Tag: Warsaw

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Die Spitz Shares Seething “American Porn”

Rising Austin-based outfit Die Spitz — Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston and Kate Halter — can trace some of their origins back to when Schrobilgen and Livingston met in preschool. They befriended Halter in middle school. And they brought De St. Aubin into their friend group when they started the band back in 2022. 

Initially, the quartet was looking to find reasons to hang out more often, and decided they should start a band after a late-night viewing of the Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt. They settled on the name Die Spitz over a “brown bag of Fireball,” opting for the feminine German definite article in place of the English. “It reminds me of the Grim Reaper spitting,” Livingstone jokes.

Their first live shows saw them pairing originals with covers from some of their early inspirations including Black Sabbath, Pixies, Mudhoney, PJ Harvey and Nirvana. Unsurprisingly, they express their ideas and themselves through a mischievously shameless blend of classic punk, hardcore metal, alt rock and more. They’ve also become known for riotous live show, where dueling cartwheels, members climbing rafters and solos while crowdsurfing could happen at just about any moment. 

The Texan quartet’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, the Will Yip–produced Something to Consume was released last September through Third Man Records. The album sees the band combining their passion, friendship, identity and artistry to fight against the inescapable decay and chaos that surrounds modern life, “There’s a political side to it, but addiction and love can also be all-consuming,” the band’s Ellie Livingston says. 

Something to Consume‘s 11 tracks contains multitudes and yet feels singular. It’s an expansive and expressive collection of songs, unified in its sense of deeply held camaraderie and freedom. “We depend on our freedom — freedom to do what we want, present the ideas we want, make the music we want,” Livingston says. “Whether it’s based in metal or something soft, no matter which of us wrote the song, we all contribute and work together. As a person, I don’t have a strong ego or voice, but within this band each one of us is capable of so much more.”

“Something to Consume is an album experience for everyone. Whether you’re craving a smack of lively metal or a melancholy wave of grungey violin, there’s a piece of all of us injected. Something to Consume is a call to the multitudes of ways we as humans allow consumption to enrapture our culture as well as ourselves.”

Though they’ve only been playing together for a few years, the album shows a maturity and technical prowess wielded and wed to the service of their deep and abiding friendship — and a hope to inspire change. “Some people aren’t interested in being political activists via music, but it weighs on me heavily and I feel misaligned with my calling if I don’t,” Chloe De St. Aubin says. “The four of us are free spirits with multiple interests, and there’s no limit or power dynamic that can derail us.”

The album features the previously released “Throw Yourself to the Sword,” a bruising mosh pit friendly synthesis of thrash metal, stoner rock and punk featuring some of the hardest and grimiest guitar riffs I’ve heard in some time. The album’s latest single “American Porn” comes as the quartet announces a lengthy list of summer and fall tour dates. The tour includes three New York City dates: November 13, 2026 and November 14, 2026 at Warsaw. Both of those shows are sold out. But don’t worry, they’ve got a February 19, 2027 stop at Brooklyn Steel. As always, all tour dates are below.

“American Porn” sees the rising Texans channeling a seething synthesis of grunge and riot grrl punk that calls out sexist record industry insiders and perverted older dudes, who come to their shows to leer and objectify them. “It’s a very angry song,” says the band’s Eleanor Livingston.” “And I want the people that come to our shows just because we’re pretty women or they want to sexualize or objectify us to listen to that song and tell us if they’re still a fan.”

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with director Emily Sanchez, the accompanying video for “American Porn” is a surreal fever dream of a visual that wouldn’t be out of place on 120 Minutes. The video calls out gender-roles, stereotypes and beauty standards with seething anger and a sense of mischief.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Automatic Shares Dreamy “Lazy”

Formed almost a decade ago, Los Angeles-based post punk outfit Automatic — Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon Gaines (bass, vocals) — have released two albums: 

  • Their full-length debut, 2019’s Signals saw the trio quickly establishing their sound, which paired motorik grooves with icy atmospheres. 

  • Their sophomore effort, 2022’s Excess saw the band sonically riding an imaginary edge where the 70s underground met 80s corporate culture. 

After they finished touring to support their sophomore album, each member of the trio pursued their own interests: Glaudini honed her skills as a producer; Saxon Gaines enrolled in botany classes; and Dompé got married, moved out to the country and began caring for horses. 

