Notes From The Record Room: Halfway To The Finish Line (or, How’s 2024 Looking?)
To whom it may interest,
June of 2024 is complete. As the dog days are now upon us, the mechanized drone of air conditioning enabling respite from the aggressive temperatures outside our respective domicile walls, the reality that the year is more than halfway over is difficult to comprehend.
Selecting the albums that I’ve listened to up to this point, offering some preview of my picks for the upcoming end-of-year list, I’m interested to see how those placements and considerations will shift in the months ahead. I’ve been really happy with much of what I’ve heard this year and there’s still so much I haven’t had the opportunity (or time) to explore.
That said, here’s what I’ve been listening to since January:
10.
Couch Slut
You Could Do It Tonight
Brutal Panda
Released: 4/19/24
Couch Slut albums are violent and bleak, treatises to the hopelessness of the human condition. You Could Do It Tonight is not easy to absorb in one sitting, but the nihilistic and Selby-evocative scenarios that seem to worsen with every corrosive bass throb or guitar shriek are so captivating that they transcend categorization as vulgarity-riddled catharsis or gratuitous shock-inductive trash.
The hype sticker says “NSFW” for a reason. Trust this.
9.
Kim Gordon
The Collective
Matador
Released: 3/8/24
Kim Gordon’s rep as paragon of NYC cool hasn’t diminished much following the dissolution of Sonic Youth. Partnering with Bill Nace for their Body/Head project and releasing her solo debut No Home Record back in 2019, Gordon hasn’t stopped moving forward and her embrace of modernity for her latest solo album, The Collective, readily communicates an unwillingness to stagnate creatively or reject 2024’s current pop-leaning sonic signature. It’s honestly remarkable how well Gordon’s cracked the youth code and managed to retain her entire musical persona without coming across as a Gen X relic pandering to trends. It’s like she’s found her version of Bowie’s Berlin era.
Had the pleasure of seeing this album performed live.
8.
The Narcotix
Dying
(no label)
Released: 3/1/24
Musicians Esther Quansah and Becky Foinchas perform as The Narcotix, a lush psych project that takes rhythmic cues from West Africa. Dying is an independent release and boasts a gorgeous blend of vocal harmonizing overtop some stunning and noteworthy arrangements that border on theatrical. There’s not one flawed second to be experienced on this album and the production work is outstanding.
7.
SUMAC
The Healer
Thrill Jockey
Released: 6/21/24
Percussive lapses of deconstruction consume the first half of “World Of Light,” which introduces the seismic 76-minute runtime of SUMAC’s fifth LP, The Healer. Gargantua metal improvisations and fascinating lapses into looped constructs, the overall weight and wanderlust of SUMAC’s latest opus are dependably significant, grabbing listeners by the ears at key moments when the drifting current takes too much control. “Yellow Dawn” is one of my favorite singles of 2024.
6.
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis
s/t
Impulse!
Released: 3/15/24
As a years-long fan, it is impressive to witness Fugazi’s rhythm section having an album issued by the prestigious Impulse! jazz label, D.C. area trio The Messthetics (bassist Joe Lally, drummer Brendan Canty, guitarist Anthony Pirog) sounding comfortable wearing the famed orange-&-black alongside saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. The Lally/Canty anchor ably keeps the jammy interplay between Pirog and Lewis on the rails while leaving them enough room to occasionally take a sharp corner or two. The rock-jazz synthesis works really well, rushes of head-knock and funk (“Emergence”, “That Thang”), soft melancholia (“Three Sister”, “Boatly”), and modern Blues (“Railroad Tracks Home”) providing a mood-varying experience.
5.
Gouge Away
Deep Sage
Deathwish Inc.
Released: 3/15/24
The shouty and impassioned Deep Sage, the third LP from Gouge Away, was developed from songs that had begun germinating in 2019 only to be indefinitely shelved following the pandemic. Forced to cease operation like so many bands and performers at the time, Gouge Away temporarily called it quits and the tracks gathered virtual dust until they were thankfully revisited and used as a springboard for the subsequent rush of writing and recording that culminated in this work.
