The Flowerss EP from Halfnoise was released back in May with the “All That Love Is” single preceeding it in April. While the track may have been around for a minute, it’s not lost any of its luster. In fact, this official video for the track makes it even more enjoyable.

A woman prepares herself in a tackling position as a man rolls away down the hill. Another woman turns her back as a man tries to greet her from the beach. Intercut images of an egg, a clothespin, a handful of ice. What’s it all mean?! Maybe it’s just enjoyably random images or maybe, just maybe, there’s a vague hint at the “dance” of a relationship; both the courtship phase and the longterm maintainable. The 70’s color palette, the camera zooms and overall presentation are engaging and well worth multiple views.

Openly citing The Strokes, Tame Impala and Radiohead as your influences is a quick way to earn a massive eyeroll from any potential new listener. One false move and you’ve gone from skeptical intrigue to flat-out miserable mockery. Fortunately, East Nashville’s Cave Mode Shack manages to not fuck it up.

The debut EP, Time Traveler’s Party, clocks in around 15 minutes. There’s very little room for filler and they make great use of it; exploring some breezier lighter pop with the likes of “End of Days” and even some more upbeat, fist-pumping, fair with “Good Girl.”

It’s certainly a promising first offering and well worth keeping an eye out for live shows and a future full-length.

Z is, as far as I can tell, the new project from Mom & Dad’s Zach Prosser. Their Instagram has only a handful of posts and a Bandcamp account has two songs posted from late in 2017. All that is to say, it feels pretty new.

The Window Light Show video for “456” starts with a bit of deceiving techno but kicks right in to an infectious bass line and skewered guitars. The dueling vocals bounce back and forth between anthemic joy and an almost sinister style. On paper, this might look to be all over the place but in execution it pulls together the variety of styles flawlessly. I’ve listened to this no less than 20 times already.

Comparisons to his former band are sure to come up but what’s wrong with that? This is clearly a natural evolution from the previous undertaking with a few of the same enjoyable tenants. There’s supposedly an album called BarbedWire.org on the horizon and I can’t wait to hear it.

David Swick has undertaken a work-in-progress / work-in-public endeavor he calls DoomFolk StarterKit. The gist of the project is as such:

DoomFolk StarterKit is an on going sketchbook series where I write and record a song on my iPhone in (about) one hour and then post it in whatever form it has taken on band camp. It’s a discipline of displaying publicly and frequently the unfinished and rough versions of myself.

In the wrong hands, this kind of experimentation could lead to unlistenable drivel. Fortunately, Swick’s hands are the right hands and the results are legitimately listenable and, more importantly, interesting. On the whole, there’s a vibe akin to The Microphones – soft vocals paired with minimal guitar and light additional instrumentation floating through. It’s calming and a bit melancholy but sometimes that’s just the right medicine to get through the day. Not too shabby for an hour long experiment.

Bonus, this edition of the Sketchbook includes a cover of “Knotty Pine, a Dirty Projects / David Bryne collaboration from the Dark Was The Night compilation record from 2009.

My neighborhood is absolutely covered in flyers for a long past Davy Crotch Rockett show. Literally every telephone pole down my street has their name emblazoned on it. So, upon stumbling on this brand new SPLIT, there was already an established appreciation for their absolutely perfect band name and their ability to promote.

What remained an unknown was what the band actually sounded like? Diving into this None Intended Records release provided a treat that was well beyond my imagination. What greeted my ears was a dark, fuzzed out, foreboding… cover of the Miami Sound Machine song, “Conga.” Yes, that one. There’s little resemblance between the original and Davy’s version but that’s exactly what makes it so compelling.

The b-side, from the equally unknown Leisure Horse, is an equally pleasing re-imagination of a different kind of classic. The band takes on The Misfits “Last Caress” and turns it into a bit of a murder ballad. It ambles along peacefully, juxtaposed with the often violent and macabre lyrics.

All and all, pleasing returns from any time invested here.

