Lo.Krain is a Siberian indie project created by a mysterious yet extremely prolific creative mastermind, whose desire and priority is to create soulful, sincere and occasionally experimental music.
The project’s latest single “Город-призрак,” which translates into English as “Ghost Town.” Anchored around glistening and chiming guitar tones, a sinuous bass line and dramatic drumming, the song’s arrangement serves as a dreamy and melancholic bed for yearning vocals. Seemingly channeling a mix of dream pop, jangle pop, post punk, bedroom pop and film noir, “Город-призрак” evokes late night commutes back home from partying or from a show with the bitterly lingering ghosts of your memories.
Mimi, Corridor‘s long-awaited and highly-anticipated fourth album is slated for Friday release on CD, LP and DSP globally through Sub Pop and across Canada through Bonsound.
The eight-song album, which was co-produced by the band and Joojoo Ashworth, recorded at Montréal-based Studio Gamma and mastered by Brooklyn’s Heba Kadry Mastering, derives its name from Jonathan Robert’s cat and features — presumably — Mimi’s face on the album artwork. Thematically, the album as the band explains is about “getting older” and “figuring out new parts of life,” inspired and informed by the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time. And while the album’s material reflects a newfound and perhaps hard-won contemplative maturity, sonically, Mimi is reportedly a huge step forward with the band expanding on the sound of 2019’s critically applauded Junior with ever more richly detailed music rooted in a distinct rhythm pulse that recalls post-punk’s own classic era of meshing dance and rock textures.
For the acclaimed Montréalers and their fans, Mimi will feel like a fresh break — even for a band that has established themselves as being forward-thinking. Much like its immediate predecessor, Mimi sees Corridor being impossible to pin down from song to song; however, whereas the elastic guitar rock of Junior came together quickly — or as the band’s Jonathan Robert describes the process ” in a rush” — the steady-as-they-go creative pace of Mimi marked a desire to break from the “exhausting” work ethic that birthed Junior.
“The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album—to build something in a new way,” Robert explains. “This time, we took our time.” During the summer of 2020, the members of the band — Jonathan Robert (vocals, guitar), Dominic Berthiaume (vocals, bass), Julien Bakvis (drums) and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux — holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi‘s material. “We went there to write, and a lot of ideas came from that retreat,” Berthiaume explains. “We didn’t end up with songs as much as we did ideas, so the result is a collage of the ideas.”
After that productive writing retreat, the band continued to tinker with the songs’ raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth leading their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. This process was naturally a byproduct of not having access to their rehearsal space as the COVID-19 pandemic faded into public view, but it was also a result of the band leaning harder into incorporating electronic textures than previously.
“For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that,” Berthiaume says, but while admitting that the band encountered their own challenges as a result: “We had to figure out how to make new songs without having the chance to play together. It was complicated sometimes.”
Some of the album’s new energy and life may be owed to Samuel Gougoux joining the band full-time, after pitching in on live performances in the past. “I come more from a background of electronic music, so it was nice to involve that with the band more,” he explains.
In the lead-up to the album’s release later this week, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:
“Mourir Demain,” a song built around brightly shimmering and chiming guitars, soaring synths and post-punk-like angular rhythms that served as a lush, velvety and somewhat uneasy bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery, which sees him ruminating on his looming mortality with a brutally unvarnished yet fearful realism. “I wrote it when my girlfriend and I were shopping for life insurance,” Corridor’s Robert says with a laugh. “With our little daughter growing up, we also considered making our will. I said to myself, ‘Oh shit, from now on I’m slowly starting to plan my death.”
“Mon Argent,” which features the sort of electronic glitch and squiggle that reminds me of VHS fuzz and badly tuned TVs with rabbit ears paired with jangling and chiming bursts of angular guitars, a remarkably steady and propulsive backbeat serving as a lush and shimmering bed for Robert’s plaintive delivery to bitterly muse about the role of money in his — er, the narrator’s — life. And of course, fittingly enough, the sense of shame and failure that money, and the lack of money creates with all of us. Certainly, as a writer and photographer, this is a familiar and remarkably bitter aspect of my life that I can relate to.
Mimi‘s latest single “Jump Cut” is a hook-driven song built around angular guitar bursts, a relentlessly propulsive motorik pulse and glistening synth oscillations that — to my ears, at least — playfully nod at Who Are You-era The Who.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker and designer Winston Hacking, the accompanying video for “Jump Cut” is a truly bonkers mix of edited found and stock footage, collage and animation that’s playfully surreal and GIF-tastic.
