New Music Reviews (10/12)

Each week, KEXP’s Music Director Don Yates shares brief insights on new and upcoming releases. See what's coming up this week below, including reviews for new releases from Budos Band, Supercrush, Gabriel Garzón-Montano, and more.

Budos Band – Long in the Tooth (Daptone)
This Staten Island band’s sixth album is a cinematic, psych-tinged blend of propulsive funk and Ethio-jazz grooves with hypnotic horns, searing organ, stinging guitar riffs and ominous melodies.

Supercrush – SODO Pop (Don Giovanni)
The debut full-length from this Seattle band featuring members of Black Breath and Shook Ones is an impressive set of hook-filled power-pop with fuzzy guitars, energetic rhythms, heavenly harmonies, and sparkling pop melodies.

Gabriel Garzón-Montano – Agüita (Jagjaguwar)
The second album from this Brooklyn-bred French Colombian artist is an adventurous set ranging from atmospheric orchestral pop, intimate R&B and delicate folk to more visceral hip hop and reggaeton bangers.

METZ – Atlas Vending (Sub Pop)
This Toronto band’s fourth album is a potent blend of intense post-hardcore and scuzzy noise-rock with clanging angular guitars, pummeling rhythms, shouted vocals and often-dark lyrics of anxiety, addiction and isolation.

Joensuu 1685 – ÖB (Svart)
The latest release (and first in 10 years) from this Finnish trio led by Mikko Joensuu is an impressive blend of psych-tinged space-rock and majestic heartland rock, combining celestial keyboards with soaring harmonies and sweeping melodies.

Slow Pulp – Moveys (Winspear)
This Chicago-via-Madison, WI band’s debut full-length is a promising set of shoegazerish dream-pop combining fuzzy guitars and melancholy melodies with Emily Massey’s hushed vocals and lyrics of loss, change and resilience.

Resistance Revival Chorus – This Joy (Righteous Babe)
This collective of over 60 women and non-binary singers was founded after the 2017 women’s march. Their debut album is an often-powerful set of protest music steeped in gospel, soul, blues and folk. Special guests include Rihannon Giddens, Valerie June and Treya Lam.

Jónsi – Shiver (Krunk)
The LA-based frontman for Sigur Ros collaborated with British producer (and PC Music founder) A.G. Cook on his second solo album (and first in 10 years). Cook’s dense, heavily processed production provides an intriguing foil for Jónsi’s ethereal melancholy, with many of the songs shifting from delicate, piano-led passages to glitchy synth textures and discordant, hard-hitting beats, with Jónsi’s celestial vocals sometimes warped beyond recognition.

Drive-By Truckers – The New OK (ATO)
This veteran Alabama/Portland band’s 13th album (and second of 2020) is a surprise release of roots-tinged rock ranging from songs of anger and defiance reflecting our perilous times to more personal, soul-steeped songs of distance and loneliness.

Mr. Gnome – The Day You Flew Away (El Marko)
The fifth full-length from this Cleveland duo is an adventurous double album blending hypnotic psych-rock and atmospheric dream-pop, crunchy hard-rock, fuzzy power-pop, propulsive post-punk and more. Conceptually, the album transitions halfway through from songs of loss and grief to songs of acceptance and joy.

Joshua Burnside – Into the Depths of Hell (self-released)
This Belfast-based artist’s second album is a strong set of dark, adventurous folk-pop, with imaginative arrangements featuring a variety of acoustic and electric instrumentation along with experimental ambient textures, haunting melodies and lyrics of struggle, loss, and mortality.

Shamir – Shamir (self-released)
This Las Vegas artist’s seventh album is a wildly diverse set ranging from soaring pop and buzzing guitar-rock to galloping country-pop, atmospheric synth-pop and orchestral ambient-pop.

Bananagun – The True Story of Bananagun (Full Time Hobby)
This Melbourne band’s debut album is a well-crafted set of sunny psych-pop inflected with Afro-beat, tropicalia and other styles, featuring a vibrant, impeccably crafted sound combining energetic rhythms with a colorful blend of guitars, keyboards, horns, woodwinds, bongos and more.

Low Cut Connie – Private Lives (Contender/Micitizen)
The sixth full-length from this Philly band led by Adam Weiner is an ambitious double-album set of gritty rock blended with soul, blues, piano ballads and more, combining a warm sound with often-poignant lyrics revolving around different characters living on society’s fringes.

Kurt Vile – Speed, Sound, Lonely KV EP (Matador)
The latest release from this Philadelphia artist is a five-song EP comprised of two originals and three covers, one of Jack Clement and two of John Prine (with one of those being a duet with John himself). It’s a sweet-sounding set of psych-tinged folk-rock combining Vile’s masterful guitar-picking with soothing melodies.

Gunn-Truscinski Duo – Soundkeeper (Three Lobed Recordings)
The fourth album from the duo of guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer John Truscinski is an evocative set of exploratory, psych-soaked instrumentals ranging from dissonant rock and fiery live jams to meditative folk, dreamy blues and atmospheric ambient.

Joachim Cooder – Over That Road I’m Bound (Nonesuch)
The second album from this LA-based musician (and son of Ry Cooder) features songs from the catalog of old-time banjo player, songwriter, comedian and early Grand Ole Opry star Uncle Dave Macon. Cooder mostly reworks Macon’s melodies, lyrics and arrangements, transforming them into atmospheric folk-pop with help from a stellar supporting cast and a variety of colorful instrumentation including Mbira (an African thumb piano) and yali tambur (a Turkish lute).

William Elliott Whitmore – I'm With You (Bloodshot)
This Iowa singer-songwriter's eighth album is a well-crafted set of acoustic-oriented country-folk with a mostly spare sound combining guitar, banjo and occasional pedal steel and fiddle with his gravelly vocals and diverse lyrics ranging from wisdom learned from ancestors to the CIA’s infamous MK Ultra mind-control experiments.

Drew Citron – Free Now (Park the Van)
The debut solo album from this member of New York band Public Practice (and before that, Beverly) is a well-crafted set of mostly downcast indie-pop, combining fuzzy guitars and atmospheric keyboards with lyrics of heartache, loss and moving on.

The Goodbye Party – Beautiful Motors (Double Double Whammy)
The second album from this Philly-based project of Michael Cantor is a well-crafted set of indie-pop ranging from jangly, hook-filled rockers to atmospheric ballads, with many of the songs combining wistful melodies with intimate lyrics of longing and loss.

Body Language – Travel Guide (Om)
This Brooklyn band’s fourth album is a well-crafted blend of buoyant electro-pop with R&B, funk, house and disco, combining moody synths and propulsive rhythms with Angelica Bess’s wispy vocals and lyrics of love and autonomy.

Garcia Peoples – Nightcap at Wits’ End (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)
This Rutherford, NJ band’s fourth album is an adventurous set of ‘70s-influenced psych-rock inflected with prog, folk and other styles, with shape-shifting songs featuring intertwining guitars, celestial keyboards and hypnotic melodies.

Aline & Wes – Armageddon of Love
This Seattle duo’s latest release is a solid 5-song EP ranging from driving blues-rock and grunge to soul-tinged folk-pop.

Dirty Projectors – Earth Crisis EP (Domino)
The fourth of five planned EPs to be released this year from this Brooklyn band led by Dave Longstreth leans into the band’s experimental tendencies with a four-song set of chopped-up chamber-pop. Every EP so far has featured a different band member on lead vocals, and this one features keyboardist Kristin Slipp.