REVIEWS & NEWS
End times music: Chat Pile – Who Loves The Sun *ALBUM REVIEW*
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨ | Each new release from these Oklahoma natives really strips back a new layer on the proverbial onion. Their fight-or-flight inducing 2022 debut ‘God’s Country’ aimed the microscope at the decay of mental health, homelessness, public shooting victim POV’s, suicidal ideation, you name it. Each track was a vividly delineated snapshot into a…
Live jazz is alive and well: SML – Spontaneous Music Live ALBUM REVIEW
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Bit of a late one The LA jazz scene is thriving right now, and has been for well over a decade. Your Thundercat’s, Flying Lotus’s, Terrace Martin’s, Kamasi Washington’s and Miles Mosley’s have lent jazz music a space to thrive in the general music underground (and some have even found themselves swimming…
Ill-fated: Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal – DOOMED! ALBUM REVIEW
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Breakups suck. They’re awkward, occasionally messy, often fraught with difference, usually devastating. The transitional space between having and losing, much like any other liminal state, is weird, scary and a little uncanny. Human beings are notoriously change-avoidant, so the hesitation to live with such a development is innate. It’s an ironic aspect…
Danceable tangibility: Curió Curió – Self Titled *ALBUM REVIEW*
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨ | Serendipity is not a word that I throw around too often on this page. It should usually be reserved for the most jaw-dropping of coincidences. Something so seemingly impossible occurs, it almost hints at the chance of a higher power. The serendipity factor increases when you factor in the transnational element. What…
Groove-centric: Horse Lords – Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive *ALBUM REVIEW*
| ⭐⭐⭐✨ | 2020’s ‘The Common Task’ felt like a bit of a watershed moment for Horse Lords. In stumbling upon the kind of jerky, psychedelic math rock that has since become such a staple of their identity, they seem to have made it a mission to test the absolute limits of reiteration. It becomes…
Musical purgatory: Office Dog – Prime Corner *ALBUM REVIEW*
| ⭐⭐⭐ | Auckland-by-way-of-Dunedin band Office Dog are searching for something on their latest effort ‘Prime Corner’. Is it answers? A place to finally belong? Love? Whatever it happens to be, they don’t necessarily seem any closer to finding it on this release. Might they get close? I have a lot of questions for someone…
A deeply Australian album: Pond – Terrestrials ALBUM REVIEW
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | When it comes to musicians making a move into global waters, the Australian music industry seems to have a chronic tendency to file all of its strongest talent overseas in order to guarantee maximum profit. I suppose this has always been endemic to the international music business, but it is particularly heinous…
Juxtapositions: Olivia Rodrigo – you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love *ALBUM REVIEW*
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Since Olivia really came into her own on 2023’s ‘GUTS’, the bar has not only been set high, it’s practically created a makeshift skylight. Rodrigo’s heavy lean towards young love and heartbreak was given the rowdy urgency it needed on her breakout, and marked her down as a definitive threat for any…
Genuine melodicism: Iceage – For the Love of Grace & The Hereafter *ALBUM REVIEW*
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Denmark’s own Iceage have found themselves on a pretty remarkable trajectory. The unruly punk rock of their initial work resembles very little of their music to come. A creative peak was attained in 2014 with the grand artistic statement of ‘Plowing The Fields of Love’, with a newfound orchestral bent to their…
Serotonin deficiency in music form: feeble little horse – Bitknot ALBUM REVIEW
| ⭐⭐⭐ | A breath of fresh air like Pittsburgh’s own feeble little horse only comes around once in a blue moon. Their 2023 breakout album ‘Girl with Fish’ was a blindingly vibrant mesh of shoegaze, twee pop, indie rock and noise pop. Guitars were blown out into white noise, the leads were dagger sharp.…
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