Sound Advice- 03. April. 2024

The flood of great 2024 releases continues! Today we're taking a look at the latest from The Church, Waxahatchee, and Outer World

Apr 03, 2024

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Longtime readers may recall that I reviewed 100 new (to me) records last year. Because ~~I’m a glutton for punishment~~ love music, I’m doing it again this year. This is the latest in the series.

Good morning!

Today we’re taking a look at several records, including the latest from The Church, Waxahatchee, and Outer World.

Every year, I celebrate all the great music we’ve been gifted while worrying that next year will see the other shoe drop. I did that last December and have been proven wrong every month since. Not only are there a ton of releases steadily coming out, but there’s also been a ton of great stuff, no matter your tastes. It’s almost overwhelming— but in all the best ways. Below are a few of the releases that have caught my attention recently.

The Church- Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars

For many people, the Church stopped being a band after 1988’s Starfish and its hit, ‘Under The Milky Way.’ A few stragglers hung on through the follow-up Golden Afternoon Fix and its sublime–and only–hit, “Metropolis.” Luckily for us, Steve Kilbey & Co. never got the memo, and the band kept making music.

19 (?!) Records later, Kilbey & Co. are back, following up on 2023’s The Hypnogogue with Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars. Hypnogogue dabbled in an expansive sound with mixed results. Created at the same time, Eros serves as part 2 to that LP and dispenses with much of that, with fantastic results.

This might be a more economical record, but the playing is as big as ever. And then there’s Kilbey’s voice—any question about what record you’re playing vanishes with ‘2054.’ Kilbey’s voice is at its most Kilbey-ist (sorry!) and shines against a spare musical backdrop before the song expands into soaring guitars and flourishes at the end. It’s a formula repeated a few times across the record to great effect.

For those of you here for one of the band’s distinct riffs (think ‘Reptile, ‘Metropolis,’ or even ‘Under The Milky Way’, you have to wait just a little bit longer before getting to ‘The Weather’ but your patience is rewarded with chunky chords and a riff that will get stuck in your head.

‘Sleeping For Miles’ is a gorgeous ballad dripping with ‘Ahs.’ It’s an easy song to get swept up and away by. Towards the end, Music From the Ghost Motel gives us a surreal instrumental as a parting gift.

Put all of that together, and you have one of the band's better releases in recent years—and one that will hopefully get the band back on people’s radar.

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Look, I'm not going to tell you something you haven't already read 100x by this point. If, for some reason, you’ve been under a rock and missed the coverage, A) Welcome back, and B) this record is incredible.

Katie Crutchfield has truly hit her stride, MJ Lenderman has brought his brand of magic to the show, and it’s all aces. Again, I’m not forging any new ground here. People have loved Waxahatchee for a while now…but not me.

These records fell into the I find this objectively wonderful, but just can’t get into it category. Honestly, I much preferred her sister Allison’s band Swearin’. Nothing was wrong with any of it; it just wasn’t my thing. That started turning with side project Plains and 2022’s I Walked With You a Ways. Sandwiched between 2020s’ Saint Cloud and this record, I enjoyed it because it wasn't a Waxahatchee record.

But sometimes pivots happen, and sometimes for the most arbitrary of reasons. On ‘Bored,’ Crutchfield manages to string the word out for what feels like 7-8 syllables. Hearing that was like a light switch, and I realized I wasn't listening to the record with detached objectivity; I liked it—really liked it. I imagine this has already carved out a spot on many people’s ‘Best of’ lists. That won’t be news, either.

Short story long; go give this a spin.

Outer World- Who Does The Music Love?

The outer world is Richmond, VA’s Tracy Wilson and Kenneth Close, who previously played together in Positive No. Readers may also recall Wilson as the vocalist in the 90s band Dahlia Seed. Today, she's the force behind Courtesy Desk (a triple-threat record store, radio show, and newsletter).

If you are looking for a new Dahlia Seeds record, this isn’t the place; COVID took Wilson’s trademark booming vocals, and this project is the outcome of reclaiming her main instrument.

It feels cheap to play on Outer World with terms like “rocket ride through…” or “voyage,” but the truth is Who Does the Music Love? is a Fantastic Voyage through the worlds of funk, jazz, postpunk, and even a bit of psych-rock.

The first bits of this record were birthed in what they describe in the presser as the Record Womb, a computer surrounded by 7000 records. If you’ve ever read Wilson’s newsletter, seen her social media posts,or check our her record store –and you should!-- this all feels totally on brand. Outer World’s route next took them to Lawrence, Kansas, and into the orbit of Sweeping Promises’ Caufield Schnug, who helped record it.

We featured the lead single ‘Forms of Knowing’ on these pages roughly four months ago. At the time, I described it as a record that “...exists in the same orbit as bands like Stereolab and even The Breeders. This new galaxy is one full of fantastic synths, samples, and post-punk sounds.”

Having given the full record a close listen, I’m sticking to it.

And One I Wish I’d written:

Matthew Blackwell takes a look at the Meat Puppets 1984 record, Meat Puppets II (1984)

Curt constructs a new character for II: the slacker-prophet, who, like an omniscient desert flâneur, observes everything that happens from his position of relative idleness. “Plateau” describes striving toward the afterlife as scaling a grand plateau where “holy ghosts and talk show hosts are planted in the sand/To beautify the foothills and shake the many hands.” But our narrator remains unbothered; he knows that “there’s nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop/And an illustrated book about birds,” nothing to meet the newly deceased at their goal other than mundanity. These songs seem like they’ve always existed, like they’ve been channeled from some hymnal lost and forgotten in the sand. But Curt, when pressed, will pause and shrug and say it’s “probably just desert stuff.”

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on any (or all) of these records! Did I get it right, or am I way off the mark?

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