JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett’s 72nd birthday.
Tag: post punk
New Audio: Slow Fiction Shares a Furious, Breakneck Ripper
Rising New York-based quintet Slow Fiction — Julia Vassallo (vocals), Paul Knepple (guitar), Joe Skimmons (guitar), Ryan Duffin (bass) and Akiva Henig (drums) — have received attention for a sound that inspired by Sonic Youth and The Jesus Chain and Mary Chain with elements of naughties-era guitar rock paired with contemporary angst.
Their latest single “When” is part of Speedy Wunderground‘s Speedy Singles series. It’s available on all DSPs right now — and will be available on 7″ vinyl with a dub remix B side by the label’s Dan Carey titled “Who Is the Dub.” You’ll be able to purchase the new single and the rest of the singles in the series here.
As for the new single “When” is an urgent, breakneck ripper that’s one-part Walkmen one-part The Jesus and Mary Chain while arguably being one of those most defiant and confrontational songs of their growing catalog while evoking desperate unease.
“I think everyone has had a moment where their expectation of the world, a relationship, the audience they are performing for falls short, and it sends you into a wild spiral downwards,” Slow Fiction’s Julia Vassallo explains. “Losing faith feels so desperate, like falling into a pit of snakes. And the snakes all have faces that seem familiar, and they’re talking, but the words are all garbled. I guess this was trying to get to the bottom of that pit of disillusionment, or maybe get out of it altogether.”
Throwback: Happy 67th Birthday, Will Sergeant!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Echo and the Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant’s 67th birthday.
New Video: Boston’s Paper Lady Shares Unhinged “Joe Modern”
Formed back in 2019, the Boston-based indie outfit Paper Lady — Alli Raina (vocals, rhythm guitar), Rowan Martin (lead guitar), Alex Castile (drums) and Taylor Morris (bass) — can trace their origins to their involvement in their Northeast DIY scene. Citing an eclectic array of influences that include Mazzy Star, Broadcast and Jefferson Airplane among others, the Boston-based quartet has crafted a sound that typically blends dreamy textures with grounded storytelling.
Last year, the band wrote and recorded their full-length debut, Idle Fate, during a retreat in a cabin in Upstate New York and at their shared home in Boston. Self-recorded and self-mixed, the album, which is slated for a May 9, 2025 release, explores themes of grief, love and fantastical existentialism while seeing the band push their sound into more experimental territory.
Idle Fate‘s third single “Joe Modern” is an angular and tightly wound up post punk anthem with dreamy shoegazer passages, anchored around angular and whirring blasts of guitar, a throbbing rhythm section paired with remarkably catchy hooks and enormous, bombastic choruses that simultaneously barely holds it together, while showcasing Raina’s feral and unhinged vocal performance.
A thematic outlier on the album, “Joe Modern” draws from real life absurdity: a scamming and scheming realtor. “We kept joking that we should write a song about this guy — and then Rowan brought this wild guitar riff to rehearsal, and the rest just fell into place,” the band’s Alli Raina explains. “The lyrics came to me instantly. It’s the most fun song to play live, and I think it helped us evolve our sound in a huge way.”
Directed by the band’s Rowan Martin, the accompanying video for “Joe Modern” is a blend of surreal, mundane and sinister, as it follows a sad-sad and haunted businessman type through the hallucinatory and dreamlike torments by his boss and a sleep paralysis demon.
New Video: Activity Shares Brooding and Uneasy “In Another Way”
Acclaimed Brooklyn-based post punk outfit Activity — currently, Grooms‘ Travis Johnson (vocals, guitar), Bri DiGiola (bass), Russian Baths‘ Jess Rees and their newest member The Pains of Being Pure at Heart‘s and Peel Dream Magazine‘s Brian Alvarez — will be releasing their third album, the Jeff Berner-produced A Thousand Years In Another Way on June 6, 2025 through Western Vinyl.
