READ THE AIR is the new full-length record from MARBLED EYE, the four-piece punk band responsible for all of that noise coming out of Oakland for the last couple of years. The opening title track sets the album’s tone immediately, guitars starting and stopping to match a staggered drum beat before guitarist and co-vocalist Chris Natividad’s lyrics act as a mission statement for the album’s recurring theme of self-reflection: “Searching / shaking / life simulating… read the air / count me out” Engineered mostly by the band themselves, Read the Air’s ten songs are both overdriven and ominous. Songs like single “In the Static” offer riffs worthy of a Marquee Moon or Entertainment! comparison, but the band still can’t shake the dread of modern times. The song’s refrain treats time like a threat, with Natividad’s constant shout of “staring at the clock” acting as a haunted refrain. The combined playing of drummer Alex Shen and bass player Ronnie Portugal give songs like “Tonight” and “See It Too” an angular and driving edge. With additional recording from Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bear and mixing from Grace Coleman (Courtney Barnett, Spiritual Cramp), Marbled Eye have dialed in a record that feels destined to live in the noisy post-punk canon for years to come. Marble Eye’s new album Read the Air arrives this March via Summer Shade Records.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Read The Air
2. In The Static
3. Tonight
4. Starting Over
5. See It Too
Side B
1. All The Pieces
2. Another Year
3. Motion
4. Wear Me Down
5. Spring Exit

The first two minutes of Sun June’s third album, Bad Dream Jaguar, is a reverie - Laura Colwell’s voice floats above a slow-burn, sparse synth, conjuring a tipsy loneliness, a hazy recollection, a disco ball spinning at the end of the night for an empty dancefloor. Sun June’s music often feels like a shared memory – the details so close to the edge of a song that you can touch them. And as an Austin-based project, their music has also always feltstrangely and specifically Texan – unhurried, long drives acrossan impossible expanse of openness, refractions shimmering off the pavement in the heat.

But on Bad Dream Jaguar, Sun June is unmoored. The back drop of Texas is replaced by longing, by distance, by transience, and aquiet fear. The only sense of certainty comes from the murky past.It’s a dispatch from aging, when you’re in the strange in-between of yourself: there’s a clear image of the person you once wereand the places you inhabited, generational curses and our fami-lies, but the future feels vast, unclear – and the present can’t helpbut slip through your fingers.

There’s a mix of hi-fi and lo-fi; some songs, like “Texas,” whichthe band had to learn at a breakneck pace ahead of their record-ing session, was recorded on a first take, live in the room, while“Eager” and “Easy Violence” feature early vocal takes from Col-well, the final songs built atop the demos. The latter track detailsstaying up all night, being a menace to society, falling into badpatterns, but is followed by “John Prine,” a drumless, piano-basedballad, a mash of pedal steel manipulated to sound closer to synths.

Sun June’s records have always been deceptively airy soundingin the face of melancholia, belying its densely textured foundation in a sense of ease. The layers on Bad Dream Jaguar don’t tangle but they float, sheaths of divergent and luminescent sonics hanging together as the sun goes down, darkness seeping in.The record exists in the chasm between giving up and going all-in. And a flicker of quiet confidence powering through, a smallhopeful glow at its core. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Eager
2. 16 Riders
3. Mixed Bag
4. Moon Ahead
5. Ambitions
6. Easy Violence
Side B
1. John Prine
2. Sage
3. Washington Square
4. Get Enough
5. Texas
6. Lightning

Myself in the Way is the band’s fifth full-length album, and it follows their first pause in consistent touring in almost 10 years. While the world was shut down, Turnover’s four bandmates spent time meditating, painting, volunteer firefighting, skateboarding, and working in state parks - deepening interests and growing roots in places they hadn’t been able to while living life on the road for so long.

Over 18 months, these individual experiences acted as the soil in which Myself in the Way grew into Turnover’s next album. Returning to Pennsylvania to track with longtime friend and producer Will Yip, vocalist & guitarist Austin Getz cites Quincy Jones, Chic, and Dark Side of the Moon as influences in the way that songs like the infectiously-rhythmic “Ain’t Love Heavy” and the trippy, disorienting “Tears of Change” feel wider, deeper and more whole than anything in the band’s catalog to date. Drummer Casey Getz’ new skills behind the drum set that open up songs on Myself in the Way to more improvisation and fluidity, pairing well with bassist Dan Dempsey’s infectious bass-lines and Nick Rayfield’s sharpened guitar and piano playing.

On Myself in the Way, Turnover’s creative vision takes center-stage in every way. The album’s cover art - a sparkling array of multicolored gems scattered across a neutral canvas - was painted during lockdown by Dempsey. Music videos for the record were directed and filmed by the band, including the dizzy “Wait Too Long” video shot on retreat in upstate New York with friends and collaborators Kyle Lamb and Blair Kemp. Austin’s increased involvement on the production side earned him his first-ever co-producer credit, and Nick Rayfield contributed a new perspective as a songwriter for the first time in the recording process. For a band that has never stopped evolving, Turnover has always remained authentic with every release. Myself in the Way is an achievement that ties new and exciting ideas in with the band’s unique artistic ambition. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Stone Station
2. Tears Of Change
3. Myself In The Way Feat. Brendan Yates
4. Wait Too Long
5. People That We Know
6. Mountains Made Of Clouds
Side B
1. Ain’t Love Heavy Feat. Bre Morell
2. Pleasures Galore
3. Stone Station Reprise
4. Fantasy
5. Queen In The River
6. Bored Of God / Orlando

Honeybee Table At The Butterfly Feast is the first album from the elusive Baltimore’s band Teen Suicide in years. For over a decade, guitarist, vocalist and project runner Sam Ray has been sometimes quietly and sometimes very noisily setting standards in the indie scene by changing genres, live lineups and even band names, but the one constant has been an undeniable gift for songwriting.

