RSTB’s Favorite Albums of 2024

I can’t remember a year that felt like such a gift for music. While the rest of 2024 can go in the bin, musically we were set. Each week was so packed with new releases that it was hard to parse them all, but these are the 100 albums that spent the most time on the speakers over here. As usual, there’s no ranking, because music’s not a race, not a competition. I couldn’t begin to place one over another in this list. I feel lucky to have listened to as much as I did this year. I wish I could have listened to more. As luck would have it, it’s also Bandcamp Friday, so use this as a guide to help musicians get as much as they can out of the year-end list extravaganza that happens this time of year. Enjoy!

Alex Izenberg – Alex Izenberg & The Exiles

Alex Izenberg’s been chasing the Formica slink of the decade for quite some time, coming as close as ever on his last album, but with Alex Izenberg & The Exiles, he’s finally found a true comfort in the mahogany mannerisms of the Nixon years. With JJ as a guiding star, Izenberg wraps his sandpaper and scotch delivery around lush arrangements, riding the diesel chug of rhythm through strings n’ sax, and even a touch of steel this time around. As background harmonies curl through the studio smoke, Izenberg delivers song after song that feel perfectly reclined, poured through the speakers with a malt finish.

Aluminum – Fully Beat

Aluminum slice through the shoegaze garden with well-prepared shears — nipping the topline luminaries like MBV and Ride, but slicing deeper into Chapterhouse, The Swirlies and Drop Nineteens. Unlike many nu-gaze contemporaries, the band doesn’t see fit to stop at the foam and fuzz. Rather than just create a smudged wonderland that’s beholden to their influences, the band embraces the baggy beat of Madchester, letting it litter a few of their singles. They flirt with Brit-pop’s love of rhythm, the influx of rave, and the verdant sweat of Mazzy Star.

Animal Piss, It’s Everywhere – Grace

Like it’s predecessor, the songs on Grace are imbued with a kind of late night linger, an aura of bottomed-out blues and beer-soaked songwriting that feels a bit truer, even in the harsh light of day. Griffin and his assembled Pissers have conjured an album that’s sliding truths between coated-tongue traipses through last night’s mistakes and this mornings regrets. The record is roughed up and righted once again, run through a soft pack filter and soaked off the bar wood with the right balance of winking charms to cover up the undercurrent of desperation. APIE’s ability to capture both the revelry and the stale smell of tomorrow remains unmatched.

Anna Butterss – Mighty Vertebrate

Feeling every bit like a companion piece to Butterss’ work with SML this year, the songwriter/bassist’s debut for International Anthem is hung on their indomitable rhythm and a sense of exploration. It’s a record that seeks to put the listener into motion and wrack them with rhythm. It feels worlds away from both jazz and electronic composition proper, a record that’s building worlds one track at a time. Groove is at the center and the methods to get there aren’t didactic at all.

Ava Mendoza – The Circular Train

Through staggering string runs, Mendoza threads heat and pain. Each note leaves its laceration on the listener, each phrase causes contusion. Her catalog is well stocked with solo works, but none are quite as biting and as hypnotic as The Circular Train. Lodged between the avant tangle of Television or Sonic Youth and the molten jazz that she’s crafted with Parker, the record is visceral and volcanic, a culmination of years of chewing on these pieces until they pierce effortlessly.

BASIC – This Is BASIC

A record that revels in stark atmospheres, it feels at times as if the glass and aluminum riffs might draw blood. It’s the kind of record that keeps the listener looking around corners, waiting for what comes next. While it may not have been on their compass, the record also evokes the kind of homegrown fractured-future blues of some of John Carpenter’s composition work (particularly the atmospheres of They Live), feeling like it could easily soundtrack an ‘80s dystopia full of shadowed horrors and hard truths. The twin guitars glint off of the headlight glare, flashing strings and sinewed riffs like rows of teeth. There’s an uneasy sweat and a dub humidity that occasionally creeps in, reverberating off of their abandoned factory acoustics in waves.

Bananagun – Why is the Colour of the Sky?

The new record rifles further through the freakbeat corners of the cupboard, leaking a good dose of fuzz and exploration into their bedrock of jazz-psych. This time around Kaleidoscope tangles with Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, while flirting with Herbie Mann. Moments of groove lock the album in place, but its the times that they let the jazz instincts get gooey that the most fun moments reveal themselves. The breakdowns on “Feeding The Moon,” and “Hippopotamusic” find Bananagun getting lost in the fusion of psych and jazz, at the tipping point of prog without dipping into the deep end. The progression is a welcome shift, a target that hopefully continues as the band heads onto new horizons.

Beachwood Sparks – Across The River of Stars

Across The River of Stars shines bright, a prime example of the band’s West Coast winds. Balancing the gauziest textures of Once We Were Trees with the Americana openness of Tarnished Gold, the band feels confident in their own skin. The album retains Beachwood’s golden glow, buoyed by synths, sonorous harmonies, and the sepia-tinged twang that has long been their ally. With Chris Robinson behind the boards, they’ve crafted a record that speaks to their legacy, while pushing their sound to the forefront of the current cosmic crop.

Beings – There Is A Garden

The eponymous outing is a storm of color and a crush of angles and light. Like a funhouse hit by a bulldozer, there are moments when Beings reflect and refract their sound in all directions. On “Face of Silence,” the band hits a peak of ecstatic ambience, a whirlpool that pulls the listener into their maw. The band is at its best when in balance of the squirm and the soothe, though. Amba’s sax is a beacon on the record, catching the winds and pushing her bandmates towards needed serenity and steering them into the tempest unafraid.

Billy Tibbals – Nightlife Stories

Tibbals sticks to the short formats with a second EP for Silver Arrow this week. The record revels in the ‘70s pomp n’ primp — the crossover between glam’s grandeur and the soft pout of power pop that would follow. Tibbals knows how to pack a song full of the kind of rock-meets-pop maximalism that got swept away in the growl of the ‘90s, save for torchbearers like The Blondes and Redd Kross, both of which might feed into the fray here. Tibbals embraces the larger than life persona, but the stage life is backed and bonded by the songs. Not a dull moment in ‘em, and then he caps the collection with a tender Bowie burnout that flickers like a lone candle in the night.

(BUY)

Black Decelerant – Reflections Vol. 2

Another stunner out of RVNG Intl. The label’s roster of artists who straddle the line between ambient and jazz is already strong, and they now add Black Decelerant, prepping a second volume of reflections from the duo of Khari Lucas, aka Contour, and Omari Jazz. The album explores improvisational jazz themes and blends them with meditative textures, allowing space and reflection. The duo intend that the space to allow for “meditations on themes of Black being and nonbeing, life and mourning, expansion and limitation, and the individual and collective.” It carries a sense of trying to remember these themes across time, passed down through storied recounting that begins to muffle the details once its etched onto thrice dubbed tapes.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Nathan Salsburg, & Tyler Trotter – Hear The Children Sing & The Evidence

From Nathan Salsburg’s nighttime ritual comes an album that becomes more than just soothing sounds for wakeful children. Instead he, along with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Tyler Trotter have turned Daniel Higgs’ works into longform meditations — circular studies that roll his lyrics around and around, polishing them like choice pebbles picked up along life’s journey. Oldham gives both songs a the kind of weight that only his voice can imbue in a piece. His honey and hickory delivery elevates any material, but with Higgs’ poetic prowess as the base layer, these two pieces become something in tune with celestial vibrations.