A friend asked why the album captured the strange, heavy feeling of being alive right now better than anything else. “Evil is very real and having its way, and love is also real and hasn’t lost yet,” Activity’s Travis Johnson told the friend — describing the album’s overall tone. The album doesn’t try to explain the strange time we’re living in; it simply feels like it. it’s a mix of violence, alienation, and tenderness, reflecting the surreal, dreamlike — and often nightmarish– rhythm of our daily lives.
The ten-song album sees the Brooklyn-based outfit crafting a blend of experimental rock, electronics and found sounds with a sense of paranoia, desperate flickers of hope and a warped reality. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Berner, the band manipulated sounds and played with room acoustics to create a feeling that’s disorientating and uneasy — like the air is thick and the walls are listening.
Coming out of a period of increased uncertainty, the Brooklyn-based quartet — then Johnson, Rees and former drummer Steven Levine — pieced the album together from various fragments, including clipped samples, looping guitar lines and spectral melodies. Johnson, Rees and DiGioia share vocal and writing duties, shaping material that feels both deeply personal and strangely alien. Throughout the album, there’s a sense that things could shift or fall apart at any second — nothing says one thing for long.
A Thousand Years In Another Way‘s first single, album opening track “In Another Way” is a brooding and uneasy track that captures the captures an alienated and painfully lonely narrator’s desperate desire to connect with someone while struggling with the chaos and uncertainty within and without.
According to the band’s Johnson, the album’s first single is “a way of letting off a bunch of aggression, rage and resentment at things not being the way they hold be, both personal and global (wishing things were ‘another way’), and feeling completely important about it, except when playing the song.”
Directed by the band’s former dummer Steven Levine, the accompanying video for “In Another Way” is brooding, uneasy, mysterious and deeply indebted to cinema.
The band’s Johnson says of the video “It was shot in a neighborhood hangout, Film Noir Cinema. The owner is a big obscure movie and music guy, and it seemed perfect. Also, one of my favorite movies is Mulholland Drive, and it seemed fun to do a reference to the Club Silencio scene as a nod to David Lynch following his passing.”
New Audio: Dead Pioneers Share An Incisive Ripper
Denver-based punk outfit Dead Pioneers — Josh Rivera (guitar), Abe Brennan (guitar), Shane Zweygardt (drums), Algiers’ Lee Tesche (bass) and acclaimed indigenous visual and performance artist and activist Gregg Deal (vocals) — will be releasing their sophomore album PO$T AMERICAN on April 11, 2025 through Hassle Records.
Deal, who is a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, is a visual and performance artist and activist, whose work frequently includes exhaustive and detailed critiques of American colonialism, society, politics, popular culture and history. Through paintings, murals and performance art, Deal critically examines issues within Indian Country such as decolonization, stereotypes and appropriation among others. His work has been exhibited at cultural centers nationally and internationally including at the Smithsonian Institution and the Venice Biennale.
After a 17 year stint living in the Washington, DC area, Deal and his family relocated to Colorado, coinciding with his time as Native Arts Artist-in-Residence at the Denver Art Museum. Dead Pioneers can trace their origins from a 2020 performance piece The Punk Pan-Indian Romantic Comedy, a deeply personal one-man show that explored themes of music, personal experiences and meaningful connections. A grant allowed Deal to expand upon the project, incorporating original music written specifically for the performance.
The Denver-based punks pair a DIY ethos with a mission to champion the rights of marginalized communities, including Indigenous, Black, Brown, Asian, LGBTQ+ folks, as well as workers’ rights. The band’s work sees them boldly and unapologetically confronting the social, political and cultural issues in the United States — a focus that’s central to their identity.
The Denver-based outfit self-released their self-titled full-length debut last fall. Clocking in at 22 minutes, with only one of the album’s 12 songs exceeding three minutes, the album’s material may be a breakneck and furious roar, but it covers a huge amount of ground. The album caught the attention of Hassle Records, who signed the band and then re-released the album.
