Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
The Alternative Weekly Roundup is a column where our staff plugs a variety of new releases in a concise, streamlined format. Albums, singles, videos, and live sets. Check back each Monday to see what we were jamming the week prior.
The Fall of Heracleion – I Burnt It All to the Ground! Everything Is A-New! I Am Alone!...
Looking at the title of The Fall of Heracleion’s debut EP you could probably correctly guess that this is misty-eyed twinkly emo that borrows liberally from Empire! Empire! and Joie De Vivre. I Burnt It All to the Ground! Everything Is A-New! I Am Alone!... is a really excellent showing, though, and we’re firmly in a post-emo-revival-CYLS time, so there isn’t a ton of stuff coming out that fills that void. It’ll be cool to see where The Fall of Heracleion goes from here. (As a side note: it’s crazy how underrated so much Australian emo is–don’t make that mistake with The Fall of Heracleion.)
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Yasu Cub – Room Without a Ceiling
On their second EP of 2024, Yasu Cub pay homage to bandleader Jacob Oki Ahearn’s grandfather Hideo Oki. The cover art for Room Without a Ceiling is a photograph he took nearly twenty-five years ago, and the penultimate track (and maybe the very best) here is called “Ancestor.” These four songs are hazy and washed-out–dream-pop operating with the logic of memory–but carry the warmth of a deep-seated love.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Autoignition – Plummet / Picking Daisies
Autoignition’s new songs show off nicely the different sounds they’ve been toying with. “Plummet” nails the scrappy, hardcore-informed pop-punk they’ve been zeroing in on since 2021, and “Picking Daisies” follows in the vein of softer, more jangly fare they tried on “Read My Mind,” “Squeeze,” and “Stryder Vibes” from March’s This Is Moving Forward. There’s no dip in quality, here, despite the two disparate styles (and a sub-five-minute runtime doesn’t hurt). This really is moving forward, huh?
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Rapt – “I Will Be My End”
Jacob Ware, former bassist of black metal band Enslavement, has reinvented himself as Rapt, a twangy folk project. Written during the “dying days of love,” Rapt’s upcoming fifth album, Until the Light Takes Us, examines a relationship on its last legs. The bleak and haunting lead single, “I Will Be My End,” grasps at remnants of autonomy.
Gillian Karon | @lethalrejection
MIKE – “You’re the Only One Watching”
This spring MIKE put out one of the best albums of the year in Pinball, his collaboration with producer Tony Seltzer, and then in October, he dropped the slurry, self-produced “Pieces of a Dream,” and now he’s back again. He’s just announced his next album, Showbiz!, will release on January 31st, and the announcement comes with the release of a new single titled “You’re the Only One Watching.” It’s a drowsy (but not sleepy!) new track that finds MIKE riding a slight, soulful beat. It’s wild that 1) this guy’s younger than I am and 2) he can put out as much music as he does (depending who you ask, Showbiz! is either his ninth, tenth, eleventh, or twelfth studio LP) and maintain this sort of quality.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Knifeplay – Spirit Echo
Knifeplay’s been pretty quiet in the two years since Animal Drowning, and now we see why. In the time since, they’ve added vocalist Johanna Bauman to their lineup, and she’s a perfect fit to carry the nearly ten-minute “Spirit Echo,” a track that finds them leaning into the noisy slowcore side of their sound. The b-side, a dusty indie folk take on “Cry Babies,” is a nice addition, carrying a similar feeling even with a different sound, but it’s the title track here that truly dazzles, a perfect demonstration of what makes Knifeplay stand out from the rest of the Philly indie rockers making slow, dreamy, loud music. There’s no one else who could write a song like “Spirit Echo”–and absolutely no one else who could justify stretching it to a trancelike nine and a half minutes.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Houses We Die In – “portraits of you”
It’s only been about half a year since Austin, Texas, metalcore six-piece Houses We Die In released their debut EP Faces of the Suffering, but that short time seems to have done them a lot of good. On “portraits of you,” their first release since, Houses We Die In get uncharacteristically melodic, tossing tender clean singing and soft, glistening arpeggios into the mix. The single still manages to be as heavy as anything else they’ve released, culminating in a cathartic, rafter-shaking breakdown. Fans of Hopesfall or even that Durendal EP (released the same day as Faces of the Suffering) should be sure to spend some time with “portraits of you.”
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
The Alternative’s ‘New Music Friday’ playlist
Each week we compile a playlist of songs our staff has been jamming. We post it on Fridays and then include it in each edition of the Weekly Roundup to make sure you don’t miss any of the great music we’re recommending.
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