Cool Records From September 2024.
Many Eyes — The Light Age
Well, I was wrong. I was just wrong, dude. Hearing ‘Revelation’ when this band first arrived out of the ashes had me setting the bar frighteningly high, because the song was such a relief, pulling the cloth off of the mystery that had been the aftermath of Keith’s previous band. It was going to be impossible to avoid the 24 year legacy he had just sloppily dismounted from, and to be honest, there was a psychic and spiritual chasm that existed between the man he was becoming in the newest phase of his life and the persona which I thought he exuded prior. The song which concluding with an immense “Fuck off, I’m in love. What don’t you understand?” set the tone for what I imagined a full record would be shaped like, but instead a few more singles came out before the full length dropped which drew me in several different directions, unsure which or what to believe. I straight up was not digging the influences involved, the lack of straight-forward aggression. “Ummm, this isn’t what I listen to Keith Buckley for…” is sort of the slack-jawed groaning I was engaging in. Gross. Immediately upon listening to the full length in its final form, all of the songs that just didn’t sit well with me started to make sense. Maybe the cloth started looking better as they assembled a complete garment, maybe I had just let the preconception, the expectations disintegrate over time. Maybe I needed to be disappointed to not only remove the bar but to forget the fact that there was an expectation at all. Maybe I just had to live in the present to really understand where Buckley wanted to go with the new music. It’s mostly heavy, more often than not a record that brings aggression and weight to the table, but as opposed to most of his previous work, he has spent time building up a different sound to his singing vocals, leaning almost into alternative rock territory. This album is great, man. I owe it a lot of apologies. All I can do is make it up by listening to it.
Check Out: Enough
House of Protection — Galore EP
Another record that comes on the tails of a band’s break up, House of Protection is comprised of Aric Improta (Night Verses) and Stevis Harrison (The Chariot) both of who were members of Fever 333 with Jason Aalon Butler (letlive.) until it seemed that the band imploded publicly in a very short period of time. Each of these individuals are capable of brilliant creative work, with Improta’s drumming style not only incorporating the chops of some of the world’s best aggressive drum techniques, but also an implementation of lots of electronic triggering and production. He’s been known to release videos of himself playing daunting parts while physically performing acrobatics including backflips or impractical spins. There’s an artistry to all that he employs. Stevis is also a frenetic and wild performer setting the universe ablaze with an unrestrained energy and power while on stage with The Chariot, throwing his body and his instrument in dozens of directions at once, completely embodying the chaos that the music represented as well. The two of them come together on this release and make something that sounds like something I completely didn’t expect, but one that ended up sticking with me for a long time. The songs are very smartly structured, ready for rock radio once you open the box. Songs remind me of the post nu-metal arena acts like Linkin Park and maybe Blindside? Lots of attention is paid to crafting enormous hooks, ones that rival some of the biggest acts in the industry. There’s just over 20 minutes of music here, but this is the kind of short release that portends huge opportunities for a band to make music for movie and video game soundtracks. I don’t know, this is just the vibe that I get. This is a slice of the kind of big picture creation that these two artists are capable of. Also, though, knowing the many different avenues these guys have created in, this might just be one of many different flavors that they’re exploring.
Check Out: Fuse
Scout Gillett — Imagination, MO EP
It’s no secret what drew me to this EP. Gillett’s cover of The Deftones’ ‘Change’ is super cool, an interesting and stripped down take on the song, but also didn’t really end up being the highlight of the release overall. There’s a dark shimmer that hovers over this release, a mature kind of blackout country. It sounds a little Chelsea Wolfe in conceptual scope, a little Alannah Myles at times in terms of the desolation and smokiness of a dive bar performance. This record sounds steeped in more years than initially meets the eye, vocally sounding like it reaches backwards through decades and adds a kind of feminine assertion in each track.
Check Out: Closer
Suki Waterhouse — Memoir of a Sparklemuffin
I’ll be real, the way that Spotify gathers songs as they are released before an album drops and puts them under a heading called an EP bothers me. I thought that some of the songs that she had released throughout the year were in a completed EP called Supersad, and it wasn’t until the end of August that I actually saw that there was a full-length coming with more songs. Sadly, I think this might be one of my least favorite album names of the year. Doesn’t matter. This album has a lot of vibes for me, pulling from a lot of different places for me with the defining theme overall being dark, fuzzy femme fatale post-pop. There are songs that feel like they’re drawing from the crystal onyx pools of Lana, there are songs that remind me so much of rock bands of 2010–2013 like Chairlift and The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, existing in this distorted parallel dream. This is a gloomy, pouty headspace record that I like the more I listen to it. I think there are elements that fit in different ways like passing phases of the moon, and this record reveals itself in various ways depending on the angles of the light that hits it.
Check Out: Think Twice