With two albums under their collective belts, the trio wanted to do something different for their third album. Slated for a September 26, 2025 release through Stones Throw Records. Is It Now? sees the trio collaborating with producer Loren Humphrey to build upon the sound of their previous releases — minimalist yet danceable songs, which they describe as “deviant pop.”  Throughout the album’s recording process, Humphrey encouraged the band to play live and loose through long takes that allowed the rhythm section to breathe. The album’s material thematically demands the listener look at the world’s oppressive structures with a fresh urgency.

Is It Now? will feature album title track, “Is It Now?” and “Mercury,” which I’ve written about over the past couple of months.

The album’s third and latest single “Lazy” sees the band seamlessly blending elements of New Wave, post-punk and spaced-out trip-hop that continues to showcase the trio’s unerring knack for tight, focused grooves. Thematically, “Lazy” is a sort of ambivalent love song, delivered with a dark sense of humor.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: grandson Returns with Bruising and Anthemic “GOD IS AN ANIMAL”

Jordan Benjamin is the Los Angeles-based creative mastermind behind the rising indie rock project grandson. Benjamin’s highly-anticipated sophomore grandson album, the Mike Crossey-produced INERTIA is slated for a September 5, 2025 release through XX Records/Create Music. The album reportedly marks an urgent, unfiltered chapter for Benjamin as an artist and songwriter, who’s operating on his own terms and speaking truth to power. 

Earlier this summer, I wrote about INERTIA‘S second single, “SELF IMMOLATION,” an urgent and impassioned Rage Against the Machine-meets-Incubus-era nu metal bruiser that thematically saw the rising Los Angeles-based artist unpacking what it means to have a cause to fight –and potentially die for.

Inertia’s third and latest single “GOD IS AN ANIMAL” continues a run of urgent and impassioned, mosh pit friendly rippers that seemingly channels RATM while thematically questioning what it means to be truly civilized, essentially questioning how civilized our society really is — or isn’t. If you’re enraged by the overwhelming cruelty and brutality of the status quo, this song is for you.

“Years ago while on tour I had this idea for a musical based off of George Orwell’s 1984, where a farm animal realizes to run the farm it has to move like a human,” Jordan Benjamin says. “After a couple iterations of that, I decided to release the title track from it on INERTIA, and trust that if that project is meant to be, it’ll find its way to the light someday. It’s certainly a fitting concept for the present moment in time. After all, we live in a ruthless world, supposedly ‘civilized’, where the dominating nations and religions scrapped their way to the top through the savage rule of the animal kingdom. We’re ultimately just apes, too smart (or stupid) for our own good.”

Directed by Joe Weil, the accompanying video for “GOD IS AN ANIMAL” is shot in a lushly cinematic Black and White that features Benjamin and the two funereally dressed women from the “SELF IMMOLATION” video rocking out to the song. The women’s interpretive dance, mimics the extraordinarily ordinariness of animalistic violence in our world.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Automatic Returns with Trip Hop-Inspired “Mercury”

Formed almost a decade ago, Los Angeles-based post punk outfit Automatic — Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon Gaines (bass, vocals) — have released two albums:

  • Their full-length debut, 2019’s Signals saw the trio quickly establishing their sound, which paired motorik grooves with icy atmospheres. 

  • Their sophomore effort, 2022’s Excess saw the band sonically riding an imaginary edge where the 70s underground met 80s corporate culture. 

After they finished touring to support their sophomore album, each member of the trio pursued their own interests: Glaudini honed her skills as a producer; Saxon Gaines enrolled in botany classes; and Dompé got married, moved out to the country and began caring for horses. 

With two albums under their collective belts, the trio wanted to do something different for their third album. Slated for a fall release through Stones Throw Records. Is It Now? sees the trio collaborating with producer Loren Humphrey to build upon the sound of their previous releases — minimalist yet danceable songs, which they describe as “deviant pop.”  Throughout the album’s recording process, Humphrey encouraged the band to play live and loose through long takes that allowed the rhythm section to breathe.

