Artist: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard Album: Phantom Island Label: KGLW Link: kinggizzardandthelizardwizard.com Style: Pop/Rock, Alternative & Indie
This Australian band started out in 2010 and released their first album in 2012. Since then, they have produced a discography whose profusion is matched only by its eclecticism. Between studio albums, concerts and compilations, they now have more than fifty LPs to their name. While maintaining an eye on progressive and psychedelic music, the artists move from jazz to rock, electro to heavy metal, folk to soul, all with great artistic success. This variation in styles, while not necessarily comfortable for the listener, makes them one of the most interesting bands of recent years.
Illustrated with a cover reminiscent of the work of M. C. Escher, Phantom Island is their first real foray into symphonic music. The tracks on this album have been rearranged by Chad Kelly, conductor and friend of Stu Mackenzie, the band’s leader. The first two tracks follow in the footsteps of the previous album with a profusion of sound, a touch of psychedelia and almost funk-like brass reminiscent of Frank Zappa. After a ballad with bucolic accents, the rest of the album moves towards pop-rock and even folk, strongly tinged with a psychedelia that cannot deny its kinship with 1970s pop culture.
The combo had already accustomed us to their generous interweaving of instrumental lines. For this album, they have taken it a step further by adding a string and wind section. Still analog in essence, a dense sound is combined with additional resonances compared to the rest of the band’s output. However, despite fewer improvisational compositions, regular listeners won’t be thrown off, as the album retains the creative momentum characteristic of its artists. Acoustic instruments are rarely overshadowed by electric ones, and the lead vocals never take precedence over the accompaniment.
Artist: James McMurtry Album: The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy Label: New West Records, LLC Link: www.jamesmcmurtry.com Style: Country, Folk, Rock
James McMurtry was born and spent his early years in Texas before following his parents to Virginia. He received his first guitar at the age of seven from his father, writer Larry McMurtry, and began playing his songs in public while a student at the University of Arizona. He then moved to San Antonio, where he worked odd jobs and pursued his musical activities before winning a folk music contest and meeting John Mellencamp, who would produce his first album, Too Long in the Wasteland, in 1989. Known for his carefully crafted lyrics, he paints an uncompromising portrait of America through songs that are like little stories.
Less politically charged than his early albums, The Black Dog And The Wandering Boy focuses on the artist’s father and the dementia that affected him in the last years of his life. James McMurtry delivers authentic Southern Americana, starting with Jon Dee Graham’s “Laredo,” a rock tune that would have fit right in with ZZ Top’s early recordings. The rest of the album veers toward a more country-folk sound, still electric and mid-tempo, tailor-made for his haunting voice, with the ghost of Johnny Cash seeming to hover over the last part of the record. All this makes for a particularly enjoyable album for lovers of traditional music from the southern United States.
Vocals and plucked guitars or banjos are at the heart of the musical arrangement, without overwhelming the rest of the accompaniment. The rhythm never forces the pace, perfectly matching the singer-narrator’s quiet diction. Harmonica, cello, and electronic organ enrich the harmonies and melodies with great skill. The production envelops the sound with a hint of warmth that leans toward a softness devoid of any aggression, which suits the acoustic instruments elegantly. In correlation, the sibilants of the voice will be noticeable on the most defined systems.
Artist : Viagra Boys Album : Viagr Aboys Label : Shrimptech Enterprises Link : https://www.vboysstockholm.com/ Style : Rock, Punk
Viagr Aboys, the Viagra Boys’ fourth album, shows that they are still at home in energetic punk rock, but that they also know how to explore more complex music to leer towards other musical horizons and renew interest.
The Viagra Boys are a Swedish band whose formation, in 2015, followed a karaoke party that took place in the tattoo parlor employing its two founders. Of the band members, singer Sebastian Murphy is the only one not born in Sweden, but with a Swedish mother, he is perfectly bilingual. After two EPs, the band released a debut album in 2018. It was well received by critics in both Sweden and the UK. The third album wins a Swedish Grammy, and in 2023, the musicians support Queens Of The Stone Age on their 15-date tour.
