SLIFT’s ILION is a towering work of rock music, a steamrolling record that starts at the highest peak and never lets up. If that sounds overwhelming, trust that this Toulouse trio have you in good hands. Their third full-length feels massive and oceanic, merging the furious intensity of metal and the wigged-out guitar heroics of psych rock with post-rock’s epic sense of scale. ILION is the kind of music where you listen to it and think to yourself, “This came from only three people?” It sure did, and SLIFT’s utter ferocity is way more than a tempest in a teacup. It reaches outwards for miles and creates new zeniths within unforeseen horizons of rock.

SLIFT is made up of brothers Jean and Remí Fossat, and Canek Flores, who first met the brothers Fossat at school. After the band formed in 2016, they quickly made their 2017 debut EP, Space Is the Key, which merged stoner rock’s heaviness with the sugar-rush qualities of garage rock. From there, things only got weirder: The trio experimented with faster tempos and bongos(!) on the following year’s full-length La Planeté Inexploreé, and in 2019, their KEXP session recorded at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes became a viral sensation, racking up more than 1.4 million YouTube views.

UMMON from 2020 represented SLIFT’s pivot towards the celestially crushing confines of psych-metal, marked by Remí’s rolling basslines and Flores’s relentless skin-pounding. But nothing in their catalog could prepare you for ILION, a huge and melodically dense record that at once recalls Godspeed! You Black Emperor’s perpetually uplifting surge, the passionate burn of post-hardcore legends …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, Led Zep’s psychotic blues-rock mysticism, and the psychedelic swirl of Swedish greats Goat.

But reducing ILION to a list of reference points would be missing the point—specifically, that you have to sit down and experience this thing and let it take over your ear space. Over eight tracks and 75+ minutes, SLIFT unleash the fury with walls of guitar and multi-part song structures that make you feel as if you’re being taken on a true journey—from the pure oblivion of ILION’s title track and the abandon of centerpiece “Weavers’ Weft” to the intense climax of the epic “The Story That Has Never Been Told.”

But what is this journey? Joseph Campbell would be proud of the thematic path laid out before the listeners on ILION, which is named after the Ancient Greek word for the city of Troy and, conceptually speaking, picks up where UMMON left off. The band explains: “Where the two records differ is that ILION is about human emotions and feelings, whereas UMMON was telling an epic story with a distant view. ILION represents the fall of humanity and the rebirth of all things in time and space.” Heavy shit, to be sure—but fear not, because you don’t need a 12-sided dice and a copy of The Odyssey to get what SLIFT dishes out on ILION. All you need are two ears, an open mind, and the willingness to be truly blown away.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ilion
2. Nimh
3. The Words That Have Never Been Heard
4. Confluence
5. Weavers' Weft
6. Uruk
7. The Story That Has Never Been Told
8. Enter The Loop

Did you know there are horses on the cover of Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version? There are at least three in the right hand corner, gathered inexplicably near a white canvas tent, a human possibly perched among its folds. As widescreen and vast as the cover may seem, those little details—the horses, the possible human, the faint wisp of white clouds—give it depth and wonder, something to which the imagination can return.

Did you know that the music on Earth 2—repressed now for its 30th anniversary, back in its original artwork, and accompanied by a riveting set of remixes that demonstrate the reach of what Dylan Carlson long ago called “ambient metal”—works much the same way? The surface is massive and obvious, the meatpaw riffs of Carlson and bassist Dave Harwell pounding and swiping and pawing at the speakers, a true bludgeon in three-dimensional sound. Listen, though, for the details in the corners, for the finesse beneath the force, and Earth 2 reveals new levels of depth and wonder.

The widespread impact of Earth 2 suggests that others have indeed been leaning in, listening to these minutiae and making something new of them. A masterpiece without many genre precedents, Earth 2 surely helped send doom metal down its more modern drone, ambient, and avant-garde avenues. Those descendants are obvious. Perhaps more surprising and gratifying are the ways it has influenced electronic music, modern composition, and even hip-hop by realigning our senses of tempo, time, and texture. Earth 2 engendered a rearrangement of expectations, regardless of preferred form.