Is It Now? will feature album title track, “Is It Now?,” a continuation of the sound they’ve established through their first two albums, while simultaneously being a subtle refine with one of the tightest grooves they’ve written to date with their unerring knack for catchy hooks. And at its core, the song expresses a deeply modern sense of unease and restlessness.

Is It Now?‘s second and latest single, “Mercury” is a brooding and slow-burning, trip hop-like track featuring glistening synth stabs and a propulsive backbeat sample that’s heavily inspired by the Stones Throw catalog. The band’s Izzy Glaudini says, the song’s lyrics are a reminder “not to fall into nihilism or cynicism, to instead see life through a bit of a spiritual lens.” She adds, “Despite the horrible shit constantly happening, life can still be mysterious and beautiful. I wanted to lean into a sense of dreaminess, and to have the verses feel like a dark lullaby.”

Directed by Sira Sounds, the accompanying, dreamily shot visual features the trio — both individually and as a unit — drinking from a goblet with green liquid.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: grandson Shares a Politically Charged and Anthemic Ripper

Jordan Benjamin is the Los Angeles-based creative mastermind behind the rising indie rock project grandson. Benjamin’s highly-anticipated sophomore grandson album, the Mike Crossey-produced INERTIA is slated for a September 5, 2025 release through XX Records/Create Music. The album reportedly marks an urgent, unfiltered chapter for Benjamin as an artist and songwriter, who’s operating on his own terms and speaking truth to power.

INERTIA‘s second and latest single “SELF IMMOLATION” is a Rage Against the Machine-meets-Incubus-era nu metal bruiser that sees Benjamin pairing a punchy and impassioned delivery with pummeling boom bap-like percussion, bursts of DJ scratching and a rousingly anthemic and mosh pit friendly, Tom Morello-like crunchy power chord-driven hook and chorus. Thematically, the song sees the rising Los Angeles-based artist unpacking what it means to have a cause to fight for — and to potentially die for.

“’Self Immolation’ was inspired by the Palestinian liberation movement across college campuses, inspired by the late Aaron Bushnell who gave his life in protest of the actions of the very military he served, inspired by the dead students of Kent State 1970, and written about what it means to have a cause to live for, to die for,” Benjamin explains. “I wrote it with my friends, each of us playing an instrument live together, in a stoned, free, creative place in Andrew’s studio one afternoon, and it was a feeling we locked into across the whole album. It was a blast to create, and we all felt a great deal of purpose and meaning in the session that day.” 

The accompanying video for “SELF IMMOLATION” is split between Benjamin and his backing band performing the song as two funereally-dressed women headbang and mosh behind him, edited footage from Kent State, protests, uprisings and fires.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Nation of Language Share Woozy “I’m not Ready for the Change”

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based synth pop act and JOVM mainstays Nation of Language — Ian Richard Devaney (vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synths) and Alex MacKay (bass) — have managed to amass a rapidly growing and devout national and international fanbase as a result of a dance floor friendly sound that draws from New Wave, post-punk and shoegaze. The JOVM mainstays three albums, 2020’s Introduction, Presence, 2021’s A Way Forward and 2023’s Strange Disciple have received coverage from Billboard, The New York Times, Document Journal, BrooklynVegan, MOJO, NME, Pitchfork, Stereogum and lengthy list of others, including this site.

Adding to a rapidly rising profile, the band has performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Recently,  “Weak In Your Light” was featured in the series finale of the Netflix hit show You. They’ve also become a mainstay on the international festival circuit, playing sets at Austin City Limits, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Pukklepop, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, and a growing list of others globally.

Last month, the acclaimed JOVM mainstays announced they signed to Sub Pop Records, who will be releasing their new material globally in 2025 and beyond, including the band’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Dance Called Memory. Slated for a September 19, 2025 release, the 10-song album was recorded, produced and mixed by Holy Ghost‘s Nick Millhiser, who produced 2023’s Strange Disciple. “What’s so great about Nick is his ability to make us feel like we don’t need to do what might be expected of us,” says Nation of Language’s Aidan Noell. The album was mastered by Heba Kadry, who has worked on some of the most acclaimed records of the past decade or so.

Sonically, the album is imbued with a subtly shifted palette: On some tracks percussion is smashed through a synthesizer to nod at early-2000’s electronic music. Chopped-up drum break samples make appearances, too.

