Posted in Whathaveyou on June 12th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
I like this band. In another timeline somewhere 20-25 years ago, one might’ve heard a band like this, signed them to Atlantic or some other major label with money to spend and a residual sense of rock music as something worth making a new investment in, and set them touring for the next decade or three, just to see what sticks. I liked the band’s 2023 self-titled debut (review here) and the follow-up 2024 EP, East Side (review here), and the upcoming single “Stranger” keeps the thread going by showcasing inheritances from grunge without being beholden to them, finding a youthful brooding that’s aware enough of its own craft not to get lost in navelgazing. Unlike fucking everybody, it sometimes feels like.
In case you, like me, have no idea when June 20 is, it’s next Friday. My suggestion is you just follow Laurel Canyon on Bandcamp/wherever and then you won’t miss it, because no, I’m not so full of myself as to think you’ll remember some song from a news post here more than a week earlier just on my say-so. Set an alarm or some such. Write it in pen on your wall calendar. Mine still says May, it turns out; though in my defense the baby-goats-calendar picture for May was extra adorable.
The mind wanders. The PR wire, however, stays on task with vigilence:
Noise punk outfit Laurel Canyon announce new single ‘Stranger’ out 20th June via Agitated Records
Recorded live to tape in London after an early morning drive from Liverpool during their first European tour, the track was laid down in just a few takes with Mercury Prize-winning producer Shuta Shinoda. What you will hear is exactly what echoed through sixteen sweaty clubs across Europe, raw and unfiltered. “Stranger” delves into themes of identity and transformation, propelled by explosive, fuzzed-out guitars, pounding drums, a hypnotic bassline and pristine vocal harmonies.
The single will be available on all major streaming platforms.
Laurel Canyon’s three-track 2024 EP East Side was the follow up to their self-titled debut album. The songs – ‘East Side’, ‘Garden of Eden’, and ‘Untitled’ – expand on their feedback-laden, amphetamine-fueled garage rock sound with sharper focus and tenacity. The cover art (by photographer Alec Ilstrup) shows a stark found object style photograph of Laurel Canyon-branded naloxone spray – which is used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids – representing the music within as a shot-to-the-heart of rock ‘n’ roll.
Good morning and heavy riffs. Today is day 7 of the Quarterly Review. It’s already been a lot, but there are still 30 more releases to cover over the next three days, so I assure you at some point I’ll have that nervous breakdown that’s been ticking away in the back of my brain. A blast as always, which I mean both sincerely and sarcastically, somehow.
But when we’re done, 100 releases will have been covered, and I get a medal sent to me whenever that happens from the UN’s Stoner Rock Commission on Such Things, so I’ll look forward to that. In the meantime, we’re off.
Quarterly Review #61-70:
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Ufomammut, Hidden
Italian cosmic doomers Ufomammut celebrate their 25th anniversary in 2024, and as they always have, they do so by looking and moving forward. Hidden is the 10th LP in their catalog, the second to feature drummer Levre — who made his debut on 2022’s Fenice (review here) alongside bassist/vocalist Urlo and guitarist Poia (both also keyboards) — and it was preceded by last year’s Crookhead EP (review here), the 10-minute title-track of which is repurposed as the opener here. A singular, signature blend of heft and synth-based atmospherics, Ufomammut roll fluidly through the six-tracker check-in, and follow on from Fenice in sounding refreshed while digging into their core stylistic purposes. “Spidher” brings extra tonal crush around its open verse, and “Mausoleum” has plenty of that as well but is less condensed and hypnotic in its atmospheric midsection, Ufomammut paying attention to details while basking in an overarching largesse. The penultimate “Leeched” was the lead single for good reason, and the four-minute “Soulost” closes with a particularly psychedelic exploration of texture and drone with the drums keeping it moving. 25 years later and there’s still new things to discover. I hear the universe is like that.
Considering some of the places Dana Schechter has taken Insect Ark over the project’s to-date duration, most of Raw Blood Singing might at times feel daringly straightforward, but that’s hardly a detriment to the material itself. Songs like “The Hands” bring together rhythmic tension and melodic breadth, as soundscapes of drone, low end chug and the drumming of Tim Wyskida (also Khanate, Blind Idiot God) cast a morose, encompassing atmospheric vision. And rest assured, while “The Frozen Lake” lumbers through its seven minutes of depressive post-sludge — shades of The Book of Knots at their heaviest, but still darker — and “Psychological Jackal” grows likewise harsher and horrific, the experimentalist urge continues to resonate; the difference is it’s being set to serve the purposes of the songs themselves in “Youth Body Swayed” or “Cleaven Hearted,” which slogs like death-doom with a strum cutting through to replace vocals, whereas the outro “Ascension” highlights the noise on its own. It is a bleak, consuming course presented over Raw Blood Singing‘s 45 minutes, but there’s solace in the catharsis as well.
Laced through with harmonica and organic vibes, Netherlands-based five-piece Heath make their full-length debut with the four extended tracks of Isaak’s Marble, reveling in duly expansive jams keyed for vibrancy and a live sound. They are somewhat the band-between as regards microgenres, with a style that can be traced on the opening title-cut to heavy ’70s funk-boogie-via-prog-rock, and the harmonica plays a role there before spacing out with echo over top of the psychedelia beginning of “Wondrous Wetlands.” The wetlands in question, incidentally, might just be the guitar tone, but that haze clears a bit as the band saunters into a light shuffle jam before the harder-hitting build into a crescendo that sounds unhinged but is in fact quite under control as it turns back to a softshoe-ready groove with organ, keys, harmonica, guitar all twisting around with the bass and drums. Sitar and vocal harmonies give the shorter-at-six-minutes “Strawberry Girl” a ’60s psych-pop sunshine, but the undercurrent is consistent with the two songs before as Heath highlight the shroomier side of their pastoralism, ahead of side B capper “Valley of the Sun” transitioning out of that momentary soundscape with clear-eyed guitar and flute leading to an angular progression grounded by snare and a guitar solo after the verse that leads the shift into the final build. They’re not done, of course, as they bring it all to a rousing end and some leftover noise; subdued in the actual-departing, but still resonant in momentum and potential. These guys might just be onto something.