TRACK LISTING

1. Seven Angels
2. Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine
3. Like Gold And Faceted

Did you know there are horses on the cover of Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version? There are at least three in the right hand corner, gathered inexplicably near a white canvas tent, a human possibly perched among its folds. As widescreen and vast as the cover may seem, those little details—the horses, the possible human, the faint wisp of white clouds—give it depth and wonder, something to which the imagination can return.

Did you know that the music on Earth 2—repressed now for its 30th anniversary, back in its original artwork, and accompanied by a riveting set of remixes that demonstrate the reach of what Dylan Carlson long ago called “ambient metal”—works much the same way? The surface is massive and obvious, the meatpaw riffs of Carlson and bassist Dave Harwell pounding and swiping and pawing at the speakers, a true bludgeon in three-dimensional sound. Listen, though, for the details in the corners, for the finesse beneath the force, and Earth 2 reveals new levels of depth and wonder.

The widespread impact of Earth 2 suggests that others have indeed been leaning in, listening to these minutiae and making something new of them. A masterpiece without many genre precedents, Earth 2 surely helped send doom metal down its more modern drone, ambient, and avant-garde avenues. Those descendants are obvious. Perhaps more surprising and gratifying are the ways it has influenced electronic music, modern composition, and even hip-hop by realigning our senses of tempo, time, and texture. Earth 2 engendered a rearrangement of expectations, regardless of preferred form.

The new remix set, Earth 2.23: Special Lower Frequency Mix, makes this clearer than ever. The Bug has taken a bit of “Seven Angels” and laced it with feedback and big bass, allowing grime luminary Flowdan to climb atop it with his dark, staccato visions. Responsible for many transformational records himself, Justin K. Broadrick of Jesu and Godflesh crawls inside “Teeth” to lash at it with punishing drum machines and sordid layers of new distortion, building it into some brokedown palace of industrial mayhem. Loop’s Robert Hampson makes good on the premise of ambient metal with his 30-minute hypnotic beauty, while longtime Earth cohort and longtime Built to Spill multi-instrumentalist Brett Netson seems to float the sound through a benighted graveyard on his clever “Teeth” revamp.

TRACK LISTING

1. Angels (The Bug Remix Feat. Flowdan)
2. May Your Vanquished Be Saved From The Bondage Of Their Sins (Robert Hampson Remix)
3. Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine (Justin K Broadrick Remix)
4. Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine (Brett Netson Version)

You can’t get Deeper if you’re standing still. That’s intentional, says the Chicago quartet’s Nic Gohl. “Does it feel good when you’re listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?” These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. “I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it,” Gohl adds. “It’s pop music, basically.” That “basically” qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020’s Auto-Pain might suppose. On Careful!, they’re not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie’s Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of “Tele,” but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti’s drum programming and McBride’s synthesizer. “Fame” seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper’s trademark.

“Build a Bridge” pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto. On “Sub,” Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It’s festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper’s music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, “Careful! is about looking out for one another.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Build A Bridge
2. Heat Lamp
3. Glare
4. Tele
5. Bite
6. Pilsen 4th
7. Sub
8. Fame
9. Everynight
10. Airplane Air
11. Devil-loc
12. Dualbass
13. Pressure

Everything Will Change is a feature-length documentary concert film of The Postal Service’s performance at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, CA during their 2013 reunion tour. A collaboration between Benjamin Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) and Jimmy Tamborello (from Dntel), with Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis, The Postal Service released Give Up, their one and only album, in 2003. That record went on to sell over a million copies and most of the band’s fans never had the chance to see them perform live. In celebration of the 10-year anniversary of Give Up, the band reunited to tour the world. Everything Will Change captures one of the nights when everything did change. 