Ultimately, for the trio, the hope was to weave raw vulnerability and humanity into a synth-heavy album. “There is a dichotomy between the Kraftwerk school of thought and the Brian Eno school of thought, each of which I’ve been drawn to at different points. I’ve read about how Kraftwerk wanted to remove all of the humanity from their music, but Eno often spoke about wanting to make synthesized music that felt distinctly human,” Nation of Language’s Ian Richard Devaney says. “As much as Kraftwerk is a sonically foundational influence, with this record I leaned much more towards the Eno school of thought. In this era quickly being defined by the rise of AI supplanting human creators, I’m focusing more on the human condition, and I need the underlying music to support that… Instead of hopelessness, I want to leave the listener with a feeling of us really seeing one another, that our individual struggles can actually unite us in empathy.”

Dance Called Memory will feature the previously released “Inept Apollo,” which continues a run of nostalgia-inducing, 80s New Wave-inspired material, while furthering their unerring knack for crafting slickly produced dance floor numbers anchored around earnest lyricism.

“I’m Not Ready for the Change,” Dance Called Memory‘s second and latest single features chopped up drum breaks seemingly inspired by Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine, glittering arpeggiated synths paired with whirring guitars and the band’s long-held penchant for enormous hooks and lived-in lyrics.

Directed by longtime collaborator John McKay, the accompanying, stylishly shot video features the trio performing the song in a studio — and for you fellow old heads, will subtly remind you of early 1980s MTV.

Along with the single and album announcements, the JOVM mainstay will be busy throughout the summer and fall. They’re will be opening for Death Cab for Cutie on their Plans: 20th Anniversary Tour for four dates: Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena on July 31, 2025 and August 2, 2025 and for two-sold out shows in Chicago’s Chicago Theatre, August 5, 2025 and August 6, 2025. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Nation of Language Share Shimmering “Inept Apollo”

Acclaimed Brooklyn-based synth pop act and JOVM mainstays Nation of Language — Ian Richard Devaney (vocals, guitar), Aidan Noell (synths) and Alex MacKay (bass) — have managed to amass a rapidly growing and devout national and international fanbase as a result of a dance floor friendly sound that draws from New Wave, post-punk and shoegaze. The JOVM mainstays three albums, 2020’s Introduction, Presence, 2021’s A Way Forward and 2023’s Strange Disciple have received coverage from Billboard, The New York Times, Document Journal, BrooklynVegan, MOJO, NME, Pitchfork, Stereogum and more.

Adding to a rapidly rising profile, the band has performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and recently “Weak In Your Light” was featured in the series finale of the Netflix hit show You. They’ve also become a mainstay on the international festival circuit, playing sets at Austin City Limits, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Pukklepop, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, and a growing list of others.

The acclaimed outfit recently signed to Sub Pop Records, who will release their new music globally in 2025 and beyond. The Brooklyn trio’s Sub Pop debut “Inept Apollo” continues a run of nostalgia-inducing, 80s New Wave-inspired material while further cementing reputation for crafting slickly produced dance floor friendly numbers anchored around earnest lyricism and songwriting.

“Work is a respite from pain. Whether it’s a paying job or just the thing you pour yourself into, having a direction to move in, finding a flow state, it can move focus away from the heaviness of the heart. So after life’s losses, in moments of despair, we resolve time and time again to dive headfirst into the work as best we can,” Devaney says of the new single. “But the artistic process also tends to be when imposter syndrome rears its ugly head – when I find my inner monologue spiraling: ‘this is the best coping mechanism I have at my disposal and I’m not even qualified to be doing it.’

He continues, “Accompanying the song is a killer music video by our friend and brother John MacKay: it is an homage to creative pursuits, and in some ways came to represent the feeling of living in a city as an artist. The video feels like walking through an old warehouse in Brooklyn, full of practice spaces and studios, each room occupied by artists striving to express and understand themselves and their place in the world. No matter how bizarre the act may seem or how much self-doubt or pain runs through the mind of the creator, the beautiful thing is the striving and continuing on, rather than the final product or any notion of ‘success.’ The power of creation belongs to all of us; requires the approval of none.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunflower Bean Shares an Arena Rock Friendly Ripper

Formed back in 2013, while they were still teenagers, New York-based trio Sunflower Bean — Julia Cumming (vocals, bass) Nick Kivlen (guitar, vocals) and Olive Faber (drums) — are arguably one of the New York metropolitan area’s most acclaimed and commercially successful indie bands. Since their formation, the New York-based trio have released three critically acclaimed albums, 2016’s Human Ceremony, 2018’s Twentytwo in Blue and 2022’s Headful of Sugar, which featured several chart-topping singles.