The Cosmic Dead, releasing through Heavy Psych Sounds, count Infinite Peaks as their ninth LP since 2011. I’ll take them at their word since between live offerings, splits, collections and whatnot, it’s hard sometimes to know what’s an album. Similarly, when immersed in the 23-minute cosmic sprawl of “Navigator #9,” it can become difficult to understand where you stop and the universe around you begins. Rising quickly to a steady, organ-inclusive roll, the Glaswegian instrumental psilocybinists conjure depth like few of their jam-prone ilk and remain entrancing as “Navigator #9” shifts into its more languid, less-consuming middle movement ahead of the resurgent finish. Over on side B, “Space Mountain” (20:02) is a bit more drastic in the ends it swaps between — a little noisier and faster up front, followed by a zazzy-jazzy push with fiddle and effects giving over to start-stop bass and due urgency in the drums complemented by fuzz like they just got in a room and this happened before the skronky apex and unearthly comedown resolve in a final stretch of drone. Ninth record or 15th, whatever. Their mastery of interstellar heavy exploration is palpable regardless of time, place or circumstance. Infinite Peaks glimpses at that dimensional makeup.
Perhaps telegraphing some of their second long-player’s darker intentions in the cover art and the title Nyctophilia — a condition whereby you’re happier and more comfortable in darkness — if not the choice of Max Norman (Ozzy Osbourne, Death Angel, etc.) to produce, San Francisco’s The Watchers are nonetheless a heavy rock and roll band. What’s shifted in relation to their 2018 debut, Black Abyss (review here), is the angle of approach they take in getting there. What hasn’t changed is the strength of songwriting at their foundation or the hitting-all-their-marks professionalism of their execution, whether it’s Tim Narducci bringing a classic reach to the vocals of “Garden Tomb” or the precise muting in his and Jeremy Von Epp‘s guitars and Chris Lombardo‘s bass on “Haunt You When I’m Dead” and Nick Benigno‘s declarative kickdrum stomping through the shred of “They Have No God.” The material lands harder without giving up its capital-‘h’ Heavy, which is an accomplishment in itself, but The Watchers set a high standard last time out and Nyctophilia lives up to that while pursuing its own semi-divergent ends.
Leipzig’s Juke Cove follow a progressive course across eight songs and 44 minutes of Tempest, between nodding riffs of marked density and varying degrees of immediacy, whether it’s the might-just-turn-around-on-you “Hypnosis” early on or the shove with which the duly brief penultimate piece “Burst” takes off after the weighted crash of and ending stoner-rock janga-janga riff of “Glow” and precedes the also-massive “Xanadu” in the closing position, capping with a fuzzy solo because why not. From opener “The Path” into the bombast of “Hypnosis” and the look-what-we-can-make-riffs-do “Wait,” the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Mateusz Pietrzela, bassist/vocalist Dima Ogorodnov and drummer Maxim Balobin mine aural individualism from familiar-enough genre elements, shaping material of character that benefits from the scope wrought in tone and production. Much to its credit, Tempest feels unforced in speaking to various sides of its persona, and no matter where a given song might go — the watery finish of “Wait” or the space-blues drift that emerges out of psych-leaning noise rock on “Confined,” for example — Juke Cove steer with care and heart alike and are all the more able to bring their audience with them as a result. Very cool, and no, I’m not calling them pricks when I say that.
A little more than a year out from their impressive self-titled debut LP (review here), Philly three-piece Laurel Canyon — guitarist/bassist/vocalist Nicholas Gillespie, guitarist/vocalist Serg Cereja, drummer Dylan DePice — offer the East Side three-songer to follow-up on the weighted proto-grunge vibes therein. “East Side” itself, at two and a half minutes, is a little more punk in that as it aligns for a forward push in the chorus between its swaggering verses, while “Garden of Eden” is more directly Nirvana-schooled in making its well-crafted melody sound like something that just tumbled out of somebody’s mouth, pure happenstance, and “Untitled” gets more aggressive in its second half, topping a momentary slowdown/nod with shouts before they let it fall apart at the end. This procession takes place in under 10 minutes and by the time you feel like you’ve got a handle on it, they’re done, which is probably how it should be. East Side isn’t Laurel Canyon‘s first short release, and they’re clearly comfortable in the format, bolstering the in-your-face-itude of their style with a get-in-and-get-out ethic correspondingly righteous in its rawness.
If you hadn’t yet come around to thinking of Poland among Europe’s prime underground hotspots, Tet offer their four-song/45-minute self-titled debut for your (re-)consideration. With its lyrics and titles in Polish, Tet draws on the modern heavy prog influence of Elder in some of the 12-minute opener/longest track (immediate points), “Srebro i antracyt,” but neither that nor “Dom w cieniu gruszy,” which follows, stays entirely in one place for the duration, and the lush melody that coincides with the unfolding of “Wiosna” is Tet‘s own in more than just language; that is to say, there’s more to distinguish them from their influences than the syllabic. Each inclusion adds complexity to the story their songs are telling, and as closer “Włóczykije” gradually moves from its dronescape by bringing in the drums unveiling the instrumentalist build already underway, Tet carve a niche for themselves in one of the continent’s most crowded scenes. I wonder if they’ve opened for Weedpecker. They could. Or Belzebong, for that matter. Either way, it will be worth looking out for how they expand on these ideas next time around.
Aidan Baker, Everything is Like Always Until it is Not
Aidan Baker, also of Nadja, aligns the eight pieces of what I think is still his newest outing — oh wait, nope; this came out in Feb. and in March he had an hour-long drone two-songer out; go figure/glad I checked — to represent the truism of the title Everything is Like Always Until it is Not, and arranges the tracks so that the earlier post-shoegaze in “Everything” or “Like” can be a preface for the more directly drone-based “It” “Is” later on. And yes, there are two songs called “Is.” Does it matter? Definitely not while Baker‘s evocations are actually being heard. Free-jazz drums — not generally known for a grounding effect — do some work in terms of giving all the float that surrounds them a terrestrial aspect, but if you know Baker‘s work either through his solo stuff, Nadja or sundry other collaborations, I probably don’t need to tell you that the 47 minutes of Everything is Like Always Until it is Not fall into the “not like always” category as a defining feature, whether it’s “Until” manifesting tonal heft in waves of static cut through by tom-to-snare-to-cymbal splashes or “Not” seeming unwilling to give itself over to its own flow. I imagine a certain restlessness is how Aidan Baker‘s music happens in the first place. You get smaller encapsulations of that here, if not more traditional accessibility.