Chalk this one up to the power of compelling album art. The Actual Feelings EP from Safari Room depicts some gorgeously simple collage work from Abby McGuire that accurately sets the tone for the music within. That sounds like a stretch because the image itself is actually a diver falling through space in front of the moon but the music itself has an lightness and airy nature that would surely be required to float past the moon.

In all seriousness tho, the four song offering is filled with falsetto voices, often layered delicately, set against a wall of building guitars. It’s a deceptively simple presentation of pop songs with much more going on than one would expect in such a short run time; including but not limited to drum machines, samples, dance-y bass lines and space-y guitars. There’s that moon reference again.

If you’re going to dive in, start with “Antelope“, the track that the band deemed worthy of releasing as a single back in June, preceding the album.

With a title like All Art Must Be Destroyed and a thank you credit that reads “For disgusting troglodytes everywhere”, it’s safe to assume that whatever OAFROTT has to offer, it’s going to have a strong opinion. And that it does.

With the first track, “The President Song”, we get a swirling intro quickly followed by an onslaught of a gruff refrain chanting “I Don’t Want Your America” coupled with “Fuck You and Your Family.” Opinions indeed! Of the five tracks, most are two minutes or shorter; absolutely blasting you with full force. “Life and Times of a Networking Failure” contains some screeds about the dangers of social networking taking a bit of life from us all, while “Sea of Nothing” contains foreboding spoken words about fighting against the nihilism of it all.

Metal has never been known for its clarity of lyrics but what you can pick up here is laser focused angst aimed at our current societal direction, resulting in a fist-pumping, head-thrashing catharsis. As long as there aren’t some questionable lyrics I’m glossing over, I’m down for the release.

Over the past few months, Sad Baxter has been hitting the promotions hard in support of their latest EP, So Happy. For a six track EP, they released extremely well produced and enjoyable videos for four songs – “Baby“, lead track “Love Yew“, “Sick-Outt” and “Believe Me.” On top of that, they released a live version of “Love Yew” and a cover of Nirvana’s “On a Plain.” We’ve talked about this.

So, after all that, how is the actual EP now that it’s been released? Is it possible that they exhausted all the “good” songs with all those videos and promotion? Surely, the remaining two tracks will just be filler, right? Wrong. The remaining two tracks – “Wash” and “Blow” – are both the most incendiary and the most explosive, respectively. “Wash” is downright manic with the captivating refrain “I don’t wanna go, you can’t make me” repeated over and over in a snarling outcry. It’s not a tantrum, it’s a line in the sand of ferocious refusal. “Blow” is a slower burn with more more emphasis on the build-and-release tactic.

Having spent months building anticipation for this release, the only disappointment is that there isn’t more of it. As a band they’ve clearly up’ed their game from their previous release, Weirdy and are capable of wrapping plenty of complicated emotions into a grunge pop song. Sad Baxter may be Sad but they should be recognized and congratulated for an album well made.

The artist pseudonym of Ian Mckewen, dot org, paired with the album title Humans Are Weird and the simple image of a man overdressed for the beach with a drink in hand sets the stage for a record that could go any direction. Before pressing play, the anticipation of what might lie ahead was exciting. Would this be mind swirlingly weird? An amateur atmospheric undertaking? Unlistenable singer-songwriter missives?

Oddly enough, it’s none of those things it is a record filled with some particularly offbeat proclivities and genre jumping styles. The lead track, “Oh Brother”, is certainly the “Weirdest” of the bunch featuring plenty of quirky keyboards and building grooves but the final track, “Tom Rigby River” is weird in its contrast to that style; as it is a nearly 8-minute acoustic number that unfolds slowly and methodically over its execution. Furthermore, “Whatever Helps You Sleep” is a quiet lullaby that explodes into a fevered cry – quite the contrast to the 17-minute title track that sounds like.. well, a little bit of everything.

And that’s really it, isn’t it? Humans ARE weird. And unpredictable. And varied. And not one single thing. Turns out ole dot org knew all along and laid it all out with this EP.