Sound Advice- 29.May.2024

The flood of great 2024 releases continues! Today we're taking a quick look at several long players.

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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.

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Good morning!

Today we’re taking a look at several records, including the latest from, well, all kinds of artists.

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.

Let’s get into it!

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Water Damage In E Water Damage is an Austin, TX-based collective that uses repetition to build industrial-grade, pulverizing tracks. When I say pulverizing, I don’t mean so loud it’s obnoxious; I mean ones that will crumble to dust anything in their way. Multiple drums and guitars lumber along, creating massive walls of sound. If an oil derrick came to life, I imagine it might sound like this. In E is 4 tracks- each marathon length. The shortest clocks in at 19:45 —and that’s a cover. Each of the four features droning guitar riffs and sustained drum patterns that feel like two titans waging an epic battle to the point of exhaustion. It’s minimalist, but saying that feels reductive— it takes a lot of work/talent to focus on a single riff/chord and hammer away for almost half an hour.

Sitting down and listening to In E will clear your mind—a mechanical meditation, if you will. You don't have to unplug to check out; just plug into this.

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Texas w/Spooner Oldham The Muscle Shoals Sessions Usually, when a band issues a Best Of record, that’s either a sign of a pivot, the band’s siren song, or a cash grab. Sometimes, it’s all three. Last year, Scottish Band Texas gifted us a Best Of release that did well to cover their long track record. That said, I wondered which of the three options it might represent.

Thankfully (at least for now), the choice was D: None of the above.

For The Muscle Shoals Sessions, the band decamped to Alabama and connected with pianist, songwriter, and session musician Spooner Oldham. Stripping 10 of their songs (and 2 covers-“Would I Lie To You” by Charles and Eddie and “Save The Last Dance” by The Drifters) down to just Sharleen Spiteri’s vocals and Oldham’s piano makes for a very different Texas experience. The band has always been influenced by Northern Soul, and that streak has run through their records. Previously, her voice would occasionally get lost in Texas’ sound. I also wondered how those influences might (or might not) gel with Oldham, long a pillar of the Memphis scene.

I was overthinking it. Here, Oldham’s light touch lifts Spiteri’s voice front and center, and it shines. These are not new tracks but fully stripped-down, reimagined ones, making for a gorgeous experience.

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Jacob Freddy- From a Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland (Bandcamp link) Jacob Freddy is the solo project of 19 year old Jacob Frericks. You may recognize that name from Bloom, his other project. From A Quiet Aliso Viejo Wasteland his first record on his own is a lo-fi, indie pop affair. It’s a quick 9 songs, but in that short time Freddy gives a nod to several bands, and manages to squeeze in plenty of hooks. Opener “All Along” is a driving pop track. “Somebody New” is dripping with fuzzed out guitars that border almost on glam rock. Others like “Eighties Car” invoke bands like Psychocandy-era The Jesus and Mary Chain. Speaking of cars, the liners notes mention the record was recorded in part …with the speakers of an old Mazda CX5. Okay then!

Freddy is standing on the shoulders of some greats here, and does right by all of them. Hopefully, this is only the first of many more records to come from him.

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BODEGA Our Brand Could Be Yr Life “What is the difference between an Artist and an Advertiser?”

Michael Azzerad’s “Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981–1991” is an excellent treatise on a roughly dozen bands that, while never quite hitting mainstream success, still wielded a massive influence on indie music. These bands also cultivated incredibly devoted fans who were almost as committed to the band’s not selling out as they were to the music itself.

Much time and energy was committed to rationalizing the commercialization of staunchly anit-capitalism sounds. More often than not, the end result was proof that you could make exceptionally good music outside the (already then) sclerotic structure of the music industry.

How strange it must feel for these bands/fans to look at the world in 2024, where the line between art and commerce is almost always fuzzy and often nonexistent and where “branding” is often given as much importance as the art itself.

Luckily, there are still plenty of holdouts, including New York’s BODEGA. The band's latest release is a spin on the book's title, viewed through today's cynical lens. Actually, that’s only half correct. Much of the work here reshapes tracks from a 2015 release when they were still known as Bodega Bay.

Ben Hozie sings lead on most of the record, but Brand really shines when Nikki Bonfiglio takes the wheel. “GND Deity” is the sort of “snarky talking instead of singing” track that is very hard to nail and easy to wreck. In this case, it works great, becoming a funky new wave/post-punk dance number.

The album is a wild ride through various genres, taking shots at various subjects- capitalism and people mindlessly consuming among them. “What is the difference between an Artist and an Advertiser?” is the question asked at the beginning of “BODEGA Bait,” and one that is returned to throughout the record.

“Dedicated to the Dedicated” is a bit of a New Wave romp. “Tarkovski” has call and response chorus that’s catchy as hell and is the most Parquet Courts song you’ll hear on a record not made by Parquet Courts.

With its swirling guitars, Stain Gaze is a woozy bit of shoegaze that will leave you feeling off balance while commanding you to move. It has all the hallmarks of late-stage Sonic Youth (mentioned in Azzerad 's book). The closing track, “City Is Taken” —again with Bonfiglio singing—feels incredibly New York. It’s my favorite on the record, and the perfect ender for a 2024 record: arty, sophisticated, sarcastic, and angry.

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Local Drags City In A Room It’s been 14 months since Lanny Durbin, aka Local Drags, graced us with an LP, and City In A Room was worth the wait. Writing about Aloe off of the previous release Mess of Everything, I noted that “defining a Midwest power pop sound can be hard- but you know it when you hear it. Obviously, many bands went to the Westerberg Finishing School—and you can tell, even if you can’t quite articulate why. Bands like Soul Asylum and The Dead Century make records that, in many ways, could only be made in Minneapolis. Expanding that circle out to Illinois, a band like Cheap Trick could only be from Illinois. The same holds for Springfield’s Local Drags.”

It was true of Mess of Everything, and it’s doubly so for City In A Room. Here, Durbin tilts even further toward a power pop sound, and it’s easy to imagine a song like “Left In the Sun” or “Room For Two” sung by either Mssrs. Westerberg or Zander. Ditto the riff on “Solid State.”

Exhibit A:

And I got left in the sun until I melted
I got left in the sun until I felt it
You know it was cool with me

and

It’s pretty easy to just put it all on me
The darker it gets the less light I need

Playing the record, it’s clear that he spent plenty of time absorbing the best from both before creating his own unique sound. There is no shortage of jangly riffs, and there is a bumper crop of endearing lyrics interspersed with wry humor.

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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?

Thanks for being here,

Kevin—