Based in the arguable capitol of the Doom Capitol region — Frederick, Maryland — the three-piece Trap Ratt arrive in superbly raw style with the four-song/33-minute Tribus Rattus Mortuus, the last of which, aptly-titled “IV,” features Tim Otis (High Noon Kahuna, Admiral Browning, etc.), who also mixed and mastered, guesting on noise while Charlie Chaplin’s soliloquy from 1940’s The Dictator takes the place of the tortured barebones shouts that accompany the plod of 13-minute opener/longest track (immediate points) “The Sacred Skunk,” seemingly whenever they feel like it. That includes the chugging part before the feedback gets caustic near the song’s end, by the way. “Thieving From the Grieving” — which may or may not have been made up on the spot — repurposes Stooges-style riffing as the foundation for its own decay into noise, and if from anything I’ve said so far about the album you might expect “Take the Gun” to not be accordingly harsh, Trap Ratt have a word and eight minutes of disaffected exploration they’d like to share with you. It’s not every record you could say benefits aesthetically from being recorded live in the band’s rehearsal space, but yes, Tribus Rattus Mortuus most definitely does.
Posted in Reviews on October 4th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Wednesday, huh? I took the dog for a walk this morning. We do that. I’ve been setting the alarm for five but getting up before — it’s still better than waking up at 4AM, which is a hard way to live unless you can go to bed at like 8 on the dot, which I can’t really anymore because kid’s bedtime, school, and so on — and taking Tilly for a walk around the block and up the big hill to start the day. Weather permitting, we do that walk three times a day and she does pretty well. This morning she didn’t want to leave the Greenie she’d been working on and so resisted at first, but got on board eventually.
In addition to physical movement being tied to emotional wellbeing — not something I’m always willing to admit applies to myself, but almost always true; I also get hangry or at least more easily overwhelmed when I’m hungry, which I always am because I have like seven eating disorders and am generally a wreck of a person — the dog doesn’t say much and it’s pretty early and dark out when we go, so I get a quiet moment out under the moon going around the block looking up at Venus, Jupiter, a few stars we can see through the suburban light pollution of the nearby thoroughfares. We go up part of the big hill, have done the full thing a couple times, but she’s only just three-plus months, so not yet really. But we’re working on it, and despite Silly Tilly’s fears otherwise, her treat was right where we left it on the rug when we got back. And she got to eat leaves, so, bonus.
There are minutes in your day. You can find them. You can do it. I’m not trying to be saccharine or to bullshit you. Life is short and most of it is really, really difficult, so take whatever solace you can get however you can get it. Let’s talk about records.
Quarterly Review #21-30:
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Maggot Heart, Hunger
This is Maggot Heart‘s third record and they’re still a surprise. It can be jarring sometimes to encounter something that edges so close to unique within the underground sphere, but the Berlin outfit founded/fronted by Linnéa Olsson (ex-The Oath, ex-Grave Pleasures, ex-Sonic Ritual) offer bleak and subversively feminine post-punk informed by black metal on Hunger, and as she, bassist Olivia Airey and drummer Uno Bruniusson (ex-In Solitude, etc.), unfurl eight tracks of arthouse aggro and aesthetic burn, one can draw lines just as easily with “Nil by Mouth” or the later “Looking Back at You” to mid-’70s coke-strung New York poetic no wave and the modern European dark progressive set to which Maggot Heart have diligently contributed over the last half decade. The horn sounds on “LBD” are a nice touch, and “Archer” puts that to work in some folk-doom context, but in the tension of “Concrete Soup” or the avant garde setting out across the three minutes of the leadoff semi-title-track “Scandinavian Hunger,” Maggot Heart demonstrate their ability to knock the listener off balance as a first step toward reorienting them to the atmosphere the band have honed in these songs, slightly goth on “This Shadow,” bombastic in the middle and end of “Parasite,” each piece set to its own purpose adding some aspect to the whole. You wouldn’t call it easy listening, but the challenge is part of the fun.
Adjacent to New Psych Philly with their homebase in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and with a self-titled collection that runs between the shoegazing shine of “Deadzone,” the full-fuzz brunt of “Slack” or “Inside Out,” the three-minute linear build of “Fell Off” made epic by its melody, and the hooky indie sway of advance single “Be as One,” the trio Catatonic Suns make a quick turnaround from their 2022 sophomore LP, Saudade, for the lysergic realization and apparent declaration of this eight tracks/31 minutes. With most cuts punkishly short and able to saunter into the noise-coated jangle of “Failsafe” or the wash of “Sublunary” — speaking of post-punk — Catatonic Suns eventually land at closer “No Stranger,” which tops eight minutes and comprises a not-insignificant percentage of the total runtime. And no, they aren’t the first heavy psych band to have shorter songs up front and a big finale, but the swirling layered triumph of “No Stranger” carries a breadth in its immersive early verses, mellow, sitar-laced midsection jam and noise-caked finish and comes across very much as what Catatonic Suns has been building toward all the while. The same might be true of the band, for all I know — it seems to be the longest piece they’ve written to-date — but either way, put them on the ‘Catatonic Voyage’ tour with Sun Voyager for two months crisscrossing the US and never look back. Big sound, and after three full-lengths, significant potential.
Densely weighted in tone, brash in its impact and heavy, heavy, heavy in atmosphere, Sacri Suoni‘s second album together and first under their new moniker (they used to be called Stoned Monkey; kudos on the change), Sacred is Not Divine positions itself as a cosmic doom thesis and an exploration of the reaches and impacts to be found through collaborative jamming. Four songs make it — “Doom Perspection of the Astral Frequency 0-1” (8:15), “Six Scalps for Six Sounds” (10:28), “Cult of Abysmus” (13:15) and “Plutomb, Engraved in Reality” (8:02) — and as heavy has they are (have I mentioned that yet?) there is dynamic at play as well in the YOB-ish noodles and strums at the start of “Six Scalps for Six Sounds” or in “Cult of Abysmus” around the 10-minute mark, or in the opener’s long fade, but make no mistake, the mission here is heft and space and the Milano outfit have both in ready supply. I think “Plutomb, Engraved in Reality” has maybe three riffs? Might be two, but either way, it’s enough. The character in this material is defined by its weight, but there are three dimensions to their style and all are represented. If you listen on headphones, try really hard not to pulverize your brain in the process.
Earthy enough in tone and their slower rolling moments to earn an earliest-Acid King comparison, Barrie, Ontario’s Nova Doll are nonetheless prone to shifting into bits of aggro punk, as in “Waydown” or “Dead Before I Knew It,” the latter of which closes their debut album, Denaturing, the very title of the thing loaded with context beyond its biochemical interpretations. That is, if Nova Doll are pissed, fair enough. “California Sunshine” arrives in the first half of the seven-song/29-minute long-player, with rhythm kept on the toms, open drones and a vastness that speaks at least to some tertiary affect of desert rock on their sound. Psychedelia comes through in different forms amid the crunch of a song like “Mabon,” or “California Sunshine,” and the bassy centerpiece near-title-track feels willfully earthbound — not complaining; they’re that much stronger for changing it up — but the three-piece of guitarist/vocalist Casey Cuff, bassist Sean Alten and drummer Daniel Allen ride that groove in “Denaturation” like they already know the big spaceout in “Light Her Up” is coming. And they probably did, given the apparent care put into what is sometimes a harsh presentation and the variety they bring around the central buzz that seems to underscore the songs. Grown-up punk, still growing, but their sound is defined and malleable in its noisy approach on their first full-length, and that’s only encouraging.