TRACK LISTING

1. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
2. We Will Become Silhouettes
3. Sleeping In
4. Turn Around
5. Nothing Better
6. Recycled Air
7. Be Still My Heart
8. Clark Gable
9. Our Secret
10.This Place Is A Prison
11. A Tattered Line Of String
12. Such Great Heights
13. Natural Anthem
14. (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan
15. Brand New Colony

The Vaselines have long been celebrated by musicians and music enthusiasts across genres and across the globe, including super-fan Kurt Cobain. Emerging in the mid-eighties under the wing of The Pastels’s Stephen McRobbie, The Vaselines came to define the sly wit and irresistible pop hooks of the era’s Scottish indie scene. Sub Pop's remastered reintroduction of The Way of The Vaselines is an opportunity for those already familiar with the Scottish band's brief career to delve deeper into their body of work, while those new to their music can experience firsthand why so many hold them in such high regard. Originally mastered from a cassette tape (and since remastered on much better equipment in the new millennium), The Way of The Vaselines compiles the band's two EPs (Son of a Gun and Dying for It) and their sole LP release (Dum-Dum). This 2023 edition is the first ever vinyl release of The Way of The Vaselines, which originally came out on CD in 1992.

TRACK LISTING

1. Son Of A Gun
2. Rory Rides Me Raw
3. You Think You’re A Man
4. Dying For It**
5. Molly’s Lips
6. Teenage Superstars
7. Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam
8. Sex Sux (Amen)
9. Slushy
10. Monsterpussy
11. Bitch
12. No Hope
13. Oliver Twisted
14. The Day I Was A Horse
15. Dum-Dum
16. Hairy
17. Lovecraft
18. Dying For It (The Blues)
19. Let’s Get Ugly

Sweeping Promises’ members Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug say “Eraser” is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she's done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”

Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schnug in their home studio in Lawrence, KS, and follows their 2020 debut, Hunger for a Way Out, and their insistent 2021 single, “Pain Without a Touch.” Coverage for both quickly followed from the likes of Stereogum (Band to Watch), Pitchfork (Selects), and NPR Music, who raved, “Sometimes the best pop songs stick to the basics: no muss, no fuss. With the Sweeping Promises, they add some fuzz. The same way the Pixies wrote pop songs with a nasty sheen, this Boston post-punk band dirties up earworm melodies with a lo-fi charm. You can play spot the influence all over this debut: Young Marble Giants here, Kleenex/LiLiPUT there, some B-52s and Blondie for good measure. Lira Mondal has a voice that leaps and bounds with the enthusiasm of a bedroom performance, hairbrush in hand. But mostly, you can hear a band dream out loud…”

TRACK LISTING

1. Eraser
2. Shadow Me
3. Good Living Is Coming For You
4. Connoisseur Of Salt
5. Walk In Place
6. You Shatter
7. Petit Four
8. Can’t Hide It
9. Throw Of The Dice
10. Ideal No

Sub Pop is thrilled to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Six Finger Satellite’s debut album, The Pigeon Is the Most Popular Bird with a brand new, fully remastered CD and double-LP reissue. Formed in 1990 in Providence, Rhode Island by J. Ryan (singer/keyboards), John MacLean (guitar), Peter Phillips (guitar), Chris Dixon (bass), and Rick Pelletier (drums), Six Finger Satellite quickly signed to Sub Pop for the Weapon EP, which got them their deal despite being a tongue-in-cheek take on the then-current grunge/alt-rock sound. Following Weapon, the band quickly jumped into making their debut full-length with Bob Weston (of Shellac, who later named a single The Bird Is the Most Popular Finger in honor of Six Finger Satellite).

Released in 1993, The Pigeon Is the Most Popular Bird was the first release to truly capture the adventurous, biting spirit and sound of Six Finger Satellite. The album is a landmark of noisy, distressing post-punk, drawing influence from Gang of Four, The Birthday Party, and Wire while adding a healthy dose of the band’s own, unique sonic antagonism. Amongst the brittle rock tracks, The Pigeon Is the Most Popular Bird has dashes of ahead-of-their-time keyboard and studio experiments that became more prominent on the band’s later albums, presaging LCD Soundsystem, DFA Records, and much of the early-2000s post-punk revival.