The Bures Band – Fool Circle

Without a doubt one of my favorite new bands to land on the speakers over the past few years, Aussie outfit The Bures Band rides the Cosmic American wind better than quite a few of their Western counterparts. Digging deep into the edges of cosmic ‘70s country and folk sounds, the band takes a natural stab at Byrdsian harmonies and hits gold, but they conjure up visions of quite a few of the unsung heroes of the hash ranch as well. Deeper crate diggers who find Sand, Help Yourself, Cowboy, Country Funk, and UK purveyors of vocal gold, Starry Eyed and Laughing on their turntable should find a lot to chew on here.

Causa Sui – From The Source

With From The Source, the band returns to the fray as vibrant and visceral as ever. The album fully incorporates the tertiary works from the bands’s members, smelting the jazz, Library, ambient, and experimental impulses to their psych onslaught. The band’s playing is limber and loose, drawing on the jazz impulses that have rippled through the group. At it’s heart, though, From The Source, is a return to the band’s heaviest moments.

Chime School – The Boy Who Rain The Paisley Motel

Chime School’s debut was an instant classic, born of a love for jangle-pop and forged with a hand that knew just how to balance the melancholy with an indie-pop edge that left hooks ringing in the listeners’ ears for days. Like fellow Bay Area contemporaries, The Reds, Pinks and Purples, Pastalaniec is exploring the deeper sighs set into the strata of strum as it hits in 2024. Much of the record shies away from easy comparisons, instead building up a cadre of hooks and heavy-hearted anthems that become etched into the current West Coast coffers rather than feeling like time-torn gems.

Color Green – Fool’s Parade

The band’s New West debut finds them pulling back on the cosmic country that’s been at their core, letting some pop nip at their Americana, while adding a few splashes of color to their sepia songcraft. With a woven structure that pulls the listener through on sun-warmed winds, the album winds up doused in as much psych-pop splendor as Cosmic American charms. Fool’s Parade feels like Color Green coming into their own.

The Cosmic Tones Research Trio – All Is Sound

Landing at the cross-section of Laraaji and Alice Coltrane, the record is a personal sound bath, an all-enveloping respite from the world that blocks out the noise, at least for a short while. Once inside the world of The Cosmic Tones Research Trio the listener is transported to a gossamer landscape streaked with flutes, sax, strings, and keys. Floating suspended in a womb of sound the record dissociates from most percussive elements, turning its ear towards the soft motion of the wind and the play of lights across closed eyelids.

Daisy Rickman – Howl

Daisy Rickman’s works are imbued with a stillness, carried on picked strings and a voice that dips through melancholy on its way to the sublime. Her songs fill the marrow with wonder — oil slick reflections that shift through beauty weighted by a wanting darkness. Howl is, at its heart, an ode to the sun and starlight. It captures the light through the trees, a verdant veneer that turns afternoon into its own emotion. It harnesses the night air, far from the city’s prying eyes, the head encircled by ringlets of breath as the notes reach towards the beacons above. Dissonance and delight pull at the album, as Rickman’s sonorous voice is cocooned by strums and shaken by bouzouki, sitar, and accordion. The album is meditative, leaning on its Anglican folk forms, but stitching much further afield through circular movement and an undercurrent of rag. The year will no doubt produce an abundance of folk albums, but it’s doubtful that many will be as wondrously affecting as Howl.

Daniel Romano – Too Hot To Sleep

Where Romano often lodges in a hook and lets a sense of swagger hold court, on Too Hot To Sleep there’s more of a sense of breathless catharsis. Dotted with a few rock n’ soul swingers that find Romano volleying vocals Julianna Riolino and Carson McHone, the record also pushes tempos far into the red. In a lot of ways, this remains a tried n’ true bout of Romano rock, but it’s good to see him kick the tempos and ruffle his composure a bit on this collection. There are few genres that Daniel Romano can’t conquer, and here he proves that, if need be, the tiger in his tank is ready to rip into the jugular.

David Nance – Mock The Hours

Nance is known almost as much for his string of short-run covers albums as much as he is his own records, but what’s always been endearing about his solo works is how he seamlessly digests his influences and obsessions, leaving just a tip-of-the-tongue familiarity in his scuzz-sopped blues. From JJ to Burnside, there’s something boiling under the backseat of Nance’s songs and it all seems to come to a head on his latest with the assembled Mowed Sound. Even with a deep back catalog already brewing, this feels like the start of a new era for Nance.

Ducks Ltd – Harm’s Way

Harm’s Way, finds them stronger than ever and serving up a jangle-pop juggernaut that’s picking through the bejeweled bounties of the Kiwi-pop ‘80s, threading through acolytes on down through the CapTracks years. The band stands apart from other miners of the Antipodean aura, capturing the impellent spirit of the original bunch without getting caught up in the pastiche that often snags and snares the most well-intentioned imitators. There’s a building bloom of new janglers. Someday a new generation of crate diggers will have a field day sorting though it all, but rest assured that Harm’s Way will be among the gems that stands out.

Dummy – Free Energy

The band refuses to rehash their successes or adhere to a formula, still lapping at the blurred boundaries of the late ‘80s/ early ‘90s and the scented edges of the 4AD stable, but pushing much further afield. Noise squalls slip Throbbing Gristle corrosion against the cosmic bounce of German Progressives like Cluster or NEU. Feeling like the kind of record that was getting scooped when majors had a vague sense that indie labels had figured out a formula for success, the record captures much of the chaos and crunch that let the Surfers, Camper Van Beethoven, and early Lips lacquer true pop moments onto art rock in ways that would prove foundational. In an era when emphasis on instant connection obscures the bigger picture, Dummy have crafted an album that’s filled with enough nuance that it begs dozens of plays just to parse it all out. The best part is, it gets more interesting with each spin on the speakers. The band shakes off the past while sounding like the future.

EggS – Crafted Achievement

Smelting classic-era indie rock with an undercurrent of new wave and a few hardened garage touches, the band embraces an era of sprawling lineups and ornamental embellishments. But leave the choir robes and Canadian arts grants by the wayside, because despite feeling like the heirs apparent to towering tracks from the early Aughts, the band offers up their version with no pomp and little pretense. Flecked with brass and built on soaring choruses, the new album buzzes with an unstoppable inertia. Pounding guitars set themselves opposite a heavier reliance on keys this time around. The band’s influences and touchstones could be picked apart all day, but what keeps this a constant on the speakers is the energy that the band brings to the album.

Elijah McLaughlin & Caleb Willitz – Morning Improvisations Evening Abstractions

A cast of collaborators, all Chicago improv vets themselves, ably begin to etch their own intricacies on the works that McLaughlin and Willitz had shaped during their studio sit-in. The record becomes a living document, a festering, flowering organism that’s as much indebted to Chicago’s post-rock legacies as it is to the ebb and flow of free jazz fumes. It’s some of the most immediate work I’ve heard from both artists and the kind of record that changes shades over time, catching different hues with each listen.

Ellkhorn – The Red Valley

The Red Valley finds the band in a collaborative spirit, something that has threaded through their past works, with catalog releases finding them in the company of Willie Lane, Ryan Jewell, Turner Williams, and Ian McColm. This time around they employ friend and collaborator Jesse Sparhawk (Fern Knight, Larkin Grimm, The Valerie Project) on lever harp and pedal steel. Like the last record, this finds Drew straying from his post solely at the guitar, adding vibraphone and zither to the mix along with adding the percussive element in the form of a large frame drum. A long simmering work that sees the band reinvigorated by the burnt psych-folk they’ve become known for, adding some intensity with Gardner’s percussive pound. Elkhorn continue to keep the fires lit, bathing their stringed psychedelics in the ash and ether of ceremonial nights.