With their self-released debut album, In Line for the End Times, hard-driving single-guitar four-piece Howl at the Sky enter the field with 12 songs and a CD-era-esque 55-minute run that filters through a summary of decades of heavy rock and roll influences. From their native state of Ohio alone, bands like Valley of the Sun and Lo-Pan, or Tummler and Red Giant a generation ago — these and others purveying straight-ahead heavy rock light on tricks and big on drive. More metal in their riffy underpinnings than some, certainly less than others, they foster hooks whether it’s a three-minute groover like “Stink Eye” and opener “Our Lady of the Knives” or the more spacious “Dry as a Bone” and the penultimate “Black Lung,” which has a bit more patience in its sway than the C.O.C.-circa-’91 “The Beast With No Eyes” and modernize ’70s vibes in the traditions of acts one might find on labels like Ripple or Small Stone. That is, rock dudes, rockin’. Vocalist Scott Wherle bears some likeness to We’re All Gonna Die‘s Jim Healey early on, but both are working from a classic heavy rock and metal foundation, and Wherle has a distinguishing, fervent push behind him in guitarist Mike Shope, bassist Scot “With One ‘T'” Fithen and drummer John Sims. For as long as these guys are together, I wouldn’t expect too many radical departures from what they do here. Once a band has its songwriting down like this, it’s really more just about letting grow on its own over time rather than forcing something, and the sense they give in listening is they know that too.
The first two four-song EPs by Buenos Aires psych/post-rock four-piece Fin del Mundo — guitarist/vocalist Lucia Masnatta, guitarist Julieta Heredia, bassist Julieta Limia, drummer/backing vocalist Yanina Silva — wander peacefully through a dreamy apocalypse compiled together chronologically as Todo Va Hacia el Mar, the band’s Spinda Records first long-player. From “La Noche” through “El Fin del Mundo,” what had been a 2020 self-titled, the tones are serene and the melodies drift without getting lost or meandering too far from the songs’ central structure, though that last of them reaches broader and heavier ground, resonance intact. The second EP, 2022’s La Ciudad Que Dejamos, the LP’s side B, has more force behind its rhythms and creates a wash in “El Próximo Verano” to preface its gang-vocal moment, while closer “El Incendio” takes the Sonic Youth-style indie of the earlier material and fosters more complex melodicism around it and builds tension into a decisive but not overblown resolution. It’s 34 minutes long and even between its two halves there’s obvious growth on the part of the band being showcased. Their next long-player will be like a second debut, and I’ll be curious how they take on a full-length format having that intention in the first place for the material.
A pandemic-born project (and in some ways, aren’t we all?), the two-piece instrumentalist unit Bloody Butterflies — that’s guitarist/bassist Jon Howard (Hordes) and drummer August Elliott (No Skull) — released their first album, Polymorphic, in 2020 and emerge with a follow-up in the seven tracks/27 minutes of the on-theme Mutations and Transformations, letting the riffs do their storytelling on cuts like “Toilet Spider” and “Frandor Rat,” the latter of which may or may not be in homage to a rat living near the Kroger on the east side of Lansing. The sound is punker raw and as well it should be. That aforementioned ratsong has some lumber to its procession, but in the bassy “Fritzi” that follows, the bright flashes of cymbal in opener “BB Theme” (also the longest inclusion; immediate points) and the noisy declaration of post-doom stomp before the feedback at the end of “Wormhole” consumes all and the record ends, they find plenty of ways to stage off monochromatism. Actually, what I suspect is they’re having fun. At least that’s what it sounds like, in a very particular way. Fair enough. It would be cool to have some clever lesson learned from the pandemic or something like that, but no, sometimes terrible shit just happens. Cool for these two getting a band out of it. Take the wins you can get.
Whilst prone to NWOBHM tapping twists of guitar in the leads of “Alien Hunter,” “Quicksilver Trail,” etc. and burling up strains of ’90s metal and a modern heavy sub-burl that adds nuance to its melodies, Solar Sons‘ fifth album, Another Dimension, arrives at its ambitions organically. The Dundee, Scotland, everybody-sings three-piece of bassist/lead vocalist Rory Lee, guitarist/vocalist Danny Lee and drummer/vocalist Pete Garrow embark with purpose on a narrative structure spread across the nine songs/62 minutes of the release that unveils more of its progressive doom character as it unfolds its storyline about a satellite sent to learn everything it can about the universe and return to save a dying Earth — science-fiction with a likeness to the Voyager probes; “The Voyage” here makes a triumph of its keyboard-backed second-half solo — presumably with alien knowledge. It’s not a minor undertaking in either theme or the actual listening time, but hell’s bells if Another Dimension doesn’t draw you in. Something in the character has me feeling like I can’t tell if it’s metal or rock or prog and yes I very much like that about it. Plenty of room for them to be all three, I guess, in these songs. They finish with the swing and shred and stomp of “Deep Inside the Mountain,” so I’ll just assume everything works out cool for homo sapiens in the long run, conveniently ignoring the fact that doing so is what got us into such a mess in the first place.
A 5:50 single to answer back to last year’s second long-player, Only the Dead Know Our Secrets (review here), the latest from Mosara — which is actually an older track given some reworking, vocals and ambience, reportedly — is “Amena,” which immediately inflicts the cruelty of its thud only as a seeming preface for the Conan-like grueling-ultradoom-battery-with-shouts-cutting-through about to take place. A slow, noise-coated roll unfolds ahead of the largely indecipherable verse, and when that’s done, a cymbal seems to get hit extra hard as though to let everyone know it’s time to really dig in. It is both rawer in its harshness and thicker in tone than the last album, so it puts forth the interesting question of what a third Mosara full-length might bring atmospherically to the mix with their deepening, distorted roil. As it stands, “Amena” is both a steamroller of riff and a meditation, holding back only for as long as it takes to slam into the next measure, with its sludge growing more and more hypnotic as it slogs through the song’s midsection toward the inevitable seeming end of feedback and drone. Noisy band getting noisier. I’m on board.
