Cool Records From May 2024.
Willow — Empathogen
Ever since I rediscovered Willow in 2015 with her song ‘Wait a Minute!’, I’ve thought she was super cool. Lemme be clear: not an artist I always want to seek out and listen to her stuff immediately, but the level of respect for her is off the charts. She’s got a rich and classical quality to her voice, but the most important aspect of her style for me is the fearlessness in her desire to create interesting, artistic and experimental music. It takes a kind unique and special kind of courage to make music that pushes boundaries and strays far from the easy givens of Straightforward Pop music, especially when your parents are two pillars of the pop culture zeitgeist and your brother is one of the most recognizable names in the underground internet landscape. Her music feels like it’s created from the same buried place that Fiona Apple pulls her designs from, some thread thin nexus that flows through all of us but can only be harvested by a talented few.
Check Out: Symptom of Life
Incubus — Morning View XXIII
This could be 100% nostalgia for me, but hearing these songs again with a new skin on them is so invigorating. It’s exciting to me in the way that reunion shows are exciting, fresh to me in ways that unexpected covers are fresh. These songs come from the third in a three album run (SCIENCE, Make Yourself, Morning View) from a band that was bar none, my favorite band for a very long time. The record on its own was a bit of a big departure from their ‘heavier’, more apt-for-aggression styling and went for a more laid-back beach house kind of vibe (which could be influenced by the album’s artwork), and on this go around the songs are performed closer to the way they sound in larger venues such as Red Rocks in a live setting. There are more delays, time stretched out into wider spans of mindspace. Guitar tones sound fuzzier, vocals come from further back in the throat, drum fills cluster together a bit sloppier, and things feel more like sitting in on a practice space than the Scott Litt produced 2001 version. There was such a joy singing along with this record the morning it released, a lightness and a laughter that seemed to fill me upon hearing these songs again. It brought me back into a lighter time and place.
Check Out: Just a Phase
Childish Gambino — Atavista
Dude, Donald Glover is so cool. His involvement in nearly every arm of media is so ambitious and his quality output on every level is even more impressive. Dropping this record without warning on a Monday, this record was one that I put on out of respect, just to see what the whole buzz was about, but I ended up being really blown away by how deeply well written and composed the whole thing was, bringing up visions of Prince and Lionel Richie for me. It’s soulful, catchy, effortless. I didn’t find out until later that this is apparently a re-release of a four year old record (going by the name of 3.15.20) which I am completely unfamiliar with. So, I mean, y’all might be more familiar than I am: does this count as a new record? Because shit, it’s new to me. I would have no idea. There are fun parts to it, parts that feel closer to Little Dicky (more of a playful interlude to music than songs, IMO), different characters, different voices, different facets of Glover’s prismatic personality. In the song I listed below, it even has elements of “art-rock” a la bands like TV On the Radio which is such an interesting middle ground within pop and rock and all that’s in between.
Check Out: To Be Hunted
Draag — Actually, the Quiet Is Nice EP
This hyper-gaze EP was such a nice surprise to come across, especially in a place like Instagram where there is such an endless barrage of entities that hover on the cusp of what you’re interested in, but just DON’T QUITE land properly. This record implants itself deftly, like a dragonfly lighting on a bed of water. Songs are fizzy and bouncy, even when they reach for darker territory (like in the industrial nu-metal tinged ‘Recharge’). Draag does a fantastic job of letting all of their distinct elements shine on their own, from buzzy synth to grungy guitar, all of it feels like elements of a dream you can trace back to their histories.
Check Out: Microgravity Tank
Crumb — AMAMA
Five years ago, Crumb dropped one of my favorite albums of 2019 in Jinx, a vibey record which pulled one into a fractal unspooling. It’s incredible to hear this band still able to reach into the cosmic river and fish out a dozen songs of infinite color and scope. This sounds like it was made in a different decade, one with headbands and peace signs and afros and lots of purple and orange. Staring straight into the center of this album has the potential to give you a contact high, complete with pulsing auras and rippling walls. Like a guided meditation, this shamanistic little record acts as a companion through which one can expand their spirit, dissolve their boundaries and embrace the hidden vibrations we find around us. I mean this as no slight to the album whatsoever, but after four or five listens to this record, I still have yet to find my way through the entire collection without falling into a thoughthole and missing a song or two. It’s not that it’s dull or uninteresting, but instead a series of songs in a row that tend to bring me into a trancelike state.
Check Out: AMAMA
Like Moths to Flames — The Cycles of Trying to Cope
This is one of those bands that I have always just associated with guys who went from A Day to Remember shows to August Burns Red shows, digging into heavy music in a kind of fun and light way, happily shifting from one breakdown to the next simply for the dopamine of it. My thought process around them was a patronizing one, a pretentious one. I’m not even sure what the difference is between the way I listen to my music and the way “they” listen to “theirs”. ANYWAY, point being, I didn’t expect much from this record and it absolutely rules. The heavy parts are so interesting, with breakdowns structured almost in tiered and topographical designs. The chugging and grinding is an absolute blast. I’ve listened to this record a few times, and I think at the end of the day, I can’t really find a good way to tell one song apart from the next, though there are moments that pop up from time to time that are absolutely rad. I was super impressed at how much I liked this album once I removed my head from my ass. This isn’t gonna turn the tables on what you thought music was becoming in 2024… but this is definitely a good time.
Check Out:The Shepherd’s Crown
Fly Over States — Ghosts EP
I don’t think an 8 minute, 4 song EP can be an album of the year, but I certainly think that hearing this little collection might have been the most excited I’d been about a release and/or a new band all year. They remind me a lot of the explosive and limitless energy of Alexisonfire, alongside the speed and time-bending Attack First mindset of State Faults. This is a particle that’s impossible to capture, a ricocheting shard of shrapnel that’s going to get under your skin and beg its way deeper into your bone. It assaults the line in much the same way Emanuel did, with songs written that are catchy as hell but incredibly difficult to touch. Dude, I love this record. CANNOT wait for more. Unforgettable.
Check Out: 40 Stripes Minus One