Emergency Group – Mind Screen

The band entered the studio last year with Chris Schlarb (Psychic Temple), ready to push their improv-heavy hues into new directions. In addition to the studio upgrade, the album marks the first time that the band has documented works that were composed previous to the recording — the heady title track, and the delicate closer “Julien.” Planning has done little to temper the band’s immediacy, and both still feel like a vital part of Emergency Group’s exploratory jazz rock repertoire, lapping at‘70s psychedelics with a supple sway. The band is constantly coiling and curling, turning phrases into inertia on instinct. There’s well-worn worry that bands can have trouble translating the fire from stage to spools, but Emergency Group’s debut LP finds them as immediate as they’e ever been.

The Green Child – Look Familiar

The Green Child embrace a fuller sound and a fuller roster on their latest album. On Look Familiar Raven and Mikey fill out the backline, adding Shaun Gionis (of Boomgates) on drums and Alex Macfarlane (Twerps) on guitar and synths. From the first moments, they splash the band’s songs with color and widen the scope. Shaun gives the band a rhythmic backbone that’s much more supple than before and Alex shades in the shapes that had only been hinted at prior, giving the band a texture and glow that radiate, melting the ice off of their past. An infusion of pop does the band good, turning their textured temperaments into New Wave gems in the space of ten songs.

Goat – Goat

The latest album for Rocket Recordings finds the band absorbing new influences while still keeping the mix of pollyrhythms, amp-fried guitars, and ominous aesthetics in tact. While the band has been no stranger to a percussive pound, there’s a particular presence on the eponymous new album, augmenting the usual patter with breakbeat accents and a sweaty, smokey dose of funk. The band feels like they’re reverse engineering classic-era hip-hop, setting themselves up as a deep well of samples for intrepid crate diggers of the future.

GospelbeacH – Wiggle Your Fingers

Confessional, cooled by the California breezes, but threaded with a gnawing worry, the album balances dread with a desire to appreciate the time we have. The record looks back at the past with a wrinkled smile and looks to the future with an even more furrowed brow, but knows that sometimes you just need to appreciate the minutia that makes even the worst moments worthwhile. The record folds in friends from near and far, finding members of The Hanging Stars sending in parts from across the Atlantic while Curation corral regulars like Alex Koford and Jake Dejongh round out the ranks. The sun may be setting on the Beach, but as anyone knows, sometimes the most beautiful hues slip out during that golden hour.

The Hanging Stars – On A Golden Shore

On A Golden Shore still finds the band inhabiting the later lineage, but they’ve let go of their grip on the darkness and desire of Hollow Heart. The band’s Richard Olsen has noted that the band were striving for something more ‘baggy and Balearic’ while still wading through the waters of Country. The album succeeds in its strive, carving out a sound that’s more homegrown, with nods towards the late ‘90s this time. The delightfully English spin that the band puts on the Cosmic American sound solidifies them as a true outpost in the East — the Starry Eyed and Laughing to Rose City’s Flying Burrito’s breeze. The last album built expectations, but On A Golden Shore has leaped over them with ease.

The Hard Quartet – The Hard Quartet

The lineup alone should be enough to pull you by the ear over to the speakers for this one. Comprised of Emmett Kelly, Stephen Malkmus, Matt Sweeney, and Jim White, the band’s resumes come stacked with records that surely already dot the shelves of many listeners, but assembled en masse the players turn in an album that’s far more than an indie vanity project. Anchored by White’s distinctive skitter on the kit, the songs are scuffed, ruffled, but gleaming with internal glow. They’re the kind of pieces that come together when talent reflects off of one another. The guitars wrap around the listener in spiral coils, tying tight tales that have Malkmus sounding as great as ever. Supergroup is a dicey term that usually brings to mind excess, but here its applicable even if the band would likely slough it off immediately.

Humdrum – Every Heaven

Every Heaven bursts onto the speakers like a classic waiting to be crowned. Propelled by a persistent beat that’s constantly trying to catch its breath, the songs tumble and jangle, strum and swoon. Smudged by synths and hung on hooks that cut deep, the record stitches together the swirling memories of mail-order singles clubs, college radio staples, and five band bills packed into basement stages. Vanderbilt clips the New Wave backdrop from 4AD’s sunnier set and drenches it in the pastel patterns of IRS, Creation, and Cherry Red.

Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few – The Almighty

The album kicks off strong, making its case early with “Love” which features Dee Alexander (The AACM Great Black Music Ensemble) on vocals. Slaloming between gospel and jazz, the song rides the wave of rhythm, building to an exultant finish that explores its subject with an exuberance and bliss. The album follows with similar divinations of love, light, and beauty, including a glowing piece that features Ari Brown adding his sax to Collier’s and Isaiah taking the lead on vocals for “Perspective (Peace and Love),” a song that shimmers like light off of water. Two side-long suites round out the album in resplendent style. Collier has never been one to shy away from ambitious works, but The Almighty finds him at his best, brimming with love and sending it out in waves to the listener.

Jeff Parker ETA IVtet – The Way Out of Easy

Anna Butterss, Jay Bellerose, and Josh Johnson return to weave rhythm and repetition into a tapestry that’s threaded with delicate patterns and infused with fragrant smoke. The record captures one night, a single performance, rather than the assembled array that made up the previous record. The band stands at their peak, a symbiotic organism that communicates through the musical mycelium. While the venue may be gone, the ETA IVtet lives on, and within recordings of The Way Out of Easy the aura of Enfield becomes a fifth member of the ensemble, a spirit to be carried wherever their next home may be.

Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders – Planet Lidders

While the record has technically only been released to subscribers of the band’s Bandcamp series, with a wider release scheduled for later in the year, the lucky few already have a heavy one on their hands. The record finds the band expanding, collaborating, and coalescing their sound. The opener features Isaiah Coller on sax, a collab that came to a head with a blistering performance at this year’s Milwaukee Psych Fest. Folk and fury play out over the rest of the album, with Drew bringing some Vibraphone action and the set capping off with a massive cover of “Almost Cut My Hair,” giving an elevated air to the CSNY classic.

Jeffrey Silverstein – Roseway

Roseway works as a perfect addendum to the last record, but it also speaks to Silverstein’s prowess with the self-imposed boundaries of an EP. His third in a series, the EPs have served as transitionary stages for his work and this EP finds Silverstein pushing himself on both poles of his sagebrush saunter. The palette remains split between instrumentals and vocal screeds, and he’s still a heavy hand with the former. Falling in heady company with Bobby Lee and Spencer Cullum, Silverstein has become one of the foremost merchants of motorik country. The band has screwed down their sound, and the balance of taut rhythms with breeze-blown guitar and steel comes through perfectly on Roseway.

Jennifer Castle – Camelot

Four years on and Castle’s returned from the clouds and climbed down the trees to wander among the rabble, reckoning with middle age, faith, foundations, humanity, and hubris. It’s a more grounded record than her last, letting go the gossamer wings that let her soar so high in the past in favor of road-dusted Americana and country. Though, true to her roots, the record doesn’t settle into anyone else’s mold for either genre. Castle has long been a whispered-about treasure, a songwriter’s songwriter, but with Camelot she’s poised to garner a few louder adulations. It’s great to see her shine.

Jim Nothing – Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn

The last album tumbled through styles, rolling ‘round the ‘90s low-fm dial and feeling like a crush-worthy mixtape sliding down the lunch table like a love note. The tone evens a bit here, with strums taking the edge over the big pop moments, but that power pop crunch still gets a showing, especially on the mid-album run from “Raleigh Arena” through “The Shimmering.” Elsewhere, though, the band ease into a softer side of their sound, jangling through the tender trail of singles that permeated the NZ ‘90s — cutting fromThe Bats, The Clean, Sneaky Feelings, and The Chills. It’s a nice sequel to the sounds that made their debut such an immediate hit around here, and it keeps them ones to watch as the years unfold.