Jupiter‘s Uinumas is a complex half-hour-plus that comprises their fourth full-length, running seven songs — that’s six plus the penultimate title-track, which is a psych-jazzy interlude — as cuts like “Lumerians” and “Relentless” at the outset see the Finnish trio reestablish their their-own-wavelength take on heavy and progressive sounds classic and new. It’s not so much about crazy structures or 75-minute-long songs or indulgent noodling — though there’s a bit of that owing to the nature of the work, if nothing else — but just how much Jupiter make the aural space they inhabit their own, the way “After You” pushes into its early wash, or the later “On Mirror Plane” (so that’s it!) spaces out and then seems to align itself around the bassline for a forward shuffle sprint, or the way that closer “Slumberjack’s Wrath” chugs through until it’s time for the blowout, which is built up past three minutes in and caps with shimmer that borders on the overwhelming. An intricate but recognizable approach, Jupiter‘s more oddball aspects and general cerebrality might put off some listeners, but as dug in as Jupiter are on Uinumas, on significantly doubts they were shooting for mass appeal anyhow. Who the hell would want that anyway? Bunch of money and people sweating everything you do. Yuck.
Posted in Whathaveyou on September 29th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
This is somewhere between me trying to give you a heads up on a record that I think sounds pretty cool and a band with some potential, and a note to myself about the same. The release of Catatonic Suns‘ upcoming album — it’s not their self-titled debut, but the vibe I get from the below is they kind of wish it was and listening to it, I get that — snuck up on me, and now here we are and it’s not next week through Agitated Records, same day as the Carlton Melton album that’s streaming today. The good news is I’ve got a Quarterly Review slated for next week and will get to write a bit about Catatonic Suns then, but in case you didn’t feel like waiting the extra week, the singles “Failsafe” and “Be As One” are streaming at the bottom of this post and there’s a bunch of info off the PR wire to go by, so dig in.
Young band, East Coast psych, heavy in parts but not beholden to it, a bit of indie they might shake off as they get older and more into garage and boogie, etc. Just thought it was something that might make your day better since it did mine. I’ll review next week. For now, this:
New album from noisy/shoegazey psych trio CATATONIC SUNS
Creating a blend of 90s indie DIY sensibilities with blankets of psychedelia
Listen to new single ‘Be As One’
Catatonic Suns new album sees them blend the underground psychedelia of the late 80s / early 90s Pacific Northwest with the shimmering shoegazery of Britain from the same time. Heavy and soft guitars, songs that soar, these new recordings verge on the epic.
For fans of The Verve (early), Screaming Trees, Truly, Ride, Slowdive, Alice In Chains.
Pennsylvanian three-piece Catatonic Suns release their brand new album via Agitated Records this autumn (Fall if you reside in the US), Patrick Shields and Jakob Christman have known each other since birth, obsessing on punk rock, but the band actually formed in 2019.
Vocalist / guitarist Patrick and fellow guitarist Llambro Llaguri began creating homemade psychedelic 4 track cassette demos during the Winter of 2015, taking heavy inspiration from an eclectic mix of acts ranging from Ween to R.E.M. As these early songs were created, the duo sought other like minded individuals in their hometown of Allentown, PA to take these primitive demos to the next level. It was then that Patrick recruited another childhood friend, Jakob Christman, to fill the role of bass along with another mutual friend Caleb Strobl completing the rhythm section of Catatonic Suns.
In 2019, the group put out their first release, the Catatonic Suns demo, a collection of lo-fi recordings made by Patrick over the years. During this period, the band began to make a name for itself by playing shows across eastern Pennsylvania including the Lehigh Valley where local garage rock heroes Original Sins hailed from. During the months of August and September of the same year, Catatonic Sun’s reputation for wall of sound psych-grunge was really brought to life when the group teamed up with local record producer guru Matt Molchany of Shards Recording Studio to track their debut studio venture “Aphelion” (more of an extended EP). Self-released in the December, the album found an audience beyond the local music circuit of Pennsylvania, even reaching countries such as the U.K., Germany and Japan.
CATATONIC SUNS CATATONIC SUNS AGITATED RECORDS RELEASE DATE: 6TH OCTOBER 2023 (LP/CD/DL)
Tracklist 1. Deadzone 2. Slack 3. Failsafe 4. Inside Out (Original Sins cover) 5. Sublunary 6. Fell Off 7. Be As One 8. No Stranger
Recorded early 2023 at Shards Recording Studio, Bethelem, PA with tracking and mixing once again by Matt Molchany. Mastered by Mikey Young.
Catatonic Suns is Patrick Shields (guitar, vocals), Jakob Christman (bass) and Caleb Strobl (drums).
Agitated/Catatonic Suns intend to remaster/reissue Saudade on LP/CD formats in 2024, to coincide with debut UK shows.
Carlton Melton release their new album, Turn to Earth, on Oct. 6 through Agitated Records, ahead of beginning a European tour on Oct. 11. And if they’re carrying boxes of records over to sell, they’ll have their work cut out for them with the 80-minute double-LP, which offers 11 tracks intermittently but not desperately space rocking while feeling their way into other heavy psychedelic elements while they go, whether that’s drones, jams, the bits of Earthless-esque rippery in “Cloudstorming” or “”Vanquished,” the Sleep riff in the former and the hints of Easternism in the latter, those two acting as respective departures from each other, themselves, the droning launch of the album in its eight-minute title-track just prior and the New Age texturing in “Cosmicity” immediately following the side flip.
“Cosmicity,” which eventually brings guitar into its 12-minute synthy drone-out, is the second of four landmarks on Turn to Earth but the first to really reveal the way the album is built. “Turn to Earth” itself, at eight minutes, is the longest of the three songs on side A, and its ambient, sometimes minimal approach is well suited to being an intro, even with its extended runtime. “Cosmicity” and the 10-minute “Unlock the Land” open sides B and C, while the repetitive space rocker “Mutiny” caps side D and is over 16 minutes long. These extended pieces — Carlton Melton, a band who digs in, digging in — give Turn to Earth all the more opportunity to immerse the listener, and especially with aural variety on a per-song basis that might be emphasized by “Cosmicity” giving over to the two-minute manipulated percussion jam “Canned Head,” those longer-form works are a chance to get lost in the songs and see where you end up.