The band has supported those albums with sold-out tour dates as headliners and as openers for the Beck, The Strokes, Cage the Elephant, Interpol, Courtney Barnett, The Pixies, The Kills, DIIV, Wolf Alice and more. They’ve also made the rounds of the international festival circuit with stops at Glastonbury, Governor’s Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Reading Festival, Leeds Festival and others. And famously, they opened for Bernie Sanders during primary campaign rallies. 

Adding to a growing profile, the band’s Julia Cumming had a guest spot on Yves Tumor‘s 2020 effort Heaven to a Tortured Mind. Nick Kivlen and Olive Faber collaborated with Frost Children on “SERPENT,” which appears on 2023’s Speed Run. 

Late last year, the band returned with the Shake EP. The self-produced and self-recorded effort featured some of the band’s heaviest, most immediate and loudest material they’ve written and recorded to date. Influenced by the doom-laden, riff-driven sound of Black Sabbath and others, the EP is an embrace of rock tropes and excess, while nodding to the band’s first two albums. 

“SHAKE was inspired by our first years as a DIY band, the spirit that birthed us and gave us the chance to have this enduring journey together,” the band says of the EP. “We wrote, recorded, engineered, and produced these songs so nothing was filtered through anyone else’s idea of us. We always felt like rock and roll was a feeling, not a sound. But sometimes there is no subverting it or explaining it. We’re now offering it exactly as it occurred to us.” 

The JOVM mainstays highly-anticipated fourth album Mortal Primetime is slated for an April 25, 2025 through Lucky Number. In the three years since their last album Headful of Sugar, the members of the band drifted from one another as they pursued new projects and confronted personal challenges, tragedies and transformations. The album reportedly finds the members of the band with a renewed sense of purpose after nearly losing everything they’ve built together. “You get to decide what your prime is, and you fight for it,” the band’s Julia Cumming says. “This is ours, and that can’t be taken away by circumstance. We can’t take it away from each other. This moment, where we are now, is what we’ve always fought for.”

Mortal Primetime‘s material was inspired by alternative rock and psychedelia and rooted in arena-sized ambition, which results in a sound that’s not just undeniably theirs, but also sees the band celebrating their history while boldly pushing into the future.

Mortal Primetime‘s first single “Champagne Taste” is a nod to the band’s long-time alias when performing secret shows to test out new material, Anchored around scuzzy riffs, arena rock friendly, power chord-driven hooks and choruses paired with Cumming’s sultry, The Idiot-era Iggy Pop-styled croon, “Champagne Taste” sees the band simultaneously channeling a synthesis of 80s glam rock and 90s riot grrl alt rock and punk. But at its core, is a fierce, almost feral determination.

“This song came after a period that felt like rock bottom for the band. It is about feeling beaten down but still driving forward, to keep faith, to grow and to continue to create on our own terms, our Mortal Primetime,” the band explains.

The Issac Roberts-directed video for “Champagne Taste” is a slick, super stylized visual that recalls 90s MTV.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Hello Mary Shares Brooding “Down My Life”

With the release of last year’s sophomore, self-titled album, New York-based indie rock trio Hello Mary — Helena Straight, Stella Wave and Mikaela Oppenheimer — received praise nationally from the likes of Rolling Stone, who wrote that the album was “one of 2023’s sharpest, nosiest debuts.”

Building upon a growing profile, the New York-based trio’s highly-anticipated, Alex Farrar and band co-produced third album Emita Ox will be released September 13, 2024 through Frenchkiss Records. Emita Ox sees the rising New York-based trio pushing harder into heavy dissertation and psychedelic dreamscapes, while they build out their singular universe rooted in a gusty strain of alternative rock. The album also reflects how the band’s musical tastes have expanded from Elliott Smith and Radiohead to encompass experimental post-rock acts like Black Midi and Swans. “This album encompasses a lot of our inspirations,” Hello Mary’s Mikaela Oppenheimer says. “It also shows what we’re like as a trio, collectively.” 

