be considered rapping in “Gary’s World” (probably my favorite song here), whereas “Cold Kitchenette” sounds like Screamers accidentally inventing hardcore thrash. Unlike the hordes of paycheck-collecting reunion bands whose members can’t stand to be in the same room as each other, Debt Rag burst with the magic of guards-down human friendship.
As we move even further out from the ’80s and ’90s, the distinction between post-punk and post-rock grows ever hazier. “Post-” is really more of a feeling than anything else, a desire to peek beyond stylistic borders in search of fertile unknown territory, for better or worse. It’s where my listening habits often wander, and a record like Industrial Relations by Turin, Italy’s Stefano Murgia (alias S.P.N; alias Esse Pi Enne) is a glistening example of what can strike when genre formalities are misremembered or ignored. As is the case with many of today’s loner artists, Murgia follows his own disjointed script, crafted from humble means and free from obligation. It’s a lazy tangle of simple three-note (or less) guitar iterations, live drum patterns suitable for the skill level of a total amateur, fun-size synths with electronic textures (which are then cut-and-pasted into larger resolution), and infrequent vocals from the shyest kid in photography class. Imagine a Hood rendition of “Hamburger Lady”, Pseudocode signing to Drag City in 1991, or perhaps The American Analog Set the day after a flood came and ruined almost all of their gear. Industrial Relations offers the sensation of being barely there, yet I’m right there with it.
It’s always a promising sign when you google a new band and the results are primarily “weird bird facts”. So it goes with Portland’s The Grebes, a private affair for the past few years now shared openly with the world, fully formed and able. They feature members of bands that, if you recall, you recall warmly: Lithics, Shop Regulars, Woolen Men and The Spatulas, and while The Grebes are also a traditional rock band by most metrics, there’s no mistaking them for one of their members’ other projects. The Grebes were allegedly borne out of noisy guitar improv between guitarists Bob Desaulniers and Raf Spielman, though you’d never know it from the traditional verse-chorus structuring found here, at its best like Tyvek offering up a stormy rendition of “You’re Gonna Miss Me”. They take clear inspiration from regional teenage garage-rock of the ’60s, wild mop-top boys in hand-me-down suits who dared to mix original material among their Beatles and Stones covers at the high school dance. It’s about as timeless as rock n’ roll gets, and while The Grebes clearly find sonic influence in those Pebbles and Back From The Grave compilations, they don’t pretend to be crazed adolescents, Wild Thing-ing and Twisting and turning every knob to ten in a fit of hormonal activity. Rather, these songs are taut, sharply tailored and mature, almost verging on the suit-jacketed power-pop of Purple Hearts and The Tubs (albeit unpolished by comparison). “Yours” is my personal fave, though I find no reason to limit myself to anything less than the entire self-titled record.
Tall Texan’s twelve-inch vinyl issue of Guiding Light’s debut EP featured the same five songs on both sides and I still managed to wear it out, so this full-length follow-up couldn’t have come sooner. And it absolutely rules! The Austin quartet’s post-punk perspective is nimble and proficient but never self-inflated – in a world of post-punk flatland ollies, they’re an unexpected heelflip down some stairs. I’m reminded of Vexx in the way that each member of the band operates on an advanced level while still retaining an undeniably punk quality, though musically-speaking, Guiding Light falls closer to the satisfying crevice between the first side of Dolly Mixture’s Demonstration Tapes and CCTV’s sole seven-inch EP. Probably because I’m still playing that Station Model Violence album at least once a week, I’m hearing a touch of them in Fear On My Own Time too – it’s that wild n’ clean guitar work with all six strings activated that does the trick. Maybe Station Model Violence performing Meat Puppets’ In A Car EP would be a more reasonably accurate way to describe Guiding Light’s compelling sound (and I hope they someday give it a whirl). Like all aforementioned bands, Guiding Light are talented songwriters, not aesthetic box-checkers; “Shackled By Lust” and “Fear On My Own Time” are an immediately catchy one-two punch, though all eight songs whiz by in a flash you’ll want to immediately relive. Vocalist Elise Cook got so caught up in the feeling that she accidentally sang multiple songs in fluent German. Haven’t we all been there before!