Julie Beth Napolin – Only The Void Stands Between Us

On her new album Julie Beth Napolin (Citay, Meridians) weaves the kind of mercurial folk spell that leads to whispered-about reputations. It’s the kind of album that will enchant the initiated and elude those that missed it years down the road, tantalizing collectors of ‘70s folk arcana and aughts revivalists. The album opens like moonflower, eyes towards the night sky, saturated in a cold humidity that runs down the spine. Napolin’s solo debut speaks to her patience conjuring it into existence, a potent brew watched over until it intoxicates the soul.

Kate Bollinger – Songs From A Thousand Frames of Mind

Capitalizing off of her mixture of ‘60s folk-pop, ’70s Canyon cool, and a porcelain-delicate delivery, the songs on the debut carry a breeziness that’s expected and a depth of production that turns her sunny folk into layered pop dioramas. Strung between contemporaries like Sylvie and Weyes Blood and a link to the past that nods to Linda Perhacs and Susan Christie, the record is both contemporary and classic. The album swings from Brill Building grandiosity to E6 psych-pop on a shoestring and Bollinger’s ability to make it all weave together seamlessly remains her greatest strength. The listener is transported, cocooned, and cradled with chambray melodies that swing in the breeze.

Khana Bierbood – Monolam

Monolam crystalizes the band’s sound without letting themselves get pinned down. It’s a psychedelic gem that flirts with genre, but knows just how to build an aura over the course of an album. Hung heavily on funk, the new album slinks through humid afternoons and into the neon night. The album has the air of a ‘70s soundtrack, chasing unseen antagonists through back alleys draped in wah-guitar washes. The atmosphere turns murky and smoke curls through flickering bar lights.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Flight b741

With a dose of Cosmic Americana in their heart and a ‘70s glam glow-up on the rise, the band finds their compass pointed towards Little Feat but tipping into T. Rex and Slade. The record captures the band at their most lascivious, though they aim their leer away from carnal concerns and towards the lip of societal slip. It’s a pelvic pump of an LP that’s more concerned with environmental collapse than the sweat and swagger would let on.The Gizz has been glossed in synth, minced through microtones, and splattered across the official bootleg pipeline, but they haven’t sounded like they’re having this much fun in a few years, and I’m fully here for it.

LAIR – Ngélar

Songs on Ngélar quiver with a defiant energy, picking up celebratory tones at times, but often also riding a line between danger and darkness. The band digs into themes of economic hardship and the effects that industrialization has played on their town of Jatiwangi, once a great hub of clay and terracotta production. That tension plays into the band’s sound — a feeling of wanting to uphold tradition, but of being crushed by commerce. The band reflects their cultural history through their instruments themselves, fashioning them out of local clay. They turn rough hewn folk forms into a conduit for electric ache. The band’s sophomore album finds them carving out a modern gem of Eastern psych that should appeal as much to Sublime Frequencies heads as it will to fans of Khruangbin and Goat.

Laughing – Because It’s True

Montreal’s Laughing digs into a power pop and indie sound that culls from the College Radio boom of the ‘90s. Catchy to a fault and stomping out of the speakers on fuzz guitars and carefree harmonies, the record ably captures the immediacy of the era. The band most often flips through the second wave of power pop, with an ear towards Teenage Fanclub, The Lemonheads, Matthew Sweet, and Velvet Crush. Like those touchstones, the band has a way with turning emotional ache into insistent pop songs, hung on a crush of guitars and delightfully barbed hooks.

Lee Baggett – Because It’s True

Waves for a Begull is a lightly toasted romp through country-kissed folk with a slight scent of funk wafting off the water. Baggett’s battered style has always been what shines, and he doesn’t shirk the reputation this tie around. With a straw hat hue coloring in the curves of his songwriting, Lee’s always been one to make the listener feel like they’re not intruding, rather that they’re just there on the couch to help conjure a few vibes. The works here feel like old friends come back to call one last time. Touches of Neil and Leon Russell soak the skin on Begull, but Lee pulls it off like he’s come to their conclusions on his own.

Lightheaded – Combustible Gems

The band bridges the ‘60s to Sarah divide like few others who’ve tried to pick up the bittersweet baton over the years. They bring to mind Veronica Falls’ adept balance and nesting doll harmonies, or label mates Kids on a Crime Spree in their ability to slip out of time completely. Alongside newcomers Parsnip, they’re leading the indie pop pool this year. The baroque pluck occasionally finds the band wandering through deeper pop wells populated by Boettcher and Brown, picking up ornamental touches from The Millennium and The Left Banke without turning towards garage revivalism. The album fills the room with a steady steam, a dry ice haze that comes on slow, but once it envelops the listener, it’s hard to escape from the band’s pillowy playland. I’d happily inhabit Combustible Gems all day long.

Lynn Avery & Cole Pulice – Phantasy & Reality

Sounding like a long distance call across space and time, the latest collaboration from Lynn Avery & Cole Pulice finds the artists mapping the shape of longing. Expanding on the dynamic from their last outing, Avery lays down a base of synth and guitar, a sparse landscape that’s scratched by winds and often at odds with the sun. To this, Pulice adds their warm, woolen sax and bass clarinet, tapping deep into the listeners’ yearning for comfort among increasingly ominous odds. Underpinned with field recordings, the pieces feel siphoned from unseen forces, built on memory and magnetism, imbued with an ache that sits deep within the human condition.

Magic Fig – Magic Fig

the debut record from Magic Fig sounds like it catapulted out of the Canterbury collective mind in the late ‘60s. The band, featuring members of The Umbrellas, Whitney’s Playland, Almond Joy, and Healing Potpourri, shrug off their indie aspirations and turn their jangles towards prog and psych, though they keep it beating with a pop heart. Atop the liquid light of their prog-pop, the vocals of Inna Showalter (Blades of Joy, Whitney’s Playland) are as captivating as ever. File it lovingly next to copies of Stella Kola’s indispensable debut and a stack of Upupayāma records.

Magic Tuber Stringband – Needlefall

North Carolina’s Magic Tuber Stringband fills the room to the rafters, despite their sleight stature as a duo. Echoing local legends like Black Twig Pickers, but pushing well beyond the bounds of standard bluegrass fare, the band set out to redefine the work of a modern stringband. Unlikely touchstones rear their heads on Needlefall, with the band citing Don Cherry and Terry Riley as inspiration, especially within their realms of free improvisation. Free forms are applied to the album, but like fellow academic expansionists Modern Nature, the band directs the flow through prompts and musical roadmaps. Thus, the album becomes far more than a folk or bluegrass bounty.

Maya Ongaku – Electronic Phantoms

Maya Ongaku add synth to the mix, saturating the air with CasioTone, Moog, and Hammond as often as the flutes, sax, and rain stick this time around. The band turns towards a sound that weaves the natural through the fissures and fractures in the machines. It’s a fusion album with Laraaji in one corner and Alice in another, set adrift with Conny Plank filling the sails. The record experiments with more propulsive feats on the first half, then bridges the gaps with a three-part suite that slides seamlessly between the band’s works on the last album and the hypnotic motions of their new wave.

Mdou Moctor – Funeral For Justice

or his second outing for the mighty Matador, Mdou and band push their sound further than ever, still rooting the songs in the Tuareg traditions and themes, but taking the production to new heights and embracing his status as a guitar luminary, with all the flash that goes along with it. Mdou, along with help from rhythm guitarist Ahmoudou Madassane, burns the skies with stings that seem to move too fast for physics, but just fast enough to light up every synapse in the brain.