PO$T AMERICAN‘s material was written last February and records last July. The album forecasts the turmoil of our last Presidential Election and reflects on the fears and disilluionsments of modern life, “The title PO$T AMERICAN reflects a collective disillusionment with the so-called American Dream,” Dead Pioneers’ Gregg Deal explains. “It critiques capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy while imagining a path toward unity beyond those oppressive systems.”
The album’s material sees the band balancing minute-long punk rock explosions, impassioned explorations of modern-day America and spoken word interludes with the shifts in form and tone not distracting from its central themes. Sonically, the album draws from Rage Against the Machine, Chuck D, Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, IDLES, Black Flag, Rollins Band and Dead Kennedys among others.
Perhaps as a result of the direct influences of its creation, the album manages to eerily presage the mood and state of our country right this moment: The fear, uncertainty, the bitter divisiveness, the racist scapegoating, the gaslighting, the gross incompetence, the oppression, bullshit and buffoonery we’ll face every day for the next four years — or even more.
“What we wrote was relevant politically and socially. We felt good about it, and moved forward in that confidence,” the band says. “It’s sad that scathing statements about fascism, white supremacy and racism in the American political landscape are somehow more relevant just because of an election, but here we are.”
And yet, the overall feeling is one of cautious optimism. “Although we didn’t expect the political relevance to become more relevant, we have no illusions to the American dream, or to where we seem to be going. But we have hope that we can get to a better place for people to have what they need. It is an album that speaks to and for this precise time and place; that perhaps could not exist at any other time. It is an album for now.”
Earlier this year, I wrote about album title track “PO$T AMERICAN,” a bruising ripper that sonically and thematically reminded me of Pearl Jam‘s “WMA” and “Push Me Pull Me” anchored around righteously furious critiques of America and American politics. If you’re a member of a marginalized community — and I guarantee that most of you readers actually are — the song should capture the distress, anger, insult and the bitterness that you feel right this second and will continue to feel for some time.
“We, like many people in our communities, are incensed by the overt and jarring political and social moves of United States Politics,” Deal says. “From the current administration to the administrations before it, there has been a trajectory in this country that has brought us to the critical moment we are all looking at. Our hope in this song is maybe, just maybe, we are saying something you feel too.” He continues, “I wrote this song on White people’s day of Independence, July 4, 2024. I wrote it sitting next to my oldest son while watching fireworks and having a discussion on what this day was supposed to mean. It went into a discussion of everything that was happening at that moment. Little did I know at the exact moment, that the relevant things would escalate, and become more stark. This was written to be scathing, honest, saying the quiet thing out loud. As we look upon the United States political landscape, this is very much how we feel.”
PO$T AMERICAN‘s latest single “The Caucasity,” continues a run of bruising art punk. Featuring propulsive and tribal rhythmic pulse and squiggling, reverb-soaked guitar blasts paired with Deal’s bemused and frustrated spoken word delivery, the song as the Dead Pioneers frontman explains “. . . tells the story of a true moment with a common set of languages and communications by non-Native people. While tongue and cheek, it’s also a true reflection of a marginalized person being asked to justify their actions, if not their entire existence.”
“This piece is the true story of an interaction with a shamelessly bold white college student that turns into a perfect example of the word while also showcasing the hurdles put in front of professional People of Color despite age, education or perceived authority. These are everyday occurrences in public spaces, academia and throughout our lives.”
New Video: Fotoform Shares Lush and Woozy “Grief is a Garden”
Deriving their name from a mid-century, avant-garde photography movement, Seattle-based post punk outfit Fotoform — longtime collaborators and married couple Kim House (bass, vocals, synths) and Geoffrey Cox (guitar), along with Death Cab for Cutie‘s and The Long Winters‘ Michael Schorr (drums) — can trace their origins back to the formation of a previous project, the goth-adjacent dream pop act C’est la Mort, which formed shortly after House and Cox married.
Specializing in what they dubbed “pointy-shoegaze,” C’est la Mort released their full-length debut through their own Dismal Nitch label, as well as various compilation tracks, including a limited split 7 inch with Stars for American Laundromat‘s The Smiths‘ tribute Please Please Please. After a series of lineup changes, House and Cox re-emerged as Fotoform in late 2016.