Their music is fully rooted in punk, and Viagr Aboys is strongly inspired by garage rock or proto-punk, always with an almost second-degree dose of off-beatness reminiscent to some extent of Devo’s approach, to which acerbic lyrics add a form of self-mockery. In addition to rhythm and guitar, the wind instruments stand out, including a saxophone that repeatedly takes a prominent place in the accompaniment, when the compositions stray from the canons of the punk-rock genre.
Perfectly in keeping with the style and image of the band’s live performances, the production of this record cultivates a haphazard, disheveled sound that may initially confuse the audiophile. However, parallels can be drawn with free jazz and avant-garde music. What’s more, while the compositions are abundant, the recording is far from muddled and doesn’t rely solely on energy, as is all too often the case in this musical style. Its clarity makes it possible to appreciate the tonalities of each instrument, as much as Sebastian Murphy’s slightly hoarse voice, which becomes softer on the last track.
Once again, rapper Rico Nasty pushes the boundaries of rap and hip-hop, drawing inspiration from both hard rock and soft pop on her trap album Lethal.
Daughter of American rapper Beware, Maria-Cecilia Simone Kelly never imagined herself working in music as a child. It was in high school that she began producing mixtapes. Around this time, her boyfriend died of a codeine overdose, and just after his death, she learned that she was pregnant with his child. She decided to leave the rap scene to raise her child and took a job as a receptionist for two years. But the call of music was stronger! In 2016, she released a series of singles that met with success on the Internet, including one in the Fast & Furious soundtrack, giving her enough exposure to sign to the Atlantic label.
Rico Nasty’s music is still based on early trap, but far from being confined to it, it can veer towards a punk-rap reminiscent of the first mixes to appear in the 90s, or conversely, plunge into modern hyper-pop that doesn’t forget to add a sweet soulful touch. Overall, everything she does is characterized by a dose of one-upmanship characteristic of this kind of music, where the competitive spirit remains a driving force. Passages reminiscent of Marylin Manson or Blink-182 rub shoulders with genuine pop ballads and tracks more rooted in modern rap, without the segues being overly destabilizing.
A record full of excess, it shines for its production quality, like recent albums by well-known American rappers. It’s a pleasure to listen to, even with a fine system, as the dynamics are often called upon and the bandwidth descends in depth, but always subtly enough so that the bass can also be heard on installations less inclined towards this register. Although based on electronic instrumentation, the timbres have a welcome freshness, often pleasing in their pleasing variety. The soundstage is also very well exploited by the mastering work, this necessary accompaniment being generally superbly managed by US studios.
Artist: Model/Actriz Album: Pirouette Label: Dirty Hit Link: https://www.modelactriz.com/ Style: Rock, Hard Rock
To describe the second album of Model/Actriz Pirouette as noise would be too simplistic. Energetic and tense, it ranges from pop to industrial metal, yet manages to remain both approachable and atypical.
This Boston-based band was formed by drummer Ruben Radlauer and guitarist Jack Wetmore. Both have known each other since childhood, their fathers even playing music together a few years earlier. Impressed by a performance by singer Cole Haden, the two men recruited him for the band, before adding bassist Aaron Shapiro. Their concerts earned them a good reputation, but with the confinement, their first album, recorded in 2021, was not released until 2023, although it was well received by critics on Pitchfork and Bandcamp.
While their musical style links them to the noise and punk movements, there are also components borrowed from metal. As a result, the tracks as a whole present a certain radicalism, but never as extreme as those of other famous bands in the aforementioned styles. Far removed from the sometimes violent archetypes, the tracks retain their interest without being too accessible either; they seek to integrate a danceable or electronic dimension and sometimes approach the industrial, recalling tracks by Nine Inch Nails or Marylin Manson. Placed at n°5, the short track “Headlights” acts as an articulation towards a calmer part.
Far from taking saturation as their central model, as other noise bands do, Model/Actriz seem to distance themselves from it. On the contrary, what immediately catches the ear is the metallic sound of the guitar, echoing the synthesizer, which resembles a vibraphone whose bars have been swapped for huge metal ones. The frenetic rhythm is distantly reminiscent of the 80s, but shines through in its tension and dryness. In the midst of this pounding, the vocals take on almost disconcerting pop accents, adding to the ambivalence of the moods created by listening to this atypical rock.
