As mentioned on Volume 102 of the WOTT Music podcast, Dan Burns (of Action! and R. Stevie Moore) has been pumping out creations over on his Bandcamp Subscriptions. There’s something new every month and much of it is available only to his subscribers.

As part enticement for new subscribers and part pure creative enjoyment, he’s posted a video for his track “Feel” – part of said subscription. It’s a compilation of vintage videogame footage, mathematic visualizations and absurd animations. There’s definitely a very particular aesthetic to it but it works.

The debut EP from surfdeadpiss, gogo, finds that pleasant balance between high-quality bedroom recording and total confidence in presentation that completely works. No song exceeds the 3-minute mark but it’s that brevity that works in its favor.

The guitars are frenzied, the vocals are ever-so-slightly strained and distorted in the most earnest way and there’s a driving drumbeat under it all. Overall, it may be less than 10 minutes of your life but it provides a bombastic improvement from whatever you were doing previously.

Let’s get the requisite background information out of the way: Halfnoise is the solo project of Zac Farro, the drummer for Franklin’s finest musical export, Paramore. Whatever baggage you may have about Paramore (good* or bad), you should leave them at the door when diving into the work of Halfnoise.

So, with that out of the way, I’m happy to see that Halfnoise has “Flowerss“, the first new track since 2017’s Half Face EP and our earliest peek into a forthcoming, as yet unnamed, EP.

The new track has a delightfully Springtime vibe with a driving beat, plenty of affected guitars and a lyrical refrain pondering “Why does it matter to you?”. I, for one, am looking forward to the full release.

they make a helluva music video

Many thanks to the Nashville Cream for the heads up on this new Lylas video for “Right Hand Hand.” The track, taken from 2017 release Warm Harm is a phenomenal example of how much the band has grown over the past years. There’s always been a dark vibe to the bands output but Warm Harm (and “Right Hand Hand” in particular) exemplifies that mounting tension incredibly well.

Recorded at the 444 Humphrey’s studio in Wedgewood Houston, the video is a straight ahead performance video but, hopefully, plants the seed for more of the same from other bands. I’d love to see something akin to the Lake Fever Sessions emerge from this.

For clarity, NGC-4414 is both “an unbarred spiral galaxy about 62 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices” and a Murfreesboro artist creating nuanced and subtle ambient music. The former has no known musical releases but the latter released a handful of transmissions in November 2017 entitled, The Moon EP. To call it delicate is being too precious about it but the songs are light combinations of field recordings, vast open spaces and foreign interference. Evoking the namesake of another galaxy is entirely appropriate and fitting for these sounds.

The Bandcamp page and YouTube channel for the artist urge you to listen to the final composition, “Before I’m Gone“, but I disagree. Starting with the actual first track, “Satellite“, puts you in an otherworldly place that best starts the journey into a transcendental beyond.

The cover to Flossie Dukeshire‘s debut release, Everyone We Know Is Here, depicts an empty room at Springwater – a all-too-familiar scene for many bands unfortunately. While the trio didn’t end up playing that night, they did get it together enough to record nine-tracks of garage rock inspired by the likes of XTC or The Damned.

“Hasta Barista” is the bands most lively track but I suggest diving in with “Still Time For You” as its their most tension filled and anthemic offering.

Four-track recordings can be a dangerous art. The accessibility of being able to record anything, anytime is wildly freeing but it can lead to a tendency not to edit. The debut record from Peter Brooks is 30 tracks of bedroom recordings spanning just nine months. That’s alotta tracks!

While that volume of music does tend to be a bit overwhelming, there are more than several handfuls of highlights that make the listen well worth it. To start, the last three tracks of the record are covers of Frank Zappa, Herb Alpert and Haroumi Hosono; a solid reference point for where Brooks influence is coming from. Tracks like the instrumental “Footprints on the Moon” or the crescendo’ing “little g (in all of us)” exemplify the goodness and freedom of the bedroom recording. It may be a bit lo-fi but it’s clearly free flowing creativity.

As you’d imagine, there’s a lot of in references to the band that the album is about. B-Side “Apollopa” makes nods to countless TMBG songs lyrically but isn’t a cover or a direct rip of any particular song from the They Might Be Giants catalog, it’s literally a song about the band and general fandom of them. Just like it says on the label, these are songs about their idols.

Definitely curious to hear more from this undertaking but am content with this first tease. Let’s hope there are some tribute videos planned as well.

Recently, Idle Bloom appeared on NPR’s World Cafe to play songs from their forthcoming Flood the Dial album and be interviewed by Ann Powers.

The performances are, unsurprisingly, excellent as they pair one song from their previously released Little Deaths and two new tracks. The accompanying interview does a great job of going beyond the typical surface discussion of a band’s history and digs into the landscape of being a mixed gender band, the sexism involved with being called a “90’s Throwback” band and how uncomfortable conversations can lead to change.

Tristen recently released a video for “Partying Is Such Sweet Sorrow” off her latest album, Sneaker Waves. We featured this track back in September on Volume 91 of the podcast so we’re glad to see the song getting the official video treatment (We’re fans).

Along with the video is a lengthy, and informative, essay from Tristen over on BUST Magazine that explores the continuing limitations of women in both pop culture and the wider world. This bit in particular struck me:

Only within the last 100 years, humans have establish widespread radio communication, the television, and finally, in the last 30 years or so, the internet, which for the first time allows instant communication between the users of the technology. According to the Nielsen report, each day, Americans are immersed in their screens for about 5 hours of television, an hour on the internet, and three hours of radio. These screens most likely show images of women created in the tradition of men’s fiction. In all of this, sadly, the rare, oversimplified depictions of women, usually in relationship to men, are hypnotic mirrors for men, too.

And as a great leveler and oppositional reaction, I can swear off male artists forever, but this feels like the tool of the oppressor, just further dividing and reacting, and it feels too simple. How can I become the change I want to see while men’s art is within me still? It flows in the conversation of consciousness, my mimicry, and therefore, my creations. The only solution I can see is to reveal the concealed conversations through my work.

It can be difficult to connect the dots between Tristen’s insightful essay and the depiction of a self-harming male protagonist wallowing in his solitude (clearly yearning for the girl at the bar) but it’s easy to take a moment and give it all some thoughtful consideration. Does the fact that the lyrics are sung by a woman change the message? How would you feel about the video if the lead was female? At the end of the day, the song is a great listen and there’s an open door here to consider a larger context – both great things.