House and Cox released their Fotoform self-titled debut in 2017. Supported with tours of the West Coast and Europe, the album received airplay and praise both locally and nationally: Album single “I Know You’re Charming” was featured as a KEXP Song of The Day. The self-titled album was voted as one of KEXP Listeners’ Top 90.3 Albums of 2017 and it landed on several year-end lists, including The Big Takeover and Part-Time Punks.
Building upon a growing profile, the band followed up with 2018’s Part-Time Punks EP, which was selected as one of The Big Takeover’s EPs of 2018. Schorr joined the band back in 2019 and by the following year, they released two benefit singles as a newly minted trio “Yves Klein Blue,” which was recored for voter outreach and the Christmas-themed “They Say It’s Always Lonely” to benefit local food banks. Both singles found the trio expanding upon their sound with the addition of synths.
In early 2020, the trio went into the studio with Evan Foster to record the material for their sophomore album, Horizons. Recording sessions were interrupted as a result of COVID-19 pandemic-enforced quarantines and restrictions and continued a year later with Foster and Matt Bayles recording drum parts. The album saw the band pivoting from the towering wall of guitars-driven sound of their previously released work and towards a much more nuanced sound that drew equally from shoegaze, dream pop and post-punk with the band continuing to pair synths with layers of guitars and driving bass lines.
The Seattle-based trio’s third album Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom) is slated for an April 18, 2025 release. The album reportedly sees the band’s evolving yet again, with the band further refining their long-held crystalline sound into a lush and introspective soundscape that blends the emotional weight of post-punk with the ethereal beauty of shoegaze with the album’s material increasingly drawing from classic 4AD heyday artists like This Moral Coil, Pale Saints and Lush.
The album’s material thematically touches upon loss, change, heartache, pain and transformation, while tackling the big existential questions. The album, also features some of the band’s most vulnerable and disarmingly honest lyrics of their growing catalog.
Album title track “Grief is a Garden,’ is a brooding slow-burning tune anchored around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, Kim House’s yearning and ethereal delivery paired with a soaring hook and chorus. Sounding a bit like Garlands-era Cocteau Twins and 4AD Records classic heyday period, “Grief is a Garden” sees the band thematically into delving deeply into personal themes of grief, loss, and in time, gradual acceptance.
“The title track to our upcoming album, ‘Grief is a Garden’ reflects on the enduring, ever-evolving nature of grief and how it changes over time,” Fotoform’s Kim House explains. “Grief blooms, decays and nourishes itself, embodying love, beauty, pain and transformation. As we move through life, we accumulate grief, and the song contemplates the evolving nature of our relationship to loss and love, as grief becomes a part of us, forever changing us and informing our new selves as we continue with life after loss.
“My brother Jeff passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of February, right after we released our first single. I am still trying to absorb the devastating reality that he is gone. I never could have imagined I would lose another brother just as we are starting to release songs off our album, which is centered around grief, loss, resilience and healing. The lyric ‘Waves keep crashing, unforeseen, losing someone is never what it seems‘ has been swirling around me as I feel blindsided by the loss of my brother. We’d been planning on talking about grief with the new record, but it’s another thing to suddenly find yourself newly grieving again.
“The longing for answers to life’s unknowable questions is palpable throughout this song, as I’ve wrestled with existential doubts since childhood, questioning everything from the stories I was raised with to the mysteries of life and death itself. ‘Into the ether, we all call out‘ is a reference to the unknowable place we enter when we die – an acknowledgement and a cry for connection.
Loved ones who touch our souls meld with our spirit and never leave us. Tethers to those we’ve lost surround us when we open our hearts. We often feel these connections after we lose someone: a certain song comes on the radio or a shared symbol appears at the most poignant time. Heightened awareness of these synchronicities tethers us to those we’ve lost.