Recorded earlier this year, the album’s material reveals a band that’s boldly leveling up as musicians and composers. The trio’s contributions to the material’s creation and production bleed into each other, but the album is also a showcase of their individual strengths and abilities: Straight’s ethereal vocal melodies and gritty guitar riffs, Wave’s emotive vocals and knotty drum patterns, and Oppenheimer’s diabolical basslines and experimentation with electronic production. “We map out all the sections beforehand, we like to write intricate parts that complement each other,” Hello Mary’s Stella Wave says.

Featuring songs that span from 2018 to 2023, the album is also a document of the band’s past five years growing up as bandmates and their arrival into young adulthood. First meeting as teenagers in 2019, the band became fast friends through the pandemic – a global crisis atop a series of crises that made coming of age feel even more weighty and complicated. “This album represents a period of time that’s very meaningful to us. The songs are related to things that we all know about, even if it’s not out on the table for everyone else,” Wave explains. “The songwriting and recording process was a very heavy time that I will never forget.” Although the lyrics touch on serious topics, the band maintains a core sense of play and exploration” jamming is their way of working through difficult and heavy feelings in a way that’s “easy and fun,” Straight says.

Created amid emotions of frustrations and camaraderie, the album finds the trio fearlessly diving into catharsis.

The album’s first single “0%” features thunderously percussive, down-tuned bass, distortion pedaled guitar fuzz, forceful drumming and Stella Wave’s throaty, feral screams within a classic grunge song structure of alternating impossibly loud choruses, quieter verses and a mischievously dreamy breakdown with vibraphone and triangle.

Much like the rest of the album, the song emerged as the trio were jamming in their practice space. After quickly becoming a crowd favorite live, the song really came to live in the studio, becoming the first time that the band’s Stella Wave had screamed on the recording. When she hopped into the recording booth, she felt emboldened to draw out the vocal shouts the band had originally planned, turning them into much longer screams.

The new single emerged as the trio were jamming in their practice space. After quickly become a crowd favorite live, the song really came to life in the studio, becoming the first time that the band’s Stella Wave had ever screamed on a recording. But when she hopped into the recording booth, she felt emboldened to draw out the vocal shouts the band originally planned, turning them into much longer screams.

The song captures a young woman boldly and defiantly expressing existential frustrations — and getting a bit of joy out of the fact of what little she knows and how much she has left to learn.

Emita Ox‘s third and latest single, the brooding “Down My Life” features Helena Straight’s angelic delivery ethereally floating over a Tool-meets-OK Computer-era Radiohead like arrangement of forceful and menacing down-tuned bass, bursts of warped piano, shimmering strummed guitar within a slightly expansive yet classic grunge song structure.

“Down My Life,” is a song that Straight says she wrote after “one of the saddest experiences” of her life. She adds, that “‘Down My Life’ is possibly the most lyrically powerful song for me on the record. The lyrics are somewhat vague, so the meaning behind it is not totally obvious to the listener, which is how I’d like it to be considering the state I was in when I wrote it.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Corridor Shares GIF-tastic Visual for “Jump Cut”

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.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Frankie and The Witch Fingers Share an Apocalyptic Ripper

Since initially forming in Bloomington, IN over a decade ago, the acclaimed Los Angeles-based psych rock outfit Frankie and the Witch Fingers — currently founding duo Dylan Sizemore (vocals, guitar) and Josh Menashe (lead guitar, synth), along with Death Valley Girls‘ Nikki “Pickle” Smith (bass) and Mike Watt’s Nick Aguilar (drums) — have a long-held reputation for restless experimentation rooted in the multiple permutations of their lineups, and for a high-powered and scuzzy, garage punk meets thrash punk take on psych rock paired with absurdist lyrics, frequently fueled by dreams, hallucinations, paranoia and lust. The result is material that can be simultaneously mischievous, menacing and dreamlike. 

Slated for a September 1, 2023 release through Greenway Records/The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstays’ forthcoming seventh album, Data Doom is built around the cerebral yet visceral songwriting of the outfit’s co-founders, while marking the first written and recorded material featuring Smith and Aguilar.