Almost completely recorded live, Deep Sage evokes left-of-the-dial, “ALT”-terior aggression once synonymous with the buzz clips of yesteryear. The analog lift of some of the band’s rougher edges is so sweet to the ear and even in instances when melody is embraced—the shades of My Bloody Valentine guitar worship in “Dallas” immediately comes to mind—there’s no loss of intensity or noticeable supplanting of noise for audible sweetener.
4.
Moor Mother
The Great Bailout
ANTI-
Released: 3/8/24
I admit that I need to sit with this one some more.
As with all Moor Mother albums, a desire for justice permeates the captivating The Great Bailout, a poetic meditation and, in some ways, expressive essay on the effects of British colonialism and the immoral Slavery Abolition Act of 1883, which provided financial compensation to former slave owners but no such measures of consideration or aid for the enslaved.
While the sound design and arrangements conceived and captured for The Great Bailout could stand as reason enough to regard this work as significant and unique, the tragedy that informs it demands from listeners reflection and no distractions. There is a lot here to distill and no opportunity for respite once the needle’s been dropped.
3.
Angry Blackmen
The Legend of ABM
Deathbomb Arc
Released: 1/26/24
Transcribed from a blog post, written 6/9/24:
Wearing provocation in a manner evocative of NWA (name) and KMD (mascot), Angry Blackmen (members Quentin Branch and Brian Warren) operate in counter-culture subterrania, generating an electrified tangle of sounds unpolished enough to alienate so-called appreciators or sophisticates. “Underground kings,” Branch states in “FUCKOFF,” “We the rap version Iggy Pop.” As assessments go, that’s as accurate and self-aware as it gets: Branch and Warren’s music conveys an embrace of hardcore’s musical economy and sonic hostility within the hip-hop device, their directed rage (“GRIND”) and vulnerability (“Suicidal Tendencies”) set to beats both coarse and appropriately unsettling.
2.
Mary Timony
Untame The Tiger
Merge
Released: 2/23/24
Between Wild Flag, Ex Hex, and Hammered Hulls, singer/guitarist Mary Timony hasn’t lacked for things to do creatively speaking since her last solo venture in 2005. Timony broke her silence as a solo act this year to produce the excellent Untame The Tiger, a heavily reflective and beautifully rendered rock album that followed a series of personally life-impacting events.
There’s an immediate recognizability to the regional sound in Timony’s playing, her connection to the Dischord curated and cultivated post-hardcore of yore still evident as her pick finds the strings. While the emotional core of Untame The Tiger is sincere and a little sad, striking is the implicit willingness to move forward, her acknowledgement of setbacks addressed with grace and melody.
1. Beak>
>>>>
Temporary Residence, Ltd. Released: 5/28/24
Transcribed from a blog post, written 5/30/24:
Motorik proclivities intact, Beak>’s latest exhibits some seamless and excellently sequenced song transitions, quality low end, and an entrancing level of layered detail. How and when they decide to dial up their intensity is neither predictable or overbearing. I think of “Denim” specifically, when a quieted metronomic bridge shifts into a chugging, howl-adorned third act.
I imagine within the utopian nighttime dreamworld of a kosmische musik enthusiast there would’ve existed an opportunity for Can to collaborate with Slint and compose an album like >>>> that plays to both their strengths: the endless possibilities of sonic mutation within irregular drum patterns and the haunting near-melodic vocals with which most of these songs contain. One exception to this observation, however, is the excellent “Hungry Are We”, some near-CSN&Y vocal harmonizing, lightly ethereal and beautifully isolated, overtop some gorgeous bass/guitar interplay.
And since I invoked the hallowed sounds of Can, “Ah Yeh” sounds like something the late Damo Suzuki was meant to sing on, a perpetual funky drum loop and undulating keyboard phrases that adorn the propulsion beneath.
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