“Grief, so deeply personal yet also universal, is hanging heavy for so many of us these days. We all find ourselves in mourning, whether for loved ones, the erosion of societal values, social injustice, dismantling of democracy, upheaval from natural disasters and the intensifying climate crisis, loss of relationships, former versions of ourselves after injury and disability and anticipatory grief of what’s to come – the list is endless.
Creating this album was a ritual in reflecting on grief, sitting with it, metabolizing, and letting it sink into all the cracks and crevices, fully absorbing grief to understand – and eventually release – some of its tight hold / energy. As I return to this familiar and tender state of fresh sorrow and loss, I take comfort in the knowledge that with time, grief will soften around the edges and the warmth of love will reclaim its position in the foreground.”
Directed by Erik Foster, the accompanying video for “Grief is a Garden” is a lush and woozy fever dream shot in a verdant garden that would have been perfect in an Edgar Allan Poe short story or in a Mary Shelley novel.
New Audio: Forgotten Garden Shares Broodingly Atmospheric “Five Minutes”
Split between Scotland and Portugal, Forgotten Garden — Portuguese-based Inês Rebelo (vocals) and Danny Elliott (guitar, keys and production), accompanied by guests — formed back in 2019 and quickly established a brooding goth-tinged sound with elements of post-punk inspired by The Cure, Joy Division and The Doors while Rebelo cites Florence Welch, Lana Del Rey, Chelsea Wolfe, Weyes Blood, Kelsey Lu and Warpaint as influences on her vocal styling.
The duo’s debut EP, the four-song Broken Pieces thematically focused on a the breakdown of a relationship and received praise from Angry Baby back in 2021. Last year’s sophomore EP In Memoriam thematically touched on death, loss and grief and received praise from The Indie Grid, who called the EP “a thing of fragile and transient beauty.”
The Portuguese-Scottish duo’s latest single is the slow-burning torch song “Five Minutes.” Anchored around a broodingly atmospheric arrangement of ethereal synths paired with a sinuous bass line, jazz-like drum patterns, “Five Minutes” perfectly showcases Rebelo’s gorgeous delivery which expresses longing and heartache within the turn of a phrase.
The duo explains that “Five Minutes” is a sad and poignant song that tells the story of a couple who immediately fall for each other and mistakenly believe that their connection will last forever. “However, slowly and almost imperceptibly over time they drift apart as their love wanes. This leads the main character in the song to wonder how they drifted apart as she wistfully looks back on their life together,” the duo explain.
Throwback: Happy Belated 68th Birthday, Cindy Wilson!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Cindy Wilson’s 68th birthday.
Lyric Video: Bambara Shares Atmospheric and Brooding “Face of Love”
JOVM mainstays Bambara — twin brothers Reid Bateh (lead vocals, guitar) and Blaze Bateh (drums), and William Brookshire (bass) — will be releasing their highly-anticipated Graham Sutton-produced fourth album, Birthmarks through Wharf Cat Records on March 14, 2025.
Birthmarks is reportedly a wild, musically adventurous collection of songs that follows a host of lost characters caught in a cycle of love, violence and rebirth. The result is material that may arguably be their most apocalyptic and poignant.
Earlier this month, I wrote about “Letters from Sing Sing,” a story and forceful rager, anchored around swirling shoegazer-like textures, Blaze Bateh’s thunderous, mathematically precise rhythmic patterns, Brookshire’s angular post-punk bass grooves serving as a lush yet tense and uneasy bed for Reid Bateh’s sonorous baritone.
The album’s final pre-release single “Face of Love” is a decided change in sonic direction for the trio: The brooding and atmospheric twilight-like track seems inspired by Cocteau Twins , Massive Attack, Portishead and the like featuring boom-bap beats, twinkly harp from LEYA’s Marilu Donovan, guest vocals from Madeline Johnston (Midwife) paired with Reid Bateh’s sing-speaking delivery detailing a story about a man at a diner, who encounters a server that reminds him of someone from his past.