Meatbodies – Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom

From the very first strains Meatbodies’ new album, the band is awash in the foam and fumes of the ‘90s — muscular riffs lost in a haze of shoegaze and dry ice. The band chews on a few obvious touchstones, rifling through the glam flash of Smashing Pumpkins and the towering sonics of MBV, but it’s fun to see them also roll in a kind of Janes-ish delivery on songs like “Billow” and “Move” that lets the vocals swing from the rafters like Farrell in his prime. The rest of the shoegaze menagerie gets a good workout in the influence list as well, injecting rhythm like Ride, angst like Adorable, and the earnest heart of Drop Nineteens. The formula works, and it’s a ballsy move to go for the double gatefold dose these days, but Meatbodies soak up every inch, revealing in some room to move.

The Medium – City Life

The Medium offer up their most country-hued record yet, weaving twang between ‘70s singer-songwriter cues and power pop charms. The latter finds the band pouncing on a particularly hometown brand of the genre, tying Twilley, Bell, Chilton, Redding and Rennie into the pomp and prowl of less local licks that conjure up Nilsson and Rhodes. With their balance of pop and prairie, The First National Band comes to mind — polished, but honest in their exploration. City Life winds up the band’s most concise and consistent album yet, a tender record tied to Nashville’s balance of studio sheen and off-strip honesty.

The Messthetics – The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis

The record moves away from the punk and post-rock roots that had tugged Messthetics away from embracing more than a few smoke curls of jazz on their last two records. The urge to bend into full jazz-rock was bubbling, but here they embrace it with extraordinary results. Both Lewis and Pirog move from fat, hammering riffs to ecstatic light beams with ease, pushing this one towards the edges of jazz-psych without tumbling over.

ML Wah – Sight Unfolding

Following up on the piano-led works of his last ML Wah record, Mirrored Night, LaJoie found inspiration in a friend’s piano, working repeated phrases on the borrowed upright and overdubbing countermelodies performed as one-take improvisations. It’s a meditative, mindful record that culminates in a dizzying collaboration with Wednesday Knudsen, a layered lament that rings through the speakers with gentle resolve.

Mo Dotti – Opaque

Opaque is fittingly titled, a barrage of textures caught up in a smoked glass glaze, but the album’s most persistent friend is rhythm. Underneath the dry ice dampness the band is propelled by percussion, rock tumbling the listener until they’re kicked out the other side smooth and slick and whirlpool fresh. The band chases a bit of Chapterhouse’s legacy here, knowing full well that there’s as much value in letting the listener dance as there is in setting ‘em sinking into the furniture. While the sandpaper sonics are appreciated, there’s every sense that “Lucky Boy,” “Whirling Sad” or “For Anyone And You” would easily jostle the listener just as much if the fader was pulled back on the fog.

Motorists – Touched By The Stuff

Motorists have a way of skimming through the most elastic impulses from the era. The album finds them adhering the bass-heavy pop punch of Breeders or Elastica to “Call Control,” and leaning into the FM fuzz on “L.O.W.,” dialing down the energy and swapping it for a scrape of grunge’s hold on the decade’s dial. They do let slip a few deeper nods to the ‘80s power pop pulpit as well. “Barking At The Gates” is loose n’ running with the harmonic hues of Shoes. There’s a new wave shimmer that slips through the darkness on “Embers,” but the band weaves them all into an album wrought with displacement and hung on a gnawing hunger. Themes of scraping by, sticking out, and skirting stagnation abound. Motorists are getting lost and found again through life and the art that feeds ya, even when it won’t buy a meal.

Mountain Movers – Walking After Dark

If you’ve seen Mountain Movers live in the last year or so there’s also been a Kosmiche stretch slinking into the sets. Those longform impulses are back, but this time the fuzz has been doused and the tones have turned liquid and limber. The band’s new album, Walking After Dark, weaves some of the band’s more compact compositions with the cosmic climate they’ve cultivated. True to the album’s title, there’s a nocturnal spirit at play, something that only makes sense once the scorch of the sun has receded from the sky. The album opens into the sundown saunter of “Bodega On My Mind/The Sun Shines On The Moon” setting the tone for the coiled calm to come. They swap between a comfortable aural amble and the pulsing cosmic corners, bookending each disc with heavy, heady dives into the ether.

Mt. Misery – Love In Mind

In the past I’ve likened the band to Real Estate, owing to their capability with harmonies and soft-focus aesthetics. On the first album the comparison held pretty true, but on Love In Mind they grow closer to the classic sounds of Go-Betweens, The Sneetches, and The Chills. The album refines the band’s sound, softly jangling and leaning into the bittersweet heartache that they capture so well. From the first moment to the last strains, the band transports the listener into their dream-smudged landscape, letting us all bask in the overcast light of uncertain youth, overwhelming love, and the ample anxieties of everyday life.

Myriam Gendron – Mayday

Gendron’s last record was a warm and tender collection that cushioned the blow of everyday life. Mayday leaps back into that mode, with “Long Way Home” bringing its cottony comforts to the speakers. The song exudes a sense of relief, the kind that can only come from finally returning to a place of safety after a long stint away. The album follows her first single’s beacon, lighting the traveler’s path with a soft glow and a breeze buffeted by ennui. It was great to see her get picked up by Thrill Jockey this year, giving a larger loudspeaker to her quiet works. Come fall this one is going to be indispensable on the headphones and it looks to be holding strong for the year end list too. Wrap up in this one.

Nathan Bowles Trio – Are Possible

The outfit strikes a balance between the Appalachian amble of the Twigs and the more exploratory work of Setting. On the surface, the record is closest to the folk forms, Bowles’ banjo upfront, sparring with Toll’s bass work with a verdant lilt. As the listener wanders deeper into the record though, jazz fluidity and circular forms find the band diving into hypnotic repetition on “The Ternions,” and sounds flung far from the traditional on “Our Air.” The trio remains unbeholden to the stuffiness of tradition, instead finding themselves among the overlap of folk’s many folds. The longer pieces on the record suture the ideals of improv to the more motorik mindset of ‘70s German Progressives, tipping towards a pastoral Kosmiche scuffed with dirt.

Ned Collette – Our Other History

There’s a bit more levity on Our Other History, tying Ned to the winking tapestries of Roy Harper and the earthen ache of Bill Fay. Yet, even with a bit of sun peeking through, Collette still remains a master of gathering storms. The winds don’t howl, the downpour doesn’t slash, but the smell of rain hangs on the air and the pressure change creeps up the spine with each note. Ned seems particularly paired to that internal barometer, and it’s hard not to feel each of these nine tracks physically as the album spins.

Nightshift – Homosapien

On Homosapien the synths become thicker, the guitars strum and twang, and the vocals get an incandescent glow. The ambiance itself blossoms, giving the album a notable expansion of dimension and depth. The record doesn’t fully jettison the band’s aesthetics — rubbered bass and acerbic lyrics that reflect the chaos and crumble of late stage life remain — but they’ve definitely turned a corner towards a second chapter. The shift looks good on ‘em, a confident, catchy, yet cushioned vision of the latter days of post-punk’s slide towards the late ‘80s, laying down the building blocks of the ‘90s sound. If Homestead was still picking up prospects they’d fit right in, but since we’re long since those days, they could land nowhere better than Trouble in Mind.

Omni – Souvenir

Great to see Omni back on the case. The band got the bump up to the Sub Pop Roster on their last album and they rack up another for the Northeast giant this year. The band remains one of the most exciting bands running through the post-punk fallout these days. Letting their roughed-up exterior get a little polish, the new album gives the band a bit of a New Wave sheen to add to their quiver. Souvenir finds the band giving a new dimensions to their sound and shaving a bit of the brittleness out of the mix.