Honeybee Table sits at an interesting point in the Teen Suicide timeline, following years of relative quiet following the releases a whole fucking lifetime of this (2018) and fucking bliss (2019), both released under the short-lived alias American Pleasure Club. Lockdown times saw a viral moment for the song “haunt me (x3)”, a cult-classic catalog track featured on the 2015 Run For Cover reissue of the band’s two beloved EPs dc snuff film and waste yrself. Now the band returns with what could be their next classic record, 16 songs that oscillate between noisy garage-rock, intimate acoustic songs and even blistering powerviolence in the vein of 2016’s ambitious double album it’s the big joyous celebration, let’s stir the honeypot. The album is as varied and captivating as the cover art of the record - a painting by Ray’s mother - and is held together by his unique artistic vision, captured not only in the genius of his songwriting but the power of lyrics that turn his lived experience of the past few years into harrowing poetry.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. You Were My Star
2. Death Wish
3. Get High, Breathe Underwater (#3)
4. Unwanted Houseguest
5. Groceries
6. I Will Always Be In Love With You (final)
7. New Strategies For Telemarketing Through Precognitive Dreams
8. Violence Violence
9. Coyote (2015-2021)

Side B
10. Every Time I Hear Your Name Called
11. You Cant Blame Me
12. It Was Probably Nothing But For A Moment There I Lost All Sense Of Feeling
13. All Of Us Steady Dying
14. Complaining In Dreams
15. How To Disappear In America Without A Trace
16. Another Life (bootleg) 

High Flying Man feels like a cautionary phrase - it’s hard to remove the connotations of Icarus, some of the more-unfortunately famous Flying Wallendas or even just a guy in the middle of a heater at the blackjack table. It’s the promise of an adrenaline rush fighting against the eventuality of a comedown on the horizon - a feeling perfectly channeled in The Berries’ third LP High Flying Man due out this summer on Run For Cover Records.

The Berries is the project of vocalist, guitarist and main songwriter Matt Berry, a Washington native who’s spent the past few years living in Los Angeles. In the five years since forming the band they’ve released a number of records, including Start All Over Again (2018) and 2019’s Berryland. During the pandemic touring pause the band also released a series of singles, collected in the Tower of Ivory compilation tape - but all the while, the songs of High Flying Man were coming together in moments of sporadic inspiration, waiting for the right time to come to light.

High Flying Man is riff-first rock music with piercing melodies and desert twang, all tied in with the emotions of living in the modern world. Lead single “Prime” evokes the feeling of hopelessness watching hollow activism fail to remedy the ills of a failing country, while the more mellow “Eagle Eye” confronts the pain of addiction with the haunting chorus refrain, “don’t I remind you of an old horse well past its prime / I’ve been ridden and abandoned, left on the roadside out of sight, out of mind.” Tracks on this record feel a kinship with classic American rock bands of the past in the driving power of songs like the anti-capitalist closer “Give Me Your Money” or the swaggering “Exceptional Fabric.”

While the songs that make up High Flying Man confront difficult truths, the music feels as alive as a man in a brown suit throwing a sword on the beach on an overcast day. Berry describes the 9-day tracking process with close friend/producer Todd Berndt and engineer Jimmy Dixon being one of “unbridled joy,” and this feeling comes across in every take recorded. This cathartic energy makes for a unifying sense of purpose on the record. “I want people to feel good about themselves when they listen to this record,” says Berry. And although there might be a comedown in the future, it’s hard to feel that way when you listen to The Berries on High Flying Man.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Western Township
2. Prime
3. Down That Road Again
4. High Flying Man
5. Eagle Eye
Side B
1. Life’s Blood
2. Exceptional Fabric
3. A Drop Of Rain
4. Choose To Get High
5. Give Me Your Money

Camp Trash seemingly burst out of nowhere with their debut EP Downtiming at the beginning of 2021, armed with catchy riffs and infectious vocals that earwormed their way into your head and wouldn’t let go. It landed on several prominent playlists from NPR, Stereogum, and the cover/ feature track of Spotify’s official editorial list, ‘Fresh Finds- Rock’.

They have only leveled up for their first full length, The Long Way, The Slow Way. Crafting songs that somehow feel original but familiar at the same time, Camp Trash blends 90s alternative rock and 2000s emo with pop-punk sensibilities. This LP is going to be the cornerstone of something great- a hallowed cult classic that catapults them into a much larger national audience.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
1. Mind Yr Own
2. Pursuit
3. Weird Florida
4. Another Harsh Toyotathon
5. Enough Explaining
6. Poured Out
Side B
1. Lake Erie Boys 2. Let It Ride
3. Soft
4. Church Bells
5. Riley
6. Feel Something