Cool Records From October 2024.

The Smile — Cut Outs

How The Smile was able to drop two albums of this level in the same year is such a monumental achievement in my mind, but in no way surprising considering the caliber of the artists behind their creation. The two main players who came over from Radiohead are masters of funneling their wild dreams into pillars of creation and the results often stand taller than their contemporaries. Even though the music they release often represent “sure things” in their circles, there is inevitably a sense of deep experimentation and abstraction at its core, and this record is no different. Most of these songs feel more like distorted dream collages than the previous Wall of Eyes did, a Rothko to sit beside their Goya. When I first heard the singles coming out for this record, I wasn’t instantly excited, but upon giving the album a full listen, I’m at odds with which of the two I like more.

Check Out: Zero Sum

Balance and Composure — With You In Spirit

It’s so cool to have this band back after several years of hiatus. There’s a very specific sound that they’re able to harness, despite each of their records sounding totally different. Whether pessimism or joy is the theme of the work, there is a sense of eternal groaning, an incessant dread that lurks in the bones of the music. This album has an internal glow that hesitates to be considered “light”, something bronze and indigo and recognizable from a distance. In that, I believe that these are songs that begged a reunion for the boys, creative energies that swirled and haunted them for too long and hit a perfect tension and release when they finally got together to put the notes into the air. Before I knew it, this record was over and I was flipping it back to the start to feel it all over again. The drone of this energy meets a steady churning beat to find some kind of pulsing ohm, a stare that becomes increasingly hard to break.

Check Out: Any Means

Delta Sleep — Blue Garden

“Holy shit, this dropped?” That’s how I feel about almost every full length that this band releases. I love the freedom and upward expanse that Delta Sleep brings to their music. 2018’s Ghost City was probably the one that I listened to most, but across their career, I’ve fallen into various records intermittently and found that their ability to make angular, artistic expressions is one which has the potential to craft some of my favorite styles of music. The limitless possibilities of their guitar work, whether going tremendous in size or blistering in speed, captivate me over and over again. This record takes on many different moods, probably one of their least ‘fun’ records that I can remember, but a somber reminder of the vast catalog of emotions that an artist can be capable of, even when operating within a theme. Despite not being an animated tapestry, this is still very unmistakably a Delta Sleep album. There are hints of it here and there, but something more stern, more austere resides within the borders of this map they’ve graphed, and I’m along for this circumnavigation.

Check Out: A Casa

Charli XCX — Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat

So, I recently wrote about Halsey’s newest record (here). Initially, those thoughts began as a text message that never ended, so I turned it into something more massive. My feelings about Charli’s collaborative take on Brat are a summary from a text message as well:

Like any other remix album, it works more like a collection of short stories: some of the songs ultimately don’t need to be here. The first track ends up being one of those wasteful economies of the listener’s time, and almost made me write off the entire collection, but ‘Club Classics’ shows a better example of how to deconstruct a song, showing how you can translate a song into a different musical language that means the same thing but does it in a different way. It’s like a poem vs prose. The 1975 song rules, but sounds like a 1975 song? Even the song with Troye Sivan was super cool for a very similar reason to why I like this record as a whole. It feels like dance music, like what you go to the genre for. I love the Shygirl remix of 365. Absolute decimation of audio and has that EDM/MDMA feel, and rave mayhem. Aside from one track, I think the rest of the record is “okay”. The song with Lorde I already really liked. The song with Billie I already hated. I was disappointed by the Julian Casablancas and the Bon Iver song, mostly because I’ve really liked their work previously and their input here seems kind of blank.

But back to ‘Everything Is Romantic’ with Caroline Polachek. I want to say that this is probably the closest that any of the Brat stuff comes to Art. This is my reason for chasing down any sort of creation. The way that they do the doppler effect on the Fall In Love Again and Again, shortening and then lengthening the words. Beautiful. Then the isolation of “everything is” and its representation throughout the background among a bunch of otherwise dissolved silence is incredible. Repeating and focusing, FOCUSING so much on Fall In Love Again and Again, it feels like my 20s, it feels like meeting people who you don’t want to miss out on, feels like building this incredible roster of people, lovers, friends, just a reminder to welcome and invite all things and all people into your heart until it goes from a village to a fucking city. And then the desperation of that hook, the big bIG sound of “everything is”… just a perfect song. Most of the lyrics are “spoken word” as well, which gives me the sense of journaling, a spooling diary, a thought process left out on a window to cool, a jar of tea left in the sunlight to warm, a phone call where someone gives you space to talk.