Parsnip – Behold

The band’s debut had a certain wobbliness to it, an off-kilter charm that focused on their love of ‘90s post-punk janglers like OH-OK, Confetti, and Tiger Trap. That whimsy remains, but as they dip into the blissful bindings of Behold, the band wades through some vocal harmonies that clip Wendy & Bonnie, The Free Design, and the Yellow Balloon. The organ swells, popcorn percussion, and bright, summery jangles brush against the layered harmonies. The band adds 12-string strums, stacking on Kinks and Byrds touches while they reach for grey-skied Mamas and Papas heartache. The melancholy meshes with the merriment and the album tugs and twists pop’s past into a bright future.

Powers/Rolin Duo – Clearing

The pair’s mixture of guitar and dulcimer remains one of modern folk’s more magical moments, weaving their respective instruments into patterns and pieces that fold and unfold with light and lucidity. This time the band forgoes any brush with brevity in favor of two sidelong pieces. Though, as anyone who has witnessed the band live can attest, given time to lengthen their twining into tapestry, not a moment is wasted. It’s easy to get lost inside these works, strung up amongst the glow and sing of strings, but as the mind moves among the Powers/Rolin path it’s possible to find something akin to peace.

Prairiewolf – Deep Time

Prairiewolf return with a sophomore album that expands their mix of kosmiche, ambient country, and spiritual jazz. Atop the silken slink of an Ace Tone FR-3, rocking each song with an unseen hand, the band crafts a catalog that’s caught somewhere between the moment when smoke curls around the wind and when it dissipates into the infinite. Deep Time finds the band crawling further and farther into the quasar blink of the kosmiche side of their catalog. The record holds a steady pulse, but softens the edges, melting their motorik moments into languid pools rippling like Capillary waves towards the horizon.

Psychic Temple – Doggie Paddlin’ Thru The Cosmic Consciousness

Between the bouts of spiritual jazz, psychedelic reinterpretations of stoner metal classics, and ambient institutions, the band has often returned to a more pastoral place. The sprawling jazz ensembles retreat and the album, hinted to be his last under the Temple’s name, winds its way through loose country funk, JJ nightshade shuffles, and rootsy moments that swing at the ‘70s in the best ways. Recorded in the Joshua Tree desert, the album has a rumpled swagger to it — organ cool downs, soaring background vocals, sweaty groovers greased to perfection, and denim-dusted AOR that slouches on the porches of the mind.

The Reds Pinks and Purples – Unwishing Well

What the world needs is a new dose of heavy-hearted indie pop from The Reds, Pinks and Purples. If the past five years have taught me anything, it’s that Glenn Donaldson may be the defining voice of what it feels like to hang resigned disappointment on a person in the 2020s. Where past albums may have dealt with heartbreak and hubris, this time Donaldson takes aim at working in music in the modern age. Fandom, frustration, and faith in the best intentions of the listening populace collide with strains of Felt, The Go-Betweens, and East River Pipe on Unwishing Well. Glenn’s got a few gentle axes to grind, and with good reason. Love leaves the deepest scars, but as the wolf of capitalism devours our darlings, there’s more than one way to break your heart.

Rich Ruth – Water Still Flows

This one’s not out until next week, but I’m sneaking it onto the list early. The new record takes a darker turn, embracing drone and metal cues. That darkness clouds the the album but it doesn’t blot out the band’s dynamic interplay. Ruth’s guitar growls, thunders, and looms like a tectonic force. The saw of strings, the scatter of vibes, and a deep sax burn are all on display. Spencer Cullum brings waves of steel to ride the storm, continuing the pair’s history of collaboration. The record is a monumental evolution of sound and its tempest is ably on view over the course of Water Still Flows.

Rosali – Bite Down

Nance and co. back Rosali with the tightness of Crazy Horse and the caress of Yo La Tengo. The last record, with Mowed Sound behind her, turned a corner for Rosali. Her sound progressed from solo singer-songwriter to something more visceral, something that sticks like a thorn in the palm of the listener. Her songs bring a drop of blood, a flash of pain, it’s a release that’s as necessary as it is cathartic. Middleman is at her best here, assured, acidic, a gleam in her eye that’s knowing and natural. The band burns through her songs, turning riffs and rumination into the kind of songs that scar the soul.

ROY – Spoons For The World

Where early albums were doused in government conspiracy concept pieces and JK & Co. clouds of pastel smoke, this time the sound has been grounded and gussied, lacquered to a mahogany sheen that’s more for the soft-hearted crooners than for the psych-splashed garage enthusiasts. Dump the tabs and pull up a brandy for this one because ROY’s gone deep into the woodwork for a stunningly honest take on Lee Hazelwood, Fred Neil, Tims — Buckley and Hardin, and Jackson C. Frank. Like many of his influences there comes a time, or perhaps an age, when tweed-elbowed ballads and deep sighs feel in order. As excellently as he captured the garage pop grist, Leffler seems to deeply understand the ‘70s singer-songwriter swerve as well.

Sam Blasucci – Real Life Thing

Blasucci doubles down on the smooth textures and reclines into the velour corners of the pop pantheon. Songs waft across the conversation pit, curl through the air, unbutton another button, and glint off of the mirrored glass of the past. The album glides past its touchstones, never holding on tightly but picking up a bit of scent in the process. Holland-era Beach Boys hues slip through Mink Hollow Rundgren touches. The album is meticulous, but never sterile. It’s just the kind of album that’ll find its fans near the Fagan and Becker boarder, headphones on and lights turned low.

Seawind of Battery – East Coast Cosmic Dreamscaper

The debut reveled in quietude, digging into shadows of Americana as they grew larger in the afternoon sun. There were shades of Bruce Langhorne alongside the more modern melt of Barry Walker Jr. and Andrew Tuttle. All of those shades remain, but on East Coast Cosmic Dreamscaper, Seawind expands and pulls past the ambient country canyon. The most prominent shift is a sense of rhythm that’s applied to quite a few songs here. There was always a subtle sway, a psychic chug that served as rudder in Horn’s work, but here the light lap of the drum machine is more prominent — a full embrace of Kosmiche can be found splashing new hues on his amber horizon.

Shane Parish – Repertoire

While he’s alone on his latest release, the record carries the spirit of collaboration in its cadre of covers. Interpreting everyone from Aphex Twin to Roland Kirk, Minutemen to John Cage and Mister Rogers, there’s certainly a wide breadth envisioned on Repertoire. The spirit of the originals flows through Parish’s interpretations weaving around and through their boundaries, pacing their performances while taking the time to run tributary from the source in delightful abundance. Repertoire proves that all music is indeed folk music — storied melodies that carry us, calm us, and caress us, no matter what corner the genre hounds have tried to put these pieces into originally. Parish is one of our most vibrant interpreters, and Repertoire finds him as near as ever to a definitive statement.

The Shovel Dance Collective – The Shovel Dance Collective

Steeped in the drape and drama of traditional English, Irish, and Scottish folk, the works of sprawling outfit Shovel Dance Collective bridge the divide between the town square and the concert hall. What could easily lapse into simple folk revival pushes the boundaries of tradition, much like their American counterparts picking apart the expectations of bluegrass. Like The Black Twig Pickers, Magic Tuber Stringband, or Nathan Bowles, the band springs off of the expectations of the past and into discordant moments that balance their pastoral reverie.

Simon Joyner – Coyote Butterfly

Rather than an album bled with regret, its an exploration of endurance. Resilience is often the hardest quality to master, and heartbreak is an exercise in internal bleeding. The album lives in the inhale just after weeping, the shuddered breath that rights the sails and seeks to exorcise the grip of grief. True, the mind’s never truly free, but scars and callouses aren’t so far apart. It takes practice to find peace and that process is documented here.