“Our video reflects the song’s theme of grappling with the overwhelming influence of technology and feeling adrift in its wake. Using AI to enhance archival footage resulted in a deliberate distortion, symbolizing the potential consequences of our intertwined relationship with it,” Hocking says of the video. “It invites reflection on how technology blurs the lines of our identities and infiltrates every aspect of our lives.”
Grand Public is a Montréal-based indie rock outfit and JOVM mainstay act that features a collection of the city’s most accomplished musicians: Gregory Paquet, the band’s founder and frontman has played with The Stills, Alvvays‘ Molly Rankin and Peter Peter. The band also features three childhood friends, who have played together in several local bands, including Reviews, an act that has shared stages with Omni, JOVM mainstays Corridor, and others.
Last year’s four-song Dominic Vanchesteing-produced debut EP Idéal Tempo featured “Lundi normal,” and “Goutte á goutte,,” two tracks that seemingly recalled Junior-era Corridor to mind with nods to 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock and 60s psych rock.
Building upon a growing profile, the Montréal-based outfit’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, the recently released Sensations Diversions sees the band blending some dexterous guitar acrobatics with dazzling melodies and ironic reflections on the charm and madness of the art scene and the entertainment economy — but while also being a refinement of the sound they’ve developed on Idéal Tempo EP.
The album features the previously released single “Lisbonne, Paris La Sorbonne” is a krautrock-like song featuring shimmering and angular guitars and an explosive guitar solo before a slow fade-out. Channeling Corridor and XTC but with a decidedly post punk edge, the song’s career-orientated narrator is desperately figuring out the right moves to advance his ambitions — and at seemingly any cost.
The album’s latest single “Clap” is a decidedly post punk-meets-art rock built around chiming guitar tones, propulsive and angular drum rhythms and punchily delivered impressionistic lyrics.
Directed by Joé Pelletier, the accompanying video for “Clap” follows the band’s members on a hang-out session at the sort of swap meet/arcade/food court that you’d see in New England. Throughout the day, the band talks about film, art and music with a winking nostalgia and pretense that seems –well familiar, and somehow missed.
Copenhagen-based experimental noise/post-punk outfit Taxidermy — Osvald Reinhold (vocals, guitar), Toke Brejning Frederiksen (guitar), Joachim Lorch-Schierning (bass) and Johan Knutz Haavik (drums) — have quickly established a sound that draws from math rock, No Wave, post-hard and emo.
Thematically, the Danish quartet’s work sees them exploring the unease and disquiet of contemporary existence through delving into the cryptic and disorientating, the claustrophobic and the surreal. Crafting material anchored around unpredictable arrangements, raw and visceral textures, broad dynamic range and intense emotional delivery, the members of the Copenhagen-based outfit actively challenges the listener to confront the discomfort of the unknown.
“Rot,” the first single from Taxidermy’s forthcoming EP is a slow-burning bit of noisy post-punk that evokes the narrator’s sanity fraying at its edges as its built around an arrangement of intricate layers of dissonant guitars, swirling feedback paired with a propulsive rhythm section serving as an uneasy and stormy bed for Reinhold’s desperate wailing. Sonically, seeming to channel Disappears/FACS, as well as Radiohead and The Smile, “Rot” not only captures a narrator who’s drowning in their own vacillating and self-flagellating doubt and hatred, but one who does so in a world that’s mad and cruel to him, as he is to himself.
Directed by Lasse Vivid, the accompanying video for “Rot” is split between shots of the gorgeous Danish countryside, surreal imagery including some gorgeous bound books and footage of a man who seems to be slowing losing his sanity. Much like the song, it’s eerie and unsettling.
Burger Daddy is the recording project of a mysterious and emerging Atlanta-based musician, who says that he “loves to write from the heart.” Instead of going for a particular sound, the Atlanta-based artist just sees whatever comes out whenever he sits down to write.
His debut single “basketball” is a brooding bit of post punk-inspired pop anchored around glistening synths, skittering and off-kilter percussion serving as an uneasy yet lush bed for the Atlanta-based artist’s expressive and yearning delivery. While sonically channeling the likes of Billy Idol and Daughn Gibson, “basketball” reveals a songwriter, who can craft a vibey and sultry song with some remarkably catchy hooks.