“The story begins when a server at a diner reminds a man of a woman from his past,” Bambara’s Reid Bateh says. “Inspiration for the music came from listening to Cocteau Twins songs reversed and slowed down. It features guest lead vocals from Madeline Johnston (Midwife), backing vocals by Jen Monroe and harp played by Marilu Donovan (LEYA).”
New Audio: Choses Sauvages Shares Groovy “Cours toujours”
With the release of their Emmanuel Ethier-produced 2018 self-titled, full-length debut, Montréal-based dance punks Choses Sauvages — Totalement Sublime‘s Marc-Antoine Barbier (guitar), Theirry Malépart (keys), Tony Bélisle (keys), Philippe Gauthier-Boudreau (drums) and La Sécurité‘s Félix Bélisle (vocals) with Foreign Diplomats‘ and Frais Dispo‘s Charles Primeau (bass) as a touring member — exploded into the local and provincial scenes. The album was a critical and commercial success with the album topping Independent Radio Charts across Québec while receiving widespread critical applause. In 2019, the Montréal-based outfit landed Association Québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video (ADISQ) Félix Award nominations for Alternative Album of the Year and Indie Rock Album of the year, with a Félix Award win for Indie Rock Album of the Year.
Throughout 2019, the French Canadian outfit supported their full-length debut with a relentless touring schedule across the province. During that tour, the band quickly developed a reputation for a must-see live show that they brought across the global festival circuit, including stops at Reeperbahn, MaMA, FIMPRO, SXSW, Le Printemps de Bourges and Wide Days.
2021’s Choses Sauvages II found the Montréal-based outfit pushing their sound more towards electronic dance music and nu-disco influences like L’Imperatrice and Lindstrøm while still drawing from their love of funk, Bowie and Bee Gees. The album also sees them furthering their approach which pairs rigorous and meticulous songwriting with a rebellious spirit.
Choses Sauvages’ highly-anticipated third album, Choses Sauvages III is slated for a March 28, 2025 release through Audiogram. In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about two of the album’s singles late last year:
- “Incendie au paradis,” a decidedly New Wave/post-punk song that seemingly drew from Heroes and Low-era Bowie and Pleasure Principle-era Gary Numan that depicts artificial intelligence as angels that can transform and improve our daily lives. But while addressing the technological advance’s promises and benefits, it raises serious and sobering concerns on its impact on all of us. “I wanted to highlight the need to think about the ethical and moral implications and the still unknown limits of these new technologies, and the influence they have on our lives,” Choses Sauvages’ Félix Bélisle explains.
- “En joue,” which saw the band seemingly drawing from Freedom of Choice-era DEVO, Pleasure Principle-era Gary Numan, Entertainment-era Gang of Four and even La Femme to create a song that was simultaneously tense yet danceable. The song as the band’s Bélisle explains “refers to the helplessness in the face of extremely violent international news of recent years. It also deals with the fear of the other, the dehumanization of certain populations taken hostage in armed conflicts.”
Choses Sauvages III’s third and final pre-release single “Cours toujours” is anchored around a dreamily narcotized yet driving groove, twinkling keys and slashing, post punk-like guitars, which serve as a lush bed for Félix Bèlisle’s ethereal cooing. Bélisle explains that “Cours toojours is a song that discusses the impossibility of escaping oneself, of the need to face the anxieties that inhabit us. The song is “a New Wave-flavored piece about personal questioning. As if we identified a problem at the centre of our being without being able to explain it,” he says.
New Video: Gloin Shares a Furious and Chaotic Ripper
Toronto-based post-punk outfit Gloin — longtime friends John Watson (guitar, vocals), Vic Byers (bass, vocals), Simon Lou (drums, vocals) and Richard Garnheim (synths, guitar) — formed back in 2018 and at the onset was a means for the band’s members to convey their shared passion for engaging and visceral live performance. Since their formation, the Toronto-based quartet have gone on a handful of North American tours, making the rounds of the North American festival circuit with sets at SXSW, Freakout Fest, New Colossus, Sled Island, Treefort Music Fest, West Festand FME while also sharing the stage with a number of renowned acts including Snapped Ankles, Osees, Amyl and The Sniffers, Brian Jonestown Massacre, A Place to Bury Strangers, Orville Peck, Moon Duo and Night Beats.