Six Organs of Admittance – Time Is Glass

With a tangle of acoustics wound around hazed landscapes, Time Is Glass is both blissful and bleak. The album starts streaked with afternoon sun, but quickly descends into the wordless womb of “Hephaestus.” The storm is brief as the album settles into an overcast resolve that feels like coming home.Scrubbed of some of the band’s early erosion the record sends Chasny’s psych-folk through the maze of mirrors — reflections of themes, circles on circles curling like smoke to the skies. The record is homesick even as it’s written from home. Is the body ever at rest? Is a place, familiar or foreign, ever truly ours? Is comfort the fight leaving or the fight won?

The Smashing Times – Mrs. Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys

Where many of the ‘80s jangle acolytes go for clean strums and wide-eyed earnestness, The Smashing Times aren’t afraid of a little dissonance and that’s on prime display over the course of Mrs. Ladyships and the Cleanerhouse Boys. The band’s quick to let a prime riff or honeyed hook go sour, slipping in just a bit of psych and curdling the reverie with noise. Like Cleaners From Venus or Half Japanese, the band isn’t scared to make the listener work for a hook. As often as they let pastoral strums and sanguine harmonies prevail, they’ll stray down an alley of dirge, ruminating on repeated mantras about tea.

SML – Small Medium Large

Recorded live and then taken home to edit, rearrange, chop and chip at what they’d worked out, the resulting album shares an origin (and two members) with Parker’s ETA IVtet, but the core of its sound is much further afield. More rooted towards the German Progressives than the fusion set, the works from SML are rhythmically locked and looped — hypnotic, but tantalizingly experimental at their core. The band bends and brands the listener, shuttling them through the start-stop traffic of “Switchboard Operations,” before oozing into the languorous “Soft Sand,” and the oxygenated funk of “Three Over Steel” The record is a blur of lights and motion, of sensory input from all sides tethered to a bedrock of beat that’s unflagging in the most delightful way.

The Soundcarriers – Through Other Reflections

In their fifth outing the band feels comfortable in their woolen wonderland, revisiting some of the darkness and dream of their 2014 classic, Entropicalia. Organs and flutes whisk the listener through portals of sound while harmonies skew more melancholic than merry. The band draws on the history of Anglican folk, but bends their take through prismatic ends, crafting pop that’s built for days of headphone exploration, 2022 found the band return to form on Wilds, a welcome surprise after years away from the speakers, and Through Other Reflections arrives to assure us that it won’t be another eight years of wanting.

Steel Fringe – Steel Fringe

The Portland outfit, featuring RSTB fave Barry Walker Jr (Rose City Band, Mouth Painter), offers up a pretty perfect debut EP — four songs of cosmic country that wind through the mountains and lay down a cascade of green hues and sumptuous harmonies. Feeling like The Byrds and Burriotos are in their blood, the first single “Klickitat County” served as a nice entry point to what the Fringe are all about, but there are more expansive horizons embedded in their eponymous EP as well. The opener, “In My Head,” adds a bit of twang and ramble. It turns down the layered approach but lets pedal steel and a pump trolley pulse that pushes the song down the tracks, soaking in the sun.

Stewart Forgey – Nature of the Universe

Pacific Range captured the woodsmoke and salt that cures the best West Coast cosmic country, melding mercurial harmonies into a record that lives forever in the California canon. The band’s Stewart Forgey moves just past the peak of the ‘70s for Nature of the Universe. Save for the title track, on which the members of PR reunite for a last light into the layered harmonies, its a solo record in spirit. There’s a lonesome lilt, a raglan rumple that captures some of what Mapache have been working while feeling like a kindred spirit to label mate Eric Silverman. The album follows a tradition of solo albums cut in the shadows of celebrated pasts, and like the troubadours that carved the path before him, Forgey succeeds in slipping his own way into the sun.

Styrofoam Winos – Real Time

The band brings together three solid songwriters, and like Galaxie 500 or Yo La Tengo before, them they are the kind of band whose members shine on their own but gain a particular glow when found in proximity. The band captures a cross-section of indie, country, and folk that feed off of each other, stewing their shared influences into an album that’s piquant and potent. The band’s as comfortable in the twang and amble of “Don’t Mind Me,” as they are on the broken-wing heartache of “Don’t Know What.” Eclecticism can sometimes sound disjointed but when it works just right it sounds as seamless as Real Time.

Sunburned Hand of the Man – Nimbus

Their recent run for Three-Lobed has seen the band in fine form and they work to top themselves on Nimbus. The band is known for their expansive, malleable lineup, but as they settled into the house studio in Turner’s Falls, the band brought to the fold a formidable array of classic and new faces. What formed is an album that pushes the band forward while embracing all that exemplifies the Sunburned ethos. The record is threaded with readings from poet Peter Gizzi, lending the album its title and giving it an anchor in philosophical splendor. Phil Franklin’s hand is felt in particular on this record, as it balances between the kosimche pulses behind Gizzi’s aural amble, the scorched psychedelics, and a surprisingly strong amount of song-oriented material. The record winds around the listener, warped by woodsmoke, dampened by moldering pages stacked and re-stacked, and doused in a kind of wooded magic that can only be dredged from the mosses and murk of the Northeastern woods.

sunshy – I Don’t Care What Comes Next

The indie pop coffers have been full this year, with particular respect paid to a swelling emphasis on shoegaze. The year’s been glazed to perfection with quite a few new records hitting the pedals while keeping the hooks in tact. Chicago four-piece sunshy throw a dose of heady gaze into the ring that feels like staring into the sun. Like fellow ’24 standouts Mo Dotti and Aluminum, the record’s core is pop first, fry second. Strip away the tsunami of sound and underneath the band still has plenty going on besides a wall of guitars. With some admitted folk influences, a slight nod to ‘90s emo, and an ambient streak that shows up on interstitial tracks like “Balletmoshing,” I Don’t Care What Comes Next balances power with vulnerability.

SUSS – Birds & Beasts

On their latest album, Birds & Beasts, the band delves further into the caves and caverns of the sound they call home. Twilight slinks over the record, unfurling with a slow and sanguine curl. The songs are cool, humid, vaporous, eventually burning off their haze for moments at at time as songs stretch into the early morning light. What sets SUSS apart is that, while there’s stillness and meditation to their works, there’s also a coiled menace. Album closer “Migration” feels like it broods, watching the curls of sweat steam under the streetlights. Similarly, “Prey” rocks back and forth with an unease that’s not made for the background. The band might be working in ambience, but SUSS create a sound that creases the listener. As bucolic as songs like “Restlesss” and “Overstory” can be, the band is just as ready to course through the veins with a nicotine twinge. The new album shows them in fine form — blissful, blistered, bitten, and bittersweet.

Te Huhu – Deelishis Herbs

Putting wind in the ‘90s and early ’00’s psychedelic sails, the South-hemi smoke slingers pick up the yoke of slow motion merchants from Spiritualized and the short-lived Lupine Howl, to Spacemen 3 and Brian Jonestown at their most mystic. The band thrives in extended grooves, pushing the vocals under waves of molasses and mercury. Te Huhu thrives on a tapestry of slow strums with an engine of longing. Throw in a veneer of heat-warped amp fry and this record comes slithering towards my wheelhouse. The band steers Deelishis Herbs on a raft of vibrations, lacquering the listener to the floor for a good forty minutes. The world’s calling out for a narcotic respite these days and this one’s ticking all the boxes.