Pitchfork rightly called The Pigeon Is the Most Popular Bird "one of the best noise-rock records of the 90s," writing that "the transitions from silly to searing highlight Six Finger Satellite’s unpredictable and caustic approach… this was the first of several examples of them spurning underground trends, and their most exhilaratingly bitter pill to swallow.”

TRACK LISTING

1. ..
2. Home For The Holy Day
3. ..
4. Laughing Larry
5. ..
6. Funny Like A Clown
7. ..
8. Deadpan
9. ..
10. Hi-Lo Jerk
11. ..
12. Love (via Satellite)
13. ..
14. Save The Last Dance For Larry
15. ..
16. Solitary Hiro
17. ..
18. Neuro-Harmonic Conspiracy
19. ..
20. Takes One To Know One
21. ..

Fresh out of high school, Hannah Jadagu released her debut EP, What Is Going On?, a collection of intimate bedroom pop tracks recorded entirely on an iPhone 7, which was, at the time, Jadagu’s most accessible mode of production. An off-the-cuff approach to music making and instinctive ability to write unforgettable hooks belied the intensity of Jadagu’s subject matter. What Is Going On? confronted some of the nation’s most urgent struggles through Jadagu’s compassionate perspective. What Is Going On? built on the small online fanbase Jadagu had developed by releasing music on SoundCloud for years as she realized her growing passion for songwriting.

Now, Jadagu is releasing Aperture, her first LP and most ambitious work to date. Written in the years between graduating from high school in Mesquite, TX and her sophomore year of college in New York, Aperture finds Jadagu in a state of transition. “Where I grew up, everyone is Christian; even if you don’t go to church, you’re still practicing in some form,” Jadagu says, laughing. “Moving out of my small hometown has made me reflect on how embedded Christianity is in the culture down there, and though I’ve been questioning my relationship to the church since high school, it’s definitely a theme on this album, but so is family.”

As a kid, Jadagu followed her older sister – a major source of inspiration – to a local children’s chorus, where she received choral training. “I hated it,” Jadagu admits. “But it taught me how to harmonize, how to discover my tone, how to recognize and write melody.” The aching single “Admit It” is dedicated to Jadagu’s sister, whose love and impeccable taste have been a constant since Jadagu was a kid. The siblings were raised on mom’s Young Money mixtapes and the Black Eyed Peas (to whom Hannah credits her love of vocoder) but it was in the sanctity of her sister’s car that Jadagu discovered the indie artists who inspire her work.

With Aperture, Jadagu faced the challenge of finding a co-producer capable of complementing her work without dominating it. Enter Max Robert Baby, a French songwriter and producer who captured Jadagu’s attention with his take on Aperture’s lead single “Say It Now.” The duo worked remotely, sending stems to one another via email, before meeting in-person for the first time at Greasy Studios on the outskirts of Paris. “When I recorded my EP, it was all MIDI, but in the studio Max and I worked with a ton of analog instruments,” Jadagu says. “Every track on this album, except for ‘Admit It,’ was written first on guitar. But the blanket of synths throughout helps me move between sensibilities. There’s rock Hannah, there’s hip-hop Hannah, and so on. I didn’t want any of the songs to sound too alike.”

An aperture is defined as an opening, a hole, a gap. On a camera, it’s the mechanism that light passes through, allowing a photographer to immortalize a moment in time. For Jadagu, the word perfectly encapsulates the mood of her debut album. In the years it took her to complete, she faced moments of darkness, sure, but the process of making it was ultimately a cathartic experience, one she now shares with you. Let the light in.

TRACK LISTING

1. Explanation
2. Say It Now
3. Six Months
4. What You Did
5. Lose
6. Admit It
7. Dreaming
8. Shut Down
9. Warning Sign
10. Scratch The Surface
11. Letter To Myself
12. Your Thoughts Are Ur Biggest Obstacle

The usual boom-and-bust cycles of growing up -- breaking down, gathering the strength to get up, fumbling hard, doing it all over again - can feel unmooring, to say the least, but, and according to DEBBY FRIDAY, its tragedies and glories need savoring. Losing illusions, gaining expectations; getting deep into the private, soupy kaleidoscope of what’s possible and what’s futile -- GOOD LUCK, her debut, and supernovic, full-length album, is built on welcoming the journey’s complicated drops and mountain highs with something more like grace.