There’s a build in the drums on “Turn to Earth” as well, and so the forward motion of “Cosmicity,” patient as it is, doesn’t arrive without preface. The centerpiece of the album as a whole, “Sundering” is a highlight for its bright fuzz tonality and the ’60s psych chic lent to it by virtue of the organ, its Californian nature affirmed by the wah and noisy freakout that ends it, cutting suddenly to “Unlock the Land,” which is immediately quieter and stays that way for about seven of its 10 minutes. A complement perhaps for the title-track, it functions similarly on a gradual forward build and is a trap for the mind without leaning on a hook, or, say, vocals at all. “Roboflow” follows with its krautrock beeps and bloops like it’s 1978 and we’re all living on Mars (which we would be if Nixon hadn’t won earlier that decade) and “Last Times” unfurls itself with a majesty, not so much doing something radically different in laying out a procession and building around it, but bringing the drone, drums and bluesy guitar together in a way that’s more jam than experiment and feels warmer for that.
Slow swirl grows louder through “Last Times,” but Carlton Melton — guitarist/synthesist Rich Millman, synthesist/guitarist Anthony Taibi, bassist Clint Golden, drummer Andy Duvall, here working with Phil Becker as producer — are setting up the pairing of “Migration” and “Mutiny” on side D, and the keyboard-driven “Roboflow” into the warm water of “Last Times” is what lets them do it. In “Migration” — another shorter, three-minute inclusion, almost there lest anyone feel like maybe they’ve got the band figured out, and that’s part of the fun — they synth has a kind of warning sound buried in the mix of the second half, and that’s fair enough for the launch happening in “Mutiny,” which burns its way upward on guitar for the first two minutes before the drums hit into the backbeat.
And does that backbeat stay even as the song progresses along an increasingly-noised outbound wavelength, scorching all the while. It starts to come apart after about nine minutes in, but it’s freakery long before then, and the remainder is Carlton Melton finding their way around some breakout drumming and heavier riffing, a consistent backing drone (might be organ), and generally apocalyptic vibing, the latter two of which hold for the duration. This last of Turn to Earth‘s anchor tracks isn’t really trying to summarize the record prior — though its building structure does represent a fair portion of it, especially but not exclusively among the longer songs — but is pushing deeper into a kosmiche reality, a total head trip for total heads, round peg in the square hole of planet Earth. This is not necessarily a new place for Carlton Melton to reside; one imagines them quite comfortable in a NorCal wyrdo palace with the protection of a rainforest of spiky pot leaves to keep what most people regard as reality at bay. Not likely to reflect their actual circumstance, but it should give you some idea of the level of ‘dug in’ they’re working at.
To wit, all the way. Carlton Melton are an exploratory band, and their work maintains that aspect no matter what a given song is actually doing in terms of structure, tone, or arrangement. This is the band’s own interpretation of psychedelic music, rather than a style they’re playing toward, and the difference of their bending it to fit them instead of bending themselves to fit it is palpable here. ‘Bent’ might be an operative word for Turn to Earth as well, since the album seems to find its own particular angle in terms of point of view. If a listener is familiar with their past work, this aspect is recognizably Carlton Melton, and if you don’t know the band, you will by the time the 80-minute existential milling machine is done turning the big rocks in your brain into little pebbles of lysergic joy. They are now and have been for some time a good case in the argument that psilocybin cures depression.
You can stream Turn to Earth in its entirety on the player below, and I suggest that you do. Give the album some time to wake up and flesh itself out at its own speed. If your head is in mania-mode, go for a couple deep breaths as you dive into the title-track. Euro/UK tour dates and order link follow.
CARLTON MELTON UK/EU TOUR OCTOBER 2023 – Oct 11 – GHENT, BE – @ Kinky Bar Oct 12 – LONDON, UK – @ Strongroom Bar w/ Black Helium and Psychic Lemon Oct 13 – GLASTONBURY, UK – @ King Arthur w/ Dead Otter and Thee Crow Oct 14 – HEBDEN BRIDGE, UK @ The Trades Club w/ Dead Sea Apes , Dead Otter and Waka(dj set) Oct 15 – GLASGOW, UK @ Ivory Blacks w/ Nebula, The Cosmic Dead, and Lucid Sins Oct 17 – SALISBURY, UK @ The Winchester Gate Oct 18 – BRISTOL, UK @ Crofter Rights w/ Sonic Jesus and Stereocilia Oct 19 – MARGATE, UK @ Bar Nothing Oct 20 – ANTWERP, BE @ Trix Desert Fest Oct 21 – AMIENS, FR @ Secret Show Oct 23 – ANNAY LE CHATEAU, FR @ Bristrot Culture Oct 24 – ROUEN , FR @ Le 3 Pieces Oct 26 – ZWOLLE, NL @ Hedon w/ The Warlocks Oct 27 – AMSTERDAM, NL @ OCCII w/ Sex Swing Oct 29 – PARIS, FR @ La Maroquinerie e w/ The Warlocks
Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco. With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 25th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Just being a little safe here in that when Carlton Melton announced Turn to Earth, their new album, would be out Oct. 6, there were European and UK tour dates announced with that. Now, what I don’t know is whether this announcement is in addition to that, or instead of it, or what. Ultimately, it’s a big whatever. It’s not like I was gonna see Carlton Melton in friggin’ Belgium anyway, so whether those shows are happening is a little moot except in my generally wanting things to go well for good bands — shitty bands can fall off a cliff — but I’d imagine they are and this is just a press release centered on the UK because there are a bunch of shows there and it’s the UK.
But, more generally about Carlton Melton: They rule. Very much their own kind of weird. I know you don’t need me to tell you that, but it’s true just the same. I haven’t heard the new record yet, and I know the last one isn’t necessarily a tell because they’re unpredictable like that, but the last three records at least have been gems and I think these guys know a streak when they’re on it. If they cruise on momentum alone, it’ll at least be interesting. And the UK announcement? Maybe it was just the Brett Savage poster art was too good not to send out.
Either way, here’s that, along with dates and other whatnot from the PR wire:
CARLTON MELTON UK TOUR 2023
New album Turn To Earth out October via Agitated Records
Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco. With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal.
As exquisite as Turn To Earth is, Melton are best appreciated as a live act: their recordings as well as their gigs are largely improvised – not so much composed as birthed. And yet their most recent tour ended abruptly and perilously. The group had to cancel its final three shows once members were admitted to Arnhem hospital in the Netherlands. Five years later, reinforcements have strengthened the band and restocked its arsenal of great tracks.
After the rockus interruptus of that 2018 tour and the tantric tease of the intervening Covid lockdown, Melton have some unfinished business. An October 2023 tour is poised to set the freshly minted quartet back onto the stages of Europe and within the cerebral folds of its fans.
Turn To Earth, sure … but keep your head in outer space.