Home Rock is an exhaustive compendium of one Gord High, produced with the unavoidably loving touch inherent within Canadians who uplift other Canadians. I don’t think The Unpopular Archives expects anyone outside of Ontario to be overly familiar with High, but Home Rock arrives as a formal exhibition of the local-legend’s sprawling, decades-long musical career, not a bid for overdue commercial success. This triple-LP treasury includes a selection of tracks produced as early as 1991 and as late as 2011 (High passed away in 2012), a 2006 album under his Clockdin alias, and a twenty-minute “disco” single (featuring “Gun School”, eleven minutes of dubby IDM research). Under aliases such as Puh, High Amiga and Clockdin, High’s musical interests were widespread and voracious. The label calls it “low-fi surf dub”, and while the bubble effects in “Herbdub” don’t betray this made-up genre name, that’s only a sliver of what High was up to. He lovingly messed with early Warp Records-style techno and jungle techniques, wonky electro-funk, computer-generated noise, hand-spliced breakbeats, and at least for “High Guitars”, slow-core indie-rock I’d expect Elliot Smith to start singing over. Some works reveal an interest in calming melodies, whereas others reject the notion outright (see “The Gunn”) – if you follow along intently, a rough map of High’s musical mind is sketched out, a generative cycle of sound experiments opening up new possibilities. If only all unheralded sonic voyagers had friends like The Unpopular Archives to keep their sounds alive after they’ve passed on.
Lewsberg not twee enough for ya? Singer-songwriter Arie van Vliet is happy to turn things up a notch (or I guess down a notch) with The Hobknobs’ debut. It’s van Vliet’s new project with Yaël Dekker, and she handles keys and percussion with an appropriately mild touch, the two of them scurrying through these simple-on-the-surface pop tunes like mice in a library. They share vocals like well-mannered relatives, often enhanced by the tick-tock of a drum box and the bass-guitar of a friend named Jaap van der Velde. Van Vliet’s voice is so instantly recognizable that it’s impossible not to compare and contrast The Hobknobs to Lewsberg. On first go, I found myself missing the sturdy rock formations of Lewsberg, those subtly sly yet instantly memorable hooks that have brought me so much joy (please play “Cold Light Of Day” at my funeral). Lewsberg are small enough to fit in an elevator, but you could sneak The Hobknobs into a shoebox, teeny enough that you’ll want to pack them in some cotton balls to prevent any injury. It’s a great sound, though there are moments that miss for me: “Jennette McCurdy” is coffeehouse ready (pejorative), and while the hippity-hop of “Are You Looking For Something?” is particularly Lewsbergian (complimentary), I don’t think there’s any cool way to integrate the “Rain Rain Go Away” nursery rhyme into one’s twee-pop (and I wish to discourage any further attempts). On the other hand, “The Bowl”, “The Tide” and “Dictionary” are shining examples of The Hobknobs’ charming talents. The conversational “The Extra Mile” is my current favorite, an intimate Jim Jarmusch-esque short that beats out feature-lengths ten times its size.
Having never figured out the button combination to unleash a kinetic orbital strike in Tekken 2, my gaming career was short-lived. I’m now forced to relive my failings through this ferocious Philly d-beat band, who have followed a couple of self-released EPs with a self-released full-length, The Terrifying Power Of Bombardment. D-beat hardcore is a battle of inches, as the style has been so thoroughly explored over the past, what, forty years?? You can’t really top the classics (feel free to argue the case for select Japanese exceptions in the comments) but you can still inject the formula with a fresh burst of fury. Kinetic Orbital Strike do well by it in a burly sort of way, calling to mind ’90s American crust as well as the requisite Discharge singles. I’m reminded of State Of Fear and Aus Rotten in the group’s tumbling depths; even within the understood confines of the style, their tempos vary from mid to urgent, and the vocals are gruff and succinct ala Doom. The (self-)production is dynamic and heavy without sacrificing its raw edge, landing much closer to the godliness of Cracked Cop Skulls than any overproduced stadium-crust sound. It’s an intentionally repetitive blueprint, but the album is not without its outlying flourishes: “No Dream At All” is a crust-metal headbanger’s delight (and by far the longest track at nearly three minutes), whereas “Essential Aid Denied” speaks directly to our moment. Blasting it loud enough that the neighbors can surely hear, I look out the window and expect to see Felix Havoc pulling a police helicopter out of the sky with his bare hands. 