Back in 2022, the Richmond, UK-based self-described “psychedelic, garage noir” duo West Wickhams — Jon Othello and Elle Flores — released their debut, Consider Her Way, which featured the brooding, The Cure-meets-Cocteau Twins-like “Consider Her Way” and their sophomore EP Magenta, which featured the slick The Cure-meets-New Order-like “This Is a Hang Up,” one of the more dance-floor friendly tracks of their growing catalog.
The British JOVM mainstays started this year with Vivre Sa Vie. Translated into English as “Your life to live,” the album features the previously released “The Conformist,” which continued a run of 80s goth and post-punk inspired material, but with chiming percussion, which added a subtle bit of bright and sunny beauty to the generally dark, brooding air they’ve established.
Vivre Sa Vie‘s latest single “At The Cinema” is a decidedly 80s post punk song that seemingly channels Garlands-era Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees and several others with the track being anchored around shimmering and reverb soaked guitars, a laconic, almost narcoleptic backbeat paired seemingly distracted dreamy vocals. Tune in and tune out, perhaps?
The accompanying video follows a collection of extremely British mods brooding and goofing off for the camera, much like characters in the movies do.
In the five years since S.A.D.’s release, the band has been rather busy: They’ve gone through a lineup change, which has resulted in their current lineup: Dylan Fuentes (vocals, guitar), Mike Hubbard (drums, synth) and Mitch Midkiff (bass). They’ve released an EP and a handful of singles, one which was featured as KEXP’s Song of the Day that have gradually revealed an evolving and decided change in sonic direction. The band has shared stages with a handful of acclaimed and renowned acts including JOVM mainstays Los Bitchos, Blackwater Holylight, Gustaf, The Bobby Lees, Godcaster, Habibi, Reignwolf and Spirit Mother among others.
Slated for an Friday release through Corporat Records, the Seattle-based outfit’s 11-song Dylan Wall-produced sophomore album Speck was recorded at Seattle’s 7 Hills Studios and reportedly sees the trio embarking on a kaleidoscopic sonic odyssey through the diverse array of genres they proudly call home. Thematically Fuentes’ lyrics oscillate between two contrasting realms: outward to explore the effects of the perils of capitalism and climate change — and inward, to scrutinize the self, in particular dissecting the ego and self-identity.
In the lead-up to to Friday, I wrote about two of the album’s previously released singles:
The Low Praise-meets-grunge-like “Rebirth Mantra,” a song built around a pummeling, most pit friendly riff, thunderous drumming and a supple yet propulsive bass line within a classic, alternating loud-quiet-loud song structure that captures Fuentes at his most introspective and neurotic, with the song’s narrator expressing his fears of feeling into the same unhelpful — and perhaps even destructive — patterns that always lead to repeated failure and frustration. The song’s narrator envisions a transformed, evolved version of himself, a much more caring, courageous and empathetic self. Of course, are we able and willing to change and evolve? Or are we too stubborn, too blind to do what’s necessary to better ourselves?”
“Phasing,” a decidedly grunge-like ripper built around the sort of feedback fueled, power chord-driven riffs reminiscent of 90s alt rock greats like Nirvana, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, complete with enormous, arena rock-meets-mosh pit-like hooks and choruses.
“Conscious Dust,” Speck‘s latest single and opening track is a Jack Endino-like grunge take on post-punk that begins with a intricate punk-meets-cheek-in-tongue Motown-like drumbeat and a fuzzy bass line. Fuentes enters the fray with a punchy chant-like delivery before the song explodes into a hypnotic and noisy mosh pit friendly ripper. As a single, “Conscious Dust” sets up the album’s overall aesthetic and thematic concerns as a sort of bold, flag-planting moment for the band and the listener. For me, the song kind of reminds me of Pearl Jam’s “Do The Evolution,” as a sort of tongue-in-cheek takedown of humanity and human consciousness.
“‘Conscious Dust’ is the first song I wrote for the album—and I intended it to be the first song on the album,” Weep Wave’s Dylan Fuentes says in press noses. It’s an ontological song that can function as playful mushroom-induced pontifications or absorbed as a reminder of the cycle of life. It speaks to a life cycle of having been here before but striving to do better than the last time.”
“I like how the chill keyboards balance the heaviness,” Fuentes adds. “I tried to create songs that feel like a journey, something you can get lost in.”
The Seattle-based outfit will be touring down the West Coast this Spring, and it begins with an April 5, 2024 album release show at Seattle’s Sunset Tavern. If you’re planning to be on the West Coast or if you’re a West Coast pal, check out the rest of the tour dates below.