CARLTON MELTON 2023 UK SHOWS Oct 12 – LONDON – STRONGROOM BAR w/ Black Helium and Psychic Lemon Oct 13 – GLASTONBURY – KING ARTHUR w/ Dead Otter and Thee Crow Oct 14 – HEBDEN BRIDGE – THE TRADES CLUB w/ Dead Sea Apes, Dead Otter and Waka (DJ Set) Oct 15 – GLASGOW – IVORY BLACKS w/ Nebula, The Cosmic Dead and Lucid Sins Oct 17 – SALISBURY – THE WINCHESTER GATE Oct 18 – BRISTOL – CROFTER RIGHTS w/ Sonic Jesus and Stereocilia Oct 19 – MARGATE – BAR NOTHING
Poster credit: Brett Savage
Carlton Melton is: andy duvall – drums/gtr; clint golden – bass; rich millman – gtr/synth; and anthony taibi – synth/gtr.
Posted in Whathaveyou on August 8th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
Is the world ready for Carlton Melton‘s second full-length of 2023? Almost certainly not. I feel like humanity has barely scratched the surface of this February’s Resemble Ensemble (review here), and even with about two months to prepare for Turn to Earth, who knows what might be in store from the out-there-out-there NorCal psych rockers? Could be jams for sure.
They’ve got two songs posted with a bit of a visualizer/video that works in stages and gets a little headachy with some vibrating imagery later on, but if you emerge from the other side of “Cloudstorming” — which is track two on Turn to Earth, after the droney titular intro — without the word “burner” on your lips, I’d be interested to know what distracted you during the 13 minutes while the song was playing. For me? Laundry. But after I threw the wash in the dryer and came back up from the basement, the four-piece — whose Rich Millman also plays in Desslok, who premiered a video today by fun coincidence — proceeded to melt down that throb in my head that tells me I need to be somewhere and couchlock my ass for the duration. Perhaps, your own laundry almost certainly done already, you might otherwise have a similar experience.
These guys have a reputation at least in my mind for delivering, and I expect no less when Turn to Earth shows up, ready or not. If you’re in the UK or EU, you’ll want to peruse the tour dates below as well to see if they’re coming nearby. For sure a band I wouldn’t mind seeing.
From the PR wire:
Announcing new CARLTON MELTON album Turn To Earth on Agitated Records
Share album’s first two tracks ‘Turn To Earth/Cloudstorming’ with accompanying video
Northern California psychedelic sorcerers Carlton Melton are brain surfers, mind trippers, …”psychlists,” if you prefer. The band will take your head for a ride, occasionally rushing at superluminal speeds through a wormhole or gliding softly on a gentle breeze in a leafy glade. Sometimes your brain needs to rage, and sometimes it needs to repose.
For a decade and a half, the band has yo-yo’ed, almost schizophrenically, between these two modes: walloping space jams with furious guitar solos in one hemisphere of the brain and ethereal, feather-light splashdowns in the other. Not to mention a track here and there that builds from the latter into the former.
But with two new releases in 2023, the band has evolved. Whether psych rock or ambient trance, their sound remains driving, organic, and flowing. With the addition of Anthony Taibi (White Manna, DDT), however, the group’s metal freak-outs are Hawkwindier and their droning kraut trances are Spacemen 3-er. In January, the quartet released the playfully spacey Resemble Ensemble, recorded in Taibi’s home studio 3D Light. October now sees the band Turn To Earth, a work with scents of Autumn, a season of death and transition. The cover art evokes a vine-covered, electric crucifix. The sound is, well, earthy but also gritty and striving towards change. The album was recorded in Fall 2022 and now harvested in Fall 2023.
CARLTON MELTON TURN TO EARTH AGITATED RECORDS Release date: 6th October 2023 (2LP/CD/DL)
Tracklist 01. Turn To Earth 02. Cloudstorming 03. Vanquished 04. Cosmicity 05. Canned Head 06. Sundering 07. Unlock The Land 08. Roboflow 09. Last Times 10. Migration 11. Mutiny
Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in San Francisco. With Becker at the helm, the synths have become more prominent (“Cosmicity,” “Roboflow,” “Migration”) and the tone heavier on the doom (“Cloudstorming,” “Unlock The Land,” title track): several moments could even serve as background music for epic dark fantasy films like Conan the Barbarian, Fire and Ice, or Heavy Metal.
As exquisite as Turn To Earth is, Melton are best appreciated as a live act: their recordings as well as their gigs are largely improvised – not so much composed as birthed. And yet their most recent tour ended abruptly and perilously. The group had to cancel its final three shows once members were admitted to Arnhem hospital in the Netherlands. Five years later, reinforcements have strengthened the band and restocked its arsenal of great tracks.
After the rockus interruptus of that 2018 tour and the tantric tease of the intervening Covid lockdown, Melton have some unfinished business. An October 2023 tour is poised to set the freshly minted quartet back onto the stages of Europe and within the cerebral folds of its fans.
Turn To Earth, sure … but keep your head in outer space.
CARLTON MELTON UK/EU 2023 TOUR Oct 11 – GHENT, BE – @ Kinky Bar Oct 12 – LONDON, UK – @ Strongroom Bar w/ Black Helium and Psychic Lemon Oct 13 – GLASTONBURY, UK – @ King Arthur Oct 14 – HEBDEN BRIDGE, UK @ The Trades Club w/ Dead Sea Apes Oct 15 – GLASGOW, UK @ Ivory Blacks TBA Oct 17 – SALISBURY, UK @ The Winchester Gate Oct 18 – BRISTOL, UK @ Crofter Rights Oct 19 – MARGATE, UK @ Bar Nothing Oct 20 – ANTWERP, BE @ Trix Desert Fest Oct 21 – AMIENS, FR @ TBA Oct 23 – ANNAY LE CHATEAU, FR @ Bristrot Culture Oct 24 – ROUEN , FR @ Le 3 Pieces Oct 26 – ZWOLLE, NL @ Hedon w/ The Warlocks Oct 27 – AMSTERDAM, NL @ OCCII w/ Sex Swing Oct 29 – PARIS, FR @ La Maroquinerie e w/ The Warlocks
Carlton Melton is: andy duvall – drums/gtr; clint golden – bass; rich millman – gtr/synth; and anthony taibi – synth/gtr.
Philadelphia’s Laurel Canyon make their self-titled full-length debut on March 31 through Agitated Records. The narrative is murky — which fits, aesthetically, even though the band isn’t — but the 10-song/37-minute offering fuzz-buzzes with immediate swagger on well-placed opening cut “Drop Out,” tapping indie chic screwall with garage rock swing and heavy grunge impulse and a point of view in the vocals and wah-overload of guitarist/bassist Nick Gillespie and guitarist/vocalist Serg Cereja of persistently lacking the fucks that might otherwise be given.