The Bay Area boasts a real rogue’s gallery of indie-pop colors, groups like Famous Mammals, Naked Roommate, Preening, The Reds Pinks & Purples, Blues Lawyer, Debt Rag, Fake Fruit and so on contributing to the region’s spinning kaleidoscope of sound. Of those I listed, the first three acts (if not more!) share personnel with Non Plus Temps. If Non Plus Temps isn’t the context wherein its players feel freest to pursue their least conventional ideas, I want to know which is, as Conditional Bunker is dub-punk armed with all the kitchen-sink percussion and dime-store synthesizer splurts it can bag and carry. I loved their 2022 full-length debut Desire Choir, and while much of the same infrastructure remains in place (dubby bass-lines, no-wave guitars, post-punk singing, the lingering sense (if not direct presence) of chaos), they’re going bigger and bolder here, like Exek, Minny Pops, Mo-Dettes and 3 Teens Kill 4 stitched together with a dull needle. That means the pop songs are poppier (“I Am Not Wise” hits with the sideways poise of early The Intelligence) and the weirdo elements are weirder (“Inside The Wall”, which directly follows, is as transgressively gassy as Nervous Gender). In a moment I’m thinking of Ric Ocasek’s power-pop, then Mark Stewart’s experimental dub, then the two of them doing that annoying mosh-pit move where they hold hands and swing in a circle until knocking into someone. It’s Siltbreeze music, but it’s also party music: convention-defying post-punk that doesn’t shut the door on keg-stands entirely.
For me The Strokes are kinda like Metallica, in that the thrilling experience of their early material generated such enduring goodwill that I continue to check out whatever they do (while fully expectant of diminishing returns). There were a few bright spots in the Strokes’ orbit since they initially Saved Rock N’ Roll™, namely the solo Julian Casablancas album (bested only by Is This It!) and the first Voidz album, but it’s mostly been a drag after First Impressions Of Earth and the band’s initial hiatus. With Is This It garnering some nostalgic publicity as it hits twenty-five years old and Casablancas settling into this bizarre role of Bernie Bro prankster himbo (it… works?), I was as ready as anyone to enjoy some new Strokes songs, but Reality Awaits is a certified stinker. I don’t get it, really – the majority of the album lingers in a listless sort of slow-dance mode, a prefab Squarespace backdrop for Casablancas’s squiggly Autotune voice. His voice has held up great (and I am no Autotune hater), but the songs themselves are as satisfying as skim milk. I’m completely fine with their contemporary aesthetics, but where are the hits! Besides the silly bop of lead single “Going Shopping” (which really only stands out by comparison), Reality Awaits sounds like circa-2010 Maroon 5 without the hooks, or New Order running through Californication (again without the hooks), or the slower material on the last few Strokes albums (sadly, I must confirm, without even those meager hooks). If they put out another album after this, I’ll still be curious enough to check that out too, but it damn well better be their Lulu. 
Like many of you I’m sure, I’ve often wondered what it’d be like if Raymond Pettibon had a band of his own. In fantasies such as these, the joy of wondering often beats the reality of knowing, which is unsurprisingly the case here. Pettibon is the lyricist, vocalist and artist-in-residence (duh) for Sür Drōne, a studio collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and soundtrack composer Daniel Adams. They released a CD-EP in 1998 (who knew and didn’t tell me??), which is collected here amidst seven other (newer?) songs, and if you’re hoping to hear a band that sounds how the nun on Slip It In and the puppet on My War looks, prepare for disappointment. Of course, Pettibon has always reveled in defying expectations, of lashing out reactionarily against the reactionaries, so no, this never had a chance of sounding like a Frontier Records classic (even though it’s actually the label that released it). If anything, T.I.T.S. is closer to his recent collaborative book with Mike Topp, The Frontier Index, a nonlinear cascade of jokes, stories and verbal riffage, now set to lightweight, joke-y college-rock. (“Dream Team” in particular sounds like the text from a Pettibon canvas set to music.) If you squint hard enough, you might hear some slight resemblance to adolescent punk-rock before passing out, but mostly the songs are loose, no-effort garage-rock numbers, some jangly and bopping, others “arty” or “psychedelic” in that late ’80s SST way – “Space Mutha” owes royalties to Meat Puppets, no doubt. Pettibon’s vocal affect is childlike and taunting… only he knows how he really feels, an opaqueness he clearly revels in upholding. As a punk, checking out T.I.T.S. is kind of your duty, but you should probably shoplift it from an indie record shop, or rig some online PayPal scam when ordering a copy – it’s what Pettibon would’ve wanted.