In crafting what may arguably be their most rhythmically complex work to date, the band drew heavily from each member’s distinct sensibilities: Smith tapped into her extensive background in West African drumming, an art form she first discovered through her music instructor parents. Aguilar leaned into formative influences like longtime Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen.

Self-produced by the proudly DIY-minded band and recorded direct to tape by the band’s Menashe, Data Doom ultimately took shape through countless sessions in their Southeast L.A.-based rehearsal space, with the band allowing themselves unlimited time to explore their gloriously strange impulses. “There was no pressure and no real time constraint for this record, and because of that the creativity flowed in a very free way that probably wouldn’t have happened if we’d been on the clock in a studio,” Frankie and the Witch’s Dylan Sizemore says in press notes. “It showed us that the more we take the time to communicate and share our ideas with each other, the more it feeds our creative energy and helps us to make something we’re all really excited about.”

While showcasing the expansive and eccentric musicality of past efforts like 2020’s Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters . . ., Data Doom reportedly features nine high-wattage songs built with both dizzying intricacy and completely unfettered imagination. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Mild Davis,” an expansive, stream-of-consciousness-driven song that sees the acclaimed JOVM mainstays cycling through a whirlwind of rhythms and textures paired with dexterous guitar work, proggy synths and a series of mind-bending solos. Seemingly drawing from Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo-era DEVO, acid jazz freakouts, garage psych and space rock, while influenced by Miles Davis‘ early 70s electric period, “Mild Davis” may arguably be the wildest, face-melting ripper I’ve come across this year. “We worked on that for two weeks straight, puzzle-piecing together different parts into one very weird and stream-of-consciousness song that’s mostly in a 7/4 time signature,” the JOVM mainstay outfit’s Josh Menashe recalls.

Lyrically, the song sees Sizemore shifting between savagely despairing the state of the world and resolutely dreaming of a brighter future. “I wrote ‘Mild Davis’ in a moment of feeling pessimistic about what technology is doing to our society, especially as AI is creeping to the forefront more and more,” says Sizemore. “But then the bridge comes from a more optimistic perspective, where it’s questioning whether we could reboot the whole system and start all over.”

“Empire,” Data Doom‘s final preview is seven minutes of scorching guitar riffs, thunderous drumming and intense, apocalyptic-laden lyrics. Play loud and open up that pit right now!

Directed by Kevin Fermini and featuring corrupted knight and ship design by Gage Lindsten, creature designs by Carlo Schievano and titles and matte paintings by Jordan Warren, the accompanying video for “Empire” is a trippy and nightmarish intergalactic romp with weird otherworldly creatures that bring Metroid to mind.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays METZ Team up with IDLES’ Joe Talbot on a Towering Ripper

Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ share two stand-alone tracks on all DSPs “Come On Down,” featuring IDLES‘ Joe Talbot and the previously unreleased “Heaven’s Gate,” which only appeared in the Cyberpunk 2077, the video game released back in 2020.

METZ’s Alex Edkins says, “‘Come On Down’ was originally recorded during the Atlas Vending sessions but never fully finished. During the pandemic I really gravitated towards the idea of collaboration as a way to fill the void left by the loss of live music. I reached out to friends from far and wide in order to get that feeling of community that gigs provide. Joe Talbot (IDLES) is a longtime friend who METZ has shared the stage with many, many times, and this song was a very natural and fun way to catch up with him and do something positive with our time off the road.”
 
“METZ have been a band we’ve looked up to since they came into our lives and made things better,” IDLES’ Joe Talbot adds. “I will never forget the first time I saw them or any of the other times. Allowing me to sing with them is a gift and I hope you like it. I love it and I love them. Long live METZ.”

“Come On Down” is a classic METZ ripper: Towering fuzz and distorted-fueled power chords, thunderous drumming, mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Prominently featuring Talbot’s snarling delivery and Edkins’ shouting, “Come On Down” has a gritty and crusty-old school punk quality while retaining the Toronto-based outfit’s enormous sound.

Directed and edited by Arturo Baston, the accompanying, animated video for “Come On Down” features a series of different birds — a hawk, geese, ducks, an ostrich and the like — flying and walking through flames.