It’s a hard line to walk, let alone have drummer Dylan DePice bash away under the throaty moans of “Madame Hit the Wire” — which may or may not be about prostitution; haven’t seen a lyric sheet, and whoever between Cereja and Gillespie is singing lead, there’s a heroic dose of drawl in the delivery; again, fitting — but Laurel Canyon, though they take their name from the Los Angeles epicenter of 1960s folk-rock/prog exploration, are way more Seattle circa 1989, and on “Drop Out” and side B’s two-minute in-room “Tangiers,” they’ve got the Steve Albini production to prove it, lest we forget dude tracked In Utero, while other songs were helmed by Bryce Goggin, whose massive discography includes work with The Lemonheads, Pavement, earlier and later Swans, among scores of others.
There’s a fair amount happening at any given time, but the will toward rawness is palpable. Don’t take that as indication that the arrangements are unconsidered, as throughout the record Laurel Canyon again and again dare to underscore that kind of fall-asleep-standing-up-or-am-I-nodding-out attitude with solidified (sub) pop structure and accessibility. Not an easy balance to strike, and the fact that “Eczema” brazenly taps “Come as You Are” creeper-verse vibes before its chorus explodes with more of a ’70s Detroit burst and “Tangiers” seems to translate the bassline of “Lithium” to guitar assures that the message gets through.
In 2021, the band issued two startup digital singles, “Two Times Emptiness” and “Enemy Lines,” both of which featured a style more born out of post-punk, but kick enough dirt on it and the shift between those songs and “Daddy’s Honey” — which was the lead track on early-2022’s Victim EP that featured Dylan Loccarini on bass and also featured “Eczema,” “Shove,” “Victim” and “Sade,” all included here, the latter closing — makes a kind of sense in the timeline. If they’re shy about anything, it’s the conscious choice that was inevitably behind the shift in approach, but the sort of full-volume post-Reagan hopelessness in the penultimate “Take Your Cut,” the jangle of guitar there when the distortion isn’t in its more consuming fullness, is the best argument in favor of itself, the trio coming across genuine in having arrived at grunge the way grunge arrived in the first place: punks too lazy or stoned to fit themselves in that genre’s rigid definition reveling in grit and the looking-around-for-the-first-time cynicism of a generation coming of age in an increasingly awful, dying world.
Does it matter that they were maybe-born when Kurt Cobain roamed the earth? Only if you’re an asshole. Relative youth — that is, pre-30 — is an asset across Laurel Canyon, freeing the band to speak to these influences while filling in the inevitable gaps with their own stylistic character, which, thankfully, they do, in the blowout jam of “Victim” and elsewhere. Of the 10 inclusions, “Madame Hit the Wire” and the probably-not-coincidentally-preceding “A Man About Town” and “Take Your Cut” seem to be the only ones not previously released, but the value of having it all in one place isn’t to be understated, even as the march through “Daddy’s Honey,” “Tangiers,” “Shove” and “Take Your Cut” feels all-in on loose-wrist three-chord strum, variously interpreted as it may be with “Shove” letting in a bit more sunlight while “Tangiers” comes through demo-tape barebones and “Take Your Cut” meets wobbly wah with stage-born reverb and feedback, its intensity showing itself in the fact that they’re in and out in under three minutes as much as in the tube-blowing scorch of the finish.
Side A’s primo hooks in “Drop Out,” “A Man About Town,” “Madame Hit the Wire” (also the longest song at 5:33, with due strut), “Eczema” and “Victim” manifest character as well as style, burgeoning individualism of craft alongside deceptively clear, resonant artistic purpose. A reboot disdainful of reboot culture, in some ways at least, the album lends fresh perspective to what was while casually dropping encouraging clues as to what might or could be. The kids — swallowed whole by rampant corporate greed amid mass shootings so normalized they barely register anymore and in a decade still very much with the shadow of plague cast over it — may or may not be alright, but they can write a tune, and they’re only correct to be pissed off, burnt out, and as disillusioned as they seemingly are.
So yeah, punk rock, and likely to be embraced more by arthouse than warehouse for its disposition, but that’s hardly their fault. It’s not a perfect release and if it was it would be wrong, but listening to the shine on that initial guitar of “Drop Out” and the understated tumult that ensues, Laurel Canyon leave little question that they are what they need to be in terms of time, place and attack, playing softer-landing verses and no-kicks-slam-dancing choruses off each other like it’s Reading Festival in 1992, except it’s not that thing and fuck your Gen-X nostalgia anyway. Ultimately, Laurel Canyon has more to say about the future than the past, especially about the band itself, who even as they round out with “Sade” still sound like they’re about to come flying apart. Where does this go 10 years from now, one wonders, since that’s the part of the story that’s never been told before.
And who the hell knows if it’ll be told this time either; universe of infinite possibility and all that. Laurel Canyon can call it quits tomorrow and be done before their first album is even released, but the point here goes beyond their potential or the revivalist aspects of this work. It’s the sense of exploration in the material that makes it exciting, the feeling that the songs — despite being a couple years old — are new to the band as well as to the listener, and with the added intrigue of how they got to where they are sound-wise, the abiding impression is that there’s further they can push it and themselves as they move forward. Here’s hoping.
Laurel Canyon‘s Laurel Canyon is streaming in full below, followed by more info from the PR wire.
Please enjoy:
Strap yourself in people, we have here the debut full length from Philly’s Laurel Canyon; after some online EP releases, and a (now) sold out 7″ with Savage Pencil, Agitated Records is excited to announce the release of their self-titled album! Guitars are drenched in an Asheton worshipping haze and pummel, melded alongside a Velvets chug and mid-to-late 80s Pacific Northwest guttural / primal howl… this is American primitive music at its most powerful. Pigeonholers beware, this album takes its cues from all the most potent places… Funhouse, Loaded, Green River, early Sub Pop, all providing valid reference points.
In amongst this over-amped harmonious murk are 10 visceral and catchy pop songs practically screaming for attention, the core members of Serg, Nick, and Dylan have created a beast of a record.
Some tracks were recorded with Steve Albini, some with Bryce Goggin and all were mastered by Howie Weinberg.
The band played 40 chaotic shows in 2022 alone from New York City to Los Angeles, where they opened for Agent Orange and Strawberry Alarm Clock on two separate occasions at the Whisky a Go Go.