Nigerian-born, then an emigré to bits of Canada - from Montreal to Vancouver to Toronto - DEBBY FRIDAY’s roamings through space and time really began when the sun fell. Nightlife was her emancipation from the toughness of home life, and she fell into it, body and soul, totally seduced. Raves til sunrise; house music in unknown basements and warehouses -- the lure of the party was the perfect escape. Things that feel good sometimes do fall apart, though.

In 2017, after DJing for less than a year, nothing was going the way that she wanted it to go. So she gathered her things and embarked on what would turn out to be the first of a few of her coming-of-age stories. After making the decision to stop herself in her tracks, she pulverized new paths for herself forward. Late-night YouTube tutorials on music production led to an EP, BITCHPUNK, and BITCHPUNK led to her first public performances, and all that gave way to a second EP, DEATH DRIVE. Her art endowed her with the strength she needed to move on. “This is what I was born to do,” she goes. “It came to me so naturally and instinctively.”

So what does it take to hone that power? Discipline - routines, rituals; an MFA, practices of writing and filmmaking, and music-making that guide a person from one day to the next - but something close to mysticism, too. DEBBY’S serious study of astrology, psychology, and philosophy allow her to move through the world, relate to others, and get closer to what’s inside her. She believes in what emerges. She believes in making the unconscious conscious. She wants to be in dialogue with the darkness. It’s why GOOD LUCK works like such a study in entropy. On the surface, you’ll hear smears of Santigold’s dub dazzle, the MIDI-crush of Death Grips, but less obviously the plaintiveness of directors like Eric Rohmer, or the grotesque decadence of later-era Sylvia Plath. (Juno Award and Polaris Prize-nominated composer Graham Walsh adds a sort of heft and pull to the genre-flexibility on parade here: think of it a little like Sevdaliza meets FKA Twigs.)

Few do it like her, though, and GOOD LUCK spans from lucid, acid housey, high-BPM tracks to melancholia and darkness to striking falsetto pop with assuredness and aplomb. The album GOOD LUCK is being co-released with a short film of the same name, co-directed by FRIDAY and Nathan De Paz Habib (past work includes Eroica, based on Chino Amobi's novel of the same name). It’s a story of individuation. It’s a love story about a woman and her masked beloved, but outside of the accompanying-but-stand-alone visual, it’s all a willing, yearning investigation into what goes on behind the veil of sadness, of cruelty. Because knowing the darkness is the only way to understand the light, but also the greys and the blues and the in-between states. FRIDAY’s explorations in GOOD LUCK -- delving down into the muck of nuance - are a kind of courage.

TRACK LISTING

1. Good Luck
2. So Hard To Tell
3. I Got It (Feat. Uñas)
4. Hot Love
5. Heartbreakerrr
6. What A Man
7. Safe
8. Let U Down
9. Pluto Baby
10. Wake Up

As its name suggested, the intimate and sultry Cuntry Covers Vol. 1 was always going to have a follow-up. Led by the brooding vocals of Bria Salmena, Cuntry Covers Vol. 2 is every bit as potent as its predecessor whose noir-inflected alternative country-rock stood in sharp contrast to the singer's commanding delivery as leader of post-punk revivalists FRIGS. Debuting the project in 2021, the languid, reverb-drenched Cuntry Covers Vol. 1 saw her artfully collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Duncan Hay Jennings and reimagining a carefully picked collection of Americana anthems.

Vol. 2 pushes the envelope further and harder. Encompassing feverish takes on tracks by Gillian Welch, Paula Cole, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Robert Lester Folsom, Glenn Campbell – by way of Nick Cave – and the late, great Loretta Lynn, Bria’s deliciously dark approach shimmers through these six startling songs.