Spring 2024 Tour Dates
4/5 – Seattle, WA at Sunset Tavern
4/6 – Tacoma, WA at New Frontier
4/12 – Chico, CA at Naked Lounge
4/13 – San Francisco at Kilowatt Bar
4/19 – San Diego, CA at Che Cafe
4/20 – Los Angeles, CA at Gengis Cohen
4/21 – Long Beach, CA at Alex’s Bar
4/27 – Denver, CO at Hi-Dive 5/1 – Salt Lake City, UT at Old Cuss
5/3 – Missoula, MT at VFM 5/4 – Spokane, WA at The Big Dipper
Back in 2013, Chicago-based post-punk act Disappears — founding member Brian Case (vocals, guitar) along with Noah Leger (drums), Jonathan van Herirk (guitar) and Damon Carruesco (bass) — released two related yet very different efforts that are among some of my favorite albums of the past decade or so — the atmospheric and tempestuous Kone EP and the tense, raging Era.
In 2017, Carruesco left the band. Disappears’ remaining members — Case, Lager and van Herrik — eventually decided to continue onward, but under a new name, and new sonic direction and songwriting approach as FACS. With 2018’s full-length debut as FACS, Negative Houses, the trio quickly established an intense, cathartic and heavy sound, although it’s not always obvious.
The Chicago-based outfit’s fifth album, last year’s Still Life in Decay was a decidedly focused that saw the band at what may arguably be their most solidified. The apocalyptic chaos of their previous album was pushed away in favor of examination with a remarkable and uneasy clarity, while being a sort of addendum to 2021’s Present Tense. Although Alianna Kalaba made an amicable last stand with the band on the album’s material, the album saw the band’s incredibly tight rhythm section dancing and twisting around each other like a double helix rather than inside it, creating a lattice, in which Case wove his guitar lines in and around, much like creeping vines as you’d hear on album tracks “When You Say” and “Slogan.”
The JOVM mainstays — currently Case, Van Herik and Leger — will be releasing the “North America Endless”/”Take Me to Your Heart” single through Sub Pop. The limited release will be on white vinyl and limited to 1,000 copies, and features the original A-side “North America Endless” and on the B-side, a cover of Eurythmics “Take Me to Your Heart.”
“North America Endless” sees the trio at their most forceful yet melodic. Anchored around a shimmering and reverb-soaked, sustain-driven guitar line, thunderous and angular drumming paired with Case’s delivery, which evokes and expresses the anxiety, despair, cognitive dissonance and dissociation of modern American life.
“We had been talking a lot about how to incorporate melody in a new way with the material we were starting to write after Still Life in Decay, and this was one of the first experiments with that,” FACS’ Brian Case says of the new single. “I had this inverted Polvo thing I had been playing around with that Jonathan married to a really nice Frippy sustained lead, and it kind of just wrote itself. Lyrically, it’s about the dissociation needed to live in this country and the powerlessness that can bring. Noah’s beat at the end of the song is one of my favorites from him.”
Regarding the cover of Eurythmics’ “Take Me to Your Heart,” Case says the song is “A band favorite, we’ve been kicking around a version of this since we first started FACS, but for some reason just got around to completing it now. This song has a lot of elements we keep in focus when we write – repetition, space, off-the-grid melodies, and mantra-like lyrics that can be construed in a few ways based on what perspective you view them from.”
The tense Joshua Ford-directed accompanying video for “North America Endless” follows a woman through the slow-burn descent into numbing dissociation and madness.
Moments Stolen sees the Bay Area-based outfit firmly cementing a sound that reflects the foggy, jagged and dystopian landscape that inspired their name with their sound frequently skirting the fringe of noise and melody, melancholy and nostalgia, tragedy and hope.
Earlier this week, I wrote about “Holoscene,” a danceable bit of post-punk that seemed to channel Murmur-era R.E.M., Boy and War-era U2 and others. Written during the darkest days of the pandemic, “Holoscene” thematically captures a very real fear of losing something so deeply human and necessary, permanently — nights out with friends, dancing and catching live music.
Moments Stolen’s latest single is the remarkably Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen-like anthemic “Cage.” Certainly, if you’re a child of the 70s and 80s, “Cage” will bring back some bittersweet nostalgia of seemingly simpler days. Pull out that Walkman and dance the night away, right?
