Posted: by The Editor
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.
Joyer – Night Songs
Brothers Nick and Shane Sullivan, who together comprise Joyer, describe much of their new album as an “attempt to push ourselves into new territory. In the past, our music leaned toward the slower side,” and the result is Night Songs, the best album of their career. Indeed, it uses their classic noisy slowcore sound as a jumping-off point to explore shoegaze (“Fall Apart” and “Softer Skin,” most prominently among others), bubbly dream pop on “Wake Up,” and even add some rustic flair on the country-tinged “777.” Throughout the whole thing, though, it sounds unmistakably like a Joyer record.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Hour – Ease the Work
It’s been six years since chamber music group Hour dropped Anemone Red (which, to be fair, only came out eight months after their debut Tiny Houses). In the intervening years bandleader Michael Cormier-O’Leary has nearly doubled the number of members in Hour, and it makes for the band’s fullest and most dynamic LP yet with Ease the Work, where the previous two occasionally dipped into slippery minimalism. Ease the Work is a thoroughly compelling album, knotty and dense but never less than engaging.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Gabe ‘Nandez and Wino Willy – Object Permanence
Gabe ‘Nandez has been busy. In 2023 he dropped two LPs, Pangaea and H.T. III, plus a deluxe version of the latter. Now he’s teamed up with producer Wino Willy for a tantalizingly brief new EP. As ever, ‘Nandez’s flow sounds effortless throughout Object Permanence as he compares himself, among others, to Hercules, Noam Chomsky, Bosch, and Lenin, and he sounds perfectly at home over Wino Willy’s understated beats.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Fly Over States – “40 Stripes Minus One”
Fly Over States just signed with Fever Ltd., the label headed by Heavenward’s Kamtin Mohager, and announced an EP titled Ghosts to be released through the label at the end of May. The EP’s second track is its lead single, the searing “40 Stripes Minus One,” which pairs nicely with the recent SeeYouSpaceCowboy in the way it calls back to the post-hardcore of the aughts while still sounding entirely modern.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Glassing – From the Other Side of the Mirror
From the Other Side of the Mirror operates at every possible point of the heavy music spectrum. Glassing blend ferocious shrieks with blast beats and tremolo picked chugs that sound like the crunching of bones, but the very next second that might all melt away into an airy swirl (see “Sallow”). It’s the year of blackened screamo, and Glassing fits neatly into that lineage, but they could just as easily open for Thrice or Cult Leader or appear on a split tape with Holy Fawn. It’s the Texas trio’s widest-ranging album yet, and it might be their best.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
ellis – no place that feels like
Linnea Siggelkow delivers every lyric on the new ellis album in a breathless whisper, as though the studio is a confession booth. It suits the general mood of no place that feels like, a record largely informed by a sense of rootlessness and the discomfort associated with it. Even on the pop-forward “taurine,” where she lilts over squiggly synths, or the jangly “what i know now,” she never raises her voice. Despite the lyrical content, ellis never loses control; it’s a testament to how far she’s come.
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 on Twitter 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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