Created during a break from Salmena and Jennings’ work in Orville Peck’s world-conquering backing band, Vol. 2 was recorded directly after Peck’s second album and Bria’s US tour supporting Wolf Alice. Embracing contrast, the sunny circumstances in which Vol. 1 was made were flipped on their head. Instead of a bucolic barn in the Canadian countryside, they recorded the new tracks in chilly Toronto, huddled together in their tiny makeshift home studio, with Jennings at the controls. They enlisted the help of local Toronto musicians Lucas Savatti (FRIGS), Simone Baril (US Girls, The Highest Order, Darlene Shrugg, Partner), Andrew Manktelow, and frequent collaborator Jaime Rae McCuaig.

While Vol. 1 was Bria’s attempt at subverting country music’s conservative roots and primarily white and heterosexual agenda, here the emphasis was on experimentation. While Vol. 2 might be less personal, it’s just as idiosyncratic, with half of the reversions staying true to the originals and others taken to a different universe entirely. Building on the tried-and-true/bold-and-new duality of Cuntry Covers’ first offering, Vol. 2 delivers a deeper dive into the duo’s brilliant alchemy of traditional and contemporary reinterpretations. The added experimental flourishes, from dizzying electronica and pulsing bass to sax-driven soul, take Bria’s new EP into previously uncharted territory, signalling a thrilling new step in Bria’s adventurous evolution.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Bria's first selection of covers provided the perfect synth-fuelled counter to some oft-solemn Americana classics, and this newest volume expands on that idea with some truly stunning selections, perfectly morphed into synthpop stormers from their original form, all coated in Bria's inimitable vocal style.

TRACK LISTING

1. Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?
2. When You Know Why You’re Happy
3. Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)
4. By The Time I Get To Phoenix
5. I Dream A Highway
6. See You Later, I’m Gone

Without a brutal evaluation of their own becoming, TV Priest might have never made their second album. Heralded as the next big thing in post-punk, they were established as a bolshy, sharp-witted outfit, the kind that starts movements with their political ire. There was of course truth in that, but it was a suit that quickly felt heavy on its wearer’s shoulders, leaving little room for true vulnerability. “A lot of it did feel like I was being really careful and a bit at arm's length,” says vocalist Charlie Drinkwater. “I think maybe I was not fully aware of the role I was taking. I had to take a step back and realize that what we were presenting was quite far away from the opinion of myself that I had. Now, I just want to be honest.”

Having made music together since their teenage years, the London four-piece piqued press attention in late 2019 with their first gig as a newly solidified group, a raucous outing in the warehouse district of Hackney Wick. Debut single “House of York” followed with a blistering critique of monarchist patriotism, and they were signed to Sub Pop for their debut album. When Uppers arrived in the height of a global pandemic, it reaped praise from critics and fans alike for its “dystopian doublespeak,” but the band — Drinkwater, guitarist Alex Sprogis, producer, bass and keys player Nic Bueth and drummer Ed Kelland – were at home like the rest of us, drinking cups of tea and marking time via government-sanctioned daily exercise. As such, the personal and professional landmark of its release felt “both colossal and minuscule” dampened by the inability to share it live.

“It was a real gratification and really cathartic, but on the other hand, it was really strange, and not great for my mental health” admits Drinkwater. “I wasn’t prepared, and I hadn't necessarily expected it to reach as many people as it did.” As such, My Other People maintains a strong sense of earth-rooted emotion, taking advantage of the opportunity to physically connect. Using “Saintless” (the closing song from Uppers) as something of a starting point, Drinkwater set about crafting lyrics that allowed him to articulate a deeper sense of personal truth, using music as a vessel to communicate with his bandmates about his depleting mental health. “Speaking very candidly, it was written at a time and a place where I was not, I would say, particularly well,” he says.

“There was a lot of things that had happened to myself and my family that were quite troubling moments.Despite that I do think the record has our most hopeful moments too; a lot of me trying to set myself reminders for living, just everyday sentiments to try and get myself out of the space I was in.” “It was a bit of a moment for all of us where we realised that we can make something that, to us at least, feels truly beautiful,” agrees Bueth. “Brutality and frustration are only a part of that puzzle, and despite a lot of us feeling quite disconnected at the time, overwhelmingly beautiful things were also still happening.”