Trummors – 5

The band’s latest album, 5, finds the band deep into the traditions of the ‘70s brothers and sisters that came before them, kicking choruses like Gram and EmmyLou, or sparring swoons like a less traditional George and Tammy. There’s a familial feel to the record, and its easy to see that everyone here has locked into Trummors’ afternoon alchemy. The record is the band’s most lived in and loose. As much as Dropout City felt like a band bringing their vision to fruition, 5 feels like the duo comfortable at their peak. The cosmic country that began to brush the big sky reclines across the speakers. Songs like “Jalisco Kid” feel like they’ve always been a part of the Americana canon and the band takes to George Strait’s “I Can Still Make Cheyenne” like seasoned vets summoning the saunter-slung ghosts of their Taos environs. It’s that pacing that makes 5 such a stunner. There’s often an urge to crank out a dancefloor filler, something to run ravage on the jukebox, but all the songs here are made for the evening dip of the sun over the hills and a tumbler of whiskey.

The Umbrellas – Fairweather Friend

The debut was built on a love for ‘80s and ‘90s pop that played with candid songwriting, and the album’s home-recorded roots gave it the feeling of a lost curio. The band’s live shows, meanwhile, found them pushing for something bigger, and that sound comes crashing through on their follow-up. Still self-recorded, but hardly sounding like that’s the case, the band have pushed the volume and dynamics to the forefront on Fairweather Friend. Buzzing with a caffeinated smile that recalls The Primitives at their most effervescent, the record seems to wrap around the listener like a favorite scarf. They grab the fizz of the Coventry band and run with it, though their love for The Pastels still steers the record like a rudder, and quieter moments nod to BMX Bandits or The Aislers Set.

Upupayāma – Mount Elephant

Mount Elephant captures a storybook quality, transporting the listener into dense jungles, peaked mountains, fragrant gardens, and glowing caves. It’s easy to let the mind wander as the record unfolds, floating on Ferrari’s phrases, lost in the images that swirl up in curls of psychedelic smoke. Kaleidoscopic in nature, the record shifts tone and texture with the subtle slip of a wrist, soaking the speakers in an array of hues, seeming to color the room in the very same saturated aura. Like contemporaries Goat, Kikagaku Moyo, and Wax Machine, Upupayāma stitches together the overlapping threads of culture, suturing the sonics of Anatolian psych, Bhutanese folk, Thai disco, and the more pastoral contingent of ‘70s German Progressives.

Uranium Club – Fairweather Friend

In the past the Club has found themselves as caustic as any tin foil chewers — evoking Pere Ubu and Mx-80 — pushing aside hooks for barbed wire windmills of sound that lacerate the listener. On their latest, like Wire, Magazine, or The Saints before them, the band excels in not holding tightly to their sound, but rather letting evolution tumble their turbulence into gems. The Saints in particular come into play as the band embraces an unlikely nest of brass on a few tracks, letting a bit of flash shine off of their tangled tin wonderland.

Vague Plot – Crying In 9

Vague Plot brings together perennial RSTB regular Zachary Cale with a stable of BK psych vets — Phil Jacob (Psychic Lines), Ben “Baby” Copperhead, Uriah Theriault (Woodsy Pride), and John Studer (Woodsy Pride) for a new outfit that’s pushing away from Cale’s folk pasts and towards a more insistent jazz rock ripple. The record loops around the room in muscular gallops, sparring singed guitars against one another, with Phil Jacob’s cosmic sax sluicing through the spaces between. The band’s already had a hell of a year, making a mark on Milwaukee and blurring the lines between jazz-psych and jam with excellent results.

Wand – Vertigo

Where Wand was often fond of throwing quite a few styles into the still in the past, the works on Vertigo feel like they were all conjured from the same strange magic. They work as singles, but they truly shine as one larger piece. Plum and Laughing Matter strove for this feeling, prog-tipped gems that found the band expanding but not always carving into the marrow like this. Wand has sounded bigger and bolder in the past, but with a touch of restraint they’ve rarely sounded more assured.

Water Damage – In E

With four sides, four pieces, each around the twenty-minute mark, In E, cranks the turbine for twice the normal amount of tumult of their average album. The band doesn’t waste a minute of it, locking into three head-nod harbingers of doom and a capping the album with a cover of Shit & Shine’s “Ladybird” (off of their ‘05 Latitudes entry) that ropes in the band’s Craig Clouse for an extra dose of Damage. With so much drone gone to the ambient crowd these days, its nice to find a respite for those who’d like to enter stasis and still seethe. Sometimes you gotta say “screw serenity, I’m looking for something that cuts to the bone.”

Weak Signal – Fine

Every song out of the Signal feels like it’s been a canon classic since college radio spilled out of dorms and onto the roster of every label lookin’. The band’s had an untouchable run over the past few years, but with Fine they’ve let loose their best set yet, a definitive statement that wrings the bar rag straight into the veins. The record’s hung on some of the band’s best hooks — rusted and ragged, but soaked in dopamine delight. Weak Signal slide through the street grease and construction dust that sill pool in the corners of a city under siege by developers bent on sanding the last jagged corners. The Signal serves as a reminder of what once was, and to an extent, what will always be. The City needs a band bold enough to chew the sinew out of a song, to carve characters out of cigarette ash.

Winged Wheel – Big Hotel

The band adds two members to their ranks, filling out a stacked deck that already contained members of Spray Paint, Tyvek, Powers/Rolin Duo, and Matchess with high profile members of Water Damage and Sonic Youth. With a deep bench of drummers, the heavy hammer of percussion becomes a focus on Big Hotel. The songs tack into the tempest, full of angry amplifiers, feedback, froth, and obfuscation, but the constant pound of the drums pulls the listener out of the fog track after track. The band’s first record wound through the mists, more akin to the murky works of Liz Harris, but on Big Hotel they’re ready to revel in the light, ready to turn turbulence into bliss. Shoegaze acolytes come and go, but rarely does a record feel like it may have something to teach the class of ’91.

Writhing Squares – Mythology

Mythology hits the listener like a battering ram, built on inertia and entropy, smashing the stasis that surrounds it. The record rings like an alarm bell set to strains of cosmic funk, synth-punk, and acid-dipped jazz. It’s a dystopian record for dystopian times. When we’re bartering water in the rubble of Wall Street and home brewing moonshine in the Lithium mines, these will be the anthems of the unsettled populace. When we rise from the ashes, Writhing Squares will be the house band at the end of the world. Get it on rotation now and beat the crowds.

Yasmin Williams – Acadia

Acadia feels like a celebration of strings, voices, sax, synths, and sticks. Not a track in the bunch doesn’t find Yasmin collaborating with peers and the album soars as her community expands. Yasmin’s core — a flurry of stringwork and the tap and tick of her percussive patter on the instrument — remain but Acadia becomes much larger than her folk and bluegrass beginnings, putting fingerpicked guitar at the heart of a panorama of sounds. Acadia embraces all the possibilities that Williams hinted at in the past and surpasses them with each successive track.

Zachary Cale – Next Year’s Ghost

After the last strains of the bittersweet “Heart of Tin” fade from the speakers the gentle lope of keys continues and it becomes clear that this is a very different kind of record for Cale. Piano and Wurlitzer are the cornerstones of the album, written as a meditative respite in the pandemic. The album ponders loneliness, isolation, time and its tenure. It’s a new skin for Cale, but inside beats the same resilient heart that hums through his past works. With a cadre of collaborators —Shahzad Ismaily (Bob Dylan, Beings, Marc Ribot), Jeremy Gustin (Delicate Steve, Okkervil River), Uriah Theriault (Woodsy Pride), Jr Bohannon, and a trio of strings — the songs that Cale penned in purgatory came to life in the studio, a bittersweet collection that drapes the listener in the comforts of melancholy.