Check Out: Everything is romantic featuring caroline polachek

American Football — American Football (covers)

Again, addressing a collaborative record is interesting. Some of the tracks are going to hit and some are going to miss. I’ve taken to writing a bigger piece on not only this record, but also how it folds into the identity and ownership of American Football in general, but I think there’s something so interesting about the way that other bands and artists are perceiving these songs. You get a sense that some of them (Iron & Wine is a great example) are taking a song and passing it through the prism of their own creative process, reinventing it in an altered form (he’s done this also in legendary fashion with The Postal Service’s ‘Such Great Heights’). Other artists (M.A.G.S.) have taken the song and allowed themselves to be possessed by the energy of the original and turned the mood into something a little bit different. I think about just how iconic the original record is and how it takes a sense of personal release to allow your perception to be altered by how some of these artists have translated nostalgia into their own template. This is a special record, one that works towards highlighting how people’s recollection of various events will always be different. It speaks to the power of memory and how one instance can act as an altar to one individual and a tomb to the next. Regardless, this is an emotional journey through an innovative filter and if nothing else, it led me down the path to getting re-obsessed with an old classic.

Check Out: But the Regrets Are Killing Me (covered by Girl Ultra)

Hey, Ily — Hey, I Loathe You!

I’ve been thinking about this record a lot since the first time I heard it! I listened to some of it first on my iPhone’s speaker and knew almost immediately that there was more resting beyond the boundary of limitations. Headphones served this record really well, as there is just so much happening from track to track. I love the sense of manic urgency, each instrument, each avenue of creation trying to fit itself down a very limited passageway and clashing/coalescing to a very frenzied and chaotic sound, like too much caffeine in not enough blood. This record jumps around so much, with influences going from Horse the Band, to These Arms Are Snakes, to The Locust and The Armed and then back around again. This sounds like what the alt kids are listening to in The Land of Oo. It’s so fun, so diverse, so dimension-bending. It’s easy to see that the members of this band all eat from the same table, all collaborate with the most open of minds. This is by far one of the most creative releases of the year, and what starts out as a big festival laser light show ends up turning into a distorted portal of static ruin somewhere within the 35 minute span of the record. I hope this band gets a ton of eyes on them after this release as there is so much potential here, a creative fountain that needs to continue to flow forth bountifully. This was one of the toughest records to choose just one song to recommend to check out, as there are so many moods, so many ideas coming together here. Get your fingers deep into this one.

Check Out: (Dis)Connected

Trauma Ray — Chameleon

Rips. Absolutely rips. Little did I know that an Instagram post by a buddy would give me some insight into what might be one of my favorite records of the year. Sonically endless and cripplingly heavy, this shoegaze/space-core record gives hit after hit of emotionally dense, anguished release. It took me a little bit to find this album’s stride, but in equal measure, tracks 3, 4 and 5 all held me to the floor and pummeled me with enormous and stunning heft, dripping with galactic dust from the cosmos. Lots of stank face, lots of head bobbing through this one. Trauma Ray have such a wonderful understanding of how to send their songs into orbit, how to distort their sound into a gnarled, heavy substance that you can sink your teeth into, that you can let your body levitate within. So rad.

Check Out: Bishop

Banshee — Backstabber EP

A nice last minute recommendation that ended up being a quick, fun romp through a cyberfantastic, post-Grimes wonderland. This record sounds like the playlist a succubus might slip into your DMs. It uses glitter, sparkle and shine to obfuscate some darker and more sinister vocals that fall back into the more deeply buried mantles of the music. The title track of the EP was the one that was recommended to me, but as I dug deeper into the core of this five track release, it gave me more Alice Glass and HEALTH vibes, which is always a nice and easy way directly into my heart of hearts.

Check Out: I may be a doe..