This tension between existential fear born from the constant uncertainties of life, and an affirmative, cathartic urge to seize the moment, is central to My Other People, a record that heals by providing space for recognition, a ground zero in which you’re welcome to stay awhile but which ultimately only leads up and out. For TV Priest, it is a follow-up that feels truly, properly them; free of bravado, unnecessary bluster or any audience pressure to commit solely to their original sound.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: The second LP from TV Priest feels like a cathartic experience. While their debut was angsty, direct post-punk with Mark E Smith-esque vocal rants, this follow up feels more contemplative. Probably inevitable, having been written during lockdown, it's a darker more considered affair with motorik drums and razor sharp guitar shards providing a backdrop for Charlie's vocals that this time around sound more restrained. If taut, brooding post-punk is your thing, then this is a great listen.

TRACK LISTING

1. One Easy Thing
2. Bury Me In My Shoes
3. Limehouse Cut
4. I Have Learnt Nothing
5. It Was Beautiful
6. The Happiest Place On Earth
7. My Other People
8. The Breakers
9. Unravelling
10. It Was A Gift
11. I Am Safe Here
12. Sunland

“Change is inevitable if you’re lucky,” says guitarist/vocalist Alex Edkins while talking about Atlas Vending, the fourth full-length album by Toronto’s METZ. “Our goal is to remain in flux, to grow in a natural and gradual way. We’ve always been wary to not overthink or intellectualize the music we love but also not satisfied until we’ve accomplished something that pushes us forward.” The music made by Edkins and his compatriots Hayden Menzies (drums) and Chris Slorach (bass) has always been a little difficult to pin down. Their earliest recordings contained nods to the teeming energy of early ‘90s DIY hardcore, the aggravated angularities of This Heat, and the noisy riffing of AmRep’s quintessential guitar manglers, but there was never a moment where METZ sounded like they were paying tribute to the heroes of their youth.

If anything, the sonic trajectory of their albums captured the journey of a band shedding influences and digging deeper into their fundamental core—steady propulsive drums, chest-thumping bass lines, bloody-fingered guitar riffs, the howling angst of our fading innocence. With Atlas Vending, METZ not only continues to push their music into new territories of dynamics, crooked melodies, and sweat-drenched rhythms, they explore the theme of growing up and maturing within a format typically suspended in youth. Covering seemingly disparate themes such as paternity, crushing social anxiety, addiction, isolation, media-induced paranoia, and the restless urge to leave everything behind, each of Atlas Vending’s ten songs offer a snapshot of today's modern condition and together form a musical and narrative whole. The song sequencing follows a cradle-to-grave trajectory, spanning from primitive origins through increasingly nuanced and turbulent peaks and valleys all the way to the climactic closer, “A Boat to Drown In.” The lyrics speak to this arc as well, with the songs addressing life’s struggles all the way through to death, as Edkins snarls “crashed through the pearly gates and opened up my eyes, I can see it now” before the band launches into the album’s cascading outro. 

While past METZ albums thrived on an abrasive relentlessness, the trio embarked on Atlas Vending with the goal to make a more patient and honest record—something that invited repeated listens rather than a few exhilarating bludgeonings. It’s as if the band realized they were in it for the long haul, and their music could serve as a constant as they navigated life’s trials and tribulations. The result is a record that sounds massive, articulate, and earnest. Bolstered by the co-production of Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and the engineering and mixing skills of Seth Manchester (Daughters, Lingua Ignota, The Body) at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, METZ deliver the most dynamic, dimensional, and compelling work of their career. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Metz have always provided a glimpse into the more uncompromising but undeniably tuneful side of indie-rock, and 'Atlas Vending' if anything cements them as one of the most necessary voices in modern guitar music. Brutal but balanced beautifully with more cohesive, melodic sections.

TRACK LISTING

1. Pulse
2. Blind Youth Industrial Park
3. The Mirror
4. No Ceiling
5. Hail Taxi
6. Draw Us In
7. Sugar Pill
8. Framed By The Comet’s Tail
9. Parasite
10. A Boat To Drown In