Throughout, the Canadian band has put precedence on delivering unforgettable live shows, driven by improvisation and experimentation, with the musicians trusting their instincts that louder is always better. And as a result, the band offers cathartic live sets.
Gloin’s self-released their debut EP, 2019’s Soft Monster. They signed with Mothland, who released their full-length debut, 2022’s Dylan Frankland produced We Found This, an effort, which was mixed by Graham Walsh. Inspired by Sonic Youth and Lightning Bolt, the album featured pop melodies and beautifully noisy arrangements, anchored by a distorted rhythm section that offers urgency but also soothing grooves.
Gloin’s highly-anticipated sophomore album All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry) is slated for a March 28, 2025 release through Mothland. Described by the band as “dancey, but scary,” the album’s material sees them revamping their noise rock-driven sound, adding further elements from darkwave, industrial, and post-punk.
The album sees the band tackling themes of bewilderment, dread and anger, while being anchored around bombastic rhythmic constructs, savvy arrangements and fervid melodies. All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry)‘s material are solemn tracks about perseverance and self-determination that are cleverly subverted through sarcastic commentary.
“We wrote the whole album as a collective, influenced by shared experiences. Half was written electronically with usually one person bringing in ideas that we all elaborated on together,” the band says in press notes. “We jammed a lot, finding things we liked that we later pieced together, while also saving pieces that we might be able to plug into a future song. One method for a few of the song was for all of us to write a complete piece, and then switch up instruments.”
Last month, I wrote about the album’s sarcastically titled first single, “controlfreak69,” a tense, uneasy yet somehow dance floor friendly track that sounded a bit like a synthesis of Gang of Four, Ministry and Evil Heat-era Primal Scream, anchored around a whirring motorik groove driven by a phased-out, down-tuned bass and relentless four-on-the-floor stomp paired with Watson’s punchy shouts and howls.
The band describe the song as “trying to stay on top and trying to keep up, all the while thinking that you have control, when you actually don’t.”
All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry)‘s second and latest single “Horse Fighting” is chaotic and furious ripper with rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses that reminds me a bit of BLOODSWEAT-era Plague Vendor — but while capturing the churning of self-anguish and self-doubt. The band describe the song as being about “childhood trauma, shame and public standards.”
Directed by Rose Cormier, the accompanying video is glitchy, noisy analog chaos. “Everything about this track screamed chaos to me. The discombobulated short lyrics lend themselves well to a rather rough and choppy editing style, and the overarching chaos of the instrumental really lent itself well to the use of analog visual synthesizers,” Cormier explains. “Being handed over a bunch of corrupted footage, some of which was very, very glitchy, seemed like a nightmare scenario, but in this case, I figured that by really leaning into the chaos, I could create this big, glitchy, colourful, high energy mess.
Live Concert Photography: Molchat Doma with Sextile at Knockdown Center 2/14/25
Live concert photography of Molchat Doma with Sextile at Knockdown Center earlier this month.
New Audio: Dream Bodies Shares Shimmering and Brooding “Dream Hangover”
Steven Fleet is a Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist, poet, writer and artist, who has been in several music projects that have allowed him to play shows across the US, the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic. Fleet is also the creative mastermind behind the solo recording project Dream Bodies. With Dream Bodies, Fleet crafts “witchy, dreamy, gothy, post punk, dream pop, cold wave with poetic, philosophical lyrics.”
“Dream Hangover,” Fleet’s Dream Bodies debut single is centered around a Joy Division-meets-Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen-like soundscape feature swirling, reverb-drenched guitars, angular bass lines and mathematically precise drum patterns paired with Fleet’s young Ian McCulloch-like vocal and rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.
“‘Dream Hangover,’ is about losing your identity in a toxic relationship, but then finding yourself and your inner strength again in its aftermath,” Fleet explains.