As far as I knew, Round Bale Recordings purveyed psych-rock, experimental post-rock and guitars on the lighter side of the spectrum, which made it all the more surprising when The Thirsty Giants jumped out of the speakers and chased me around the room with their ferocious hardcore-punk. What a pleasant surprise! It’s actually pretty heartwarming, too: in 2022, Round Bale label-head David Perron played drums with the then-teenaged guitarist / vocalist Holden Perron (his son, I take it?), they brought on the younger Perron’s prior bandmate Hunter Thiesen on bass, and suddenly The Thirsty Giants took shape. I don’t know if Perron Senior is feeding Junior the best selection of punk to emulate or if he discovered it on his own, but The Thirsty Giants are hitting the right buttons for me. I’m hearing big similarities to Kaleidoscope, first-few-EPs-era 7 Seconds, Code Of Honor and a little Necros and Crucifix, but there are a few grungier tracks here too, a noise-rock update on Nirvana that The Thirsty Giants handle with similar conviction (I thought about the late-great Leather more than once). It’s hard-hitting and delivered with perfectly disgusted vocals, enough to remind me that somehow, all those great early hardcore records were actually made by kids under legal drinking age. For reference: if Minor Threat’s debut EP was released today, Ian MacKaye would’ve been born in 2007. 
Hosianna Mantra falls within the network of reissue-centric labels from the great Nexus Records shop in Brooklyn. Its focus is on “spiritual” music that gazes back to ancient times for inspiration… intriguing obscurities rescued from the River Styx for one final spin. A world of kingdoms and fields lit only by fire! It’s alluring enough to captivate historians and artists alike, of which we can include the cryptic Swedish project Tusen År Under Jord. Sorgsendömet Fobos was originally released as a limited-edition cassette back in 2013 AD, but the Hosianna Mantra folks granted it a second life with this handsome slab of appropriately-black vinyl. On the cover, the vacant-eyed knight, horseback and in mid-prayer, concerned me that this might fall into an aesthetic I tend to avoid: gothic folk with Renn Faire signifiers. Luckily, Hosianna Mantra wouldn’t do us dirty like that – rather, this album is an engrossing exercise in brooding loop-based minimalism. The circular crackle of dusty vinyl is ever present over looping strings… mournful melodies manifest themselves from some long-forgotten time. These fractured, shadowy Euro waltzes probably played softly in the heads of World War 1 soldiers as they took their final breaths on some godforsaken Slovakian battlefield. The disintegrated textures of William Basinski are prominent, though a more apt comparison might be Brannten Schnüre, whose gloomy industrial-folk collages conjure similar images of castle ruins, dark forests and watchful eyes. Gather your most herbaceous and medicinal twigs, ’cause tonight we’re brewing some Tusen År Under Jord tea. 
I saw Cloud Nothings for the first time a few months back and was amazed at how hard they ripped. Society has failed me yet again by not cluing me into this earlier! While it was a true trio effort, Jayson Gerycz was positioned front and center for good reason, a hard-hitting whirlwind of a drummer who, much like Ric Flair, elevates the talent of anyone he’s sparring with. He’s got a variety of projects happening, the newest of which might be Vital Stress, another hard-cracking punk band from a town that’s already way over quota, Cleveland. Don’t let the cute cat on the cover fool you – Vital Stress has some real dirt under their nails, playing motor-punk riffs with the energy (not the speed) of hardcore-punk. They packed six songs on this seven-inch and I’m glad they did, as I want as much of this as I can get, songs that remind me of Pink Lincolns, Land Speed Record, Dead Boys, Easy Action and Reagan Youth, but smack immediate for the present moment, not beholden to the past. At this stage in their existence (very early), they’re one of those dangerous opening bands that comfortable touring bands should fear – there’s no chillaxing in the green room when Vital Stress are already on stage and completely ravaging the crowd. You should’ve opted for one of those watered-down replicas of your own indie band that the unimaginative booker originally recommended instead!
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