Bandcamp Daily's Best Albums of 2018

It’s a good eight minutes and most of two songs into the second album from this Houston, Texas trio before you hear any vocals, and by that point they may well be superfluous. Khruangbin (the name translates from Thai as “flying engine” or “airplane” and the former feels particularly fitting) make immaculate instrumental tracks that effortlessly accommodates psychedelic rock, Thai funk, Caribbean grooves, vintage funk, and Middle Eastern riffs. What makes *Con Todo El Mundo* (another translation, this time from Spanish: “for all the world”) so pleasurable is the way those touchstones tie together to create a singular, gratifying sound. Bassist Laura Lee deftly moves in and out of the beat, guitarist Mark Speer supplies long and supple runs, and drummer Donald “DJ” Johnson places a funk kick on the rhythm as these songs unfurl without undue stress. Like gears on a car, the three-piece can shift up into the sharp, reverb-heavy bite of “Maria También” or slow into a nocturnal, jazzy drift on “August 10.” The feel is mellow, but it’s never merely easy listening; the shifting melodies and pinpoint drum parts keep you focused on the many possibilities of this sound.

“Qualm” is the new album by Helena Hauff, released via Ninja Tune. The title has a duality that Hauff enjoys - the German word “Qualm” ( kvalm) translates as fumes or smoke, whilst the English meaning refers to an uneasy feeling of doubt, worry, or fear, especially about one's own conduct. True to form, the record is unapologetically raw and finds her returning to her original modus operandi - jamming on her machines - “trying to create something powerful without using too many instruments and layers”. A former resident of the Golden Pudel club in her hometown Hamburg, Helena’s profile and global standing has grown exponentially since the release of “Discreet Desires” in 2015, purely on the strength of her authenticity and her expertly curated DJ sets spanning acid, electro, EBM, techno and post punk. Gigging incessantly (and still lugging a box of records across the world) Helena’s reputation earned her an invitation to join the BBC Radio 1 Residency, she was the subject of cover features for Crack Magazine and DJ Mag, she played headline sets at Sonar (b2b with Ben UFO) and Dekmantel, and at the end of 2017 Crack Magazine declared Helena “The Most Exciting DJ In The World (Right Now)” and her ballistic BBC Essential Mix was voted the best of 2017. Born and raised in Hamburg, a self-confessed child of the 90s, Helena was obsessed with the music she discovered via the television on channels such as MTV and VIVA. She recalls her grandmother buying Technotronic's 'Pump Up The Jam’ at the flea market for her and watching coverage of iconic electronic music festival Loveparade in Berlin on TV. She has fond memories of borrowing CDs from the local library and making her own mixtapes - these days an archaic practice but from a curatorial standpoint these were her earliest outings as a DJ. Helena picks out Miss Kittin & The Hacker and Toktok vs. Soffy O as inspirations but it was the self-titled album from 2001 by electro icon Radioactive Man that was "a real eye-opener" providing the stimulus for her to dive in and immerse herself in the music and culture. At university Helena studied first for a Fine Art degree, but whilst she enjoyed the emphasis on experimentation and artistic freedom, she realised that she didn’t have an innate need to make visual art, the prerequisite for a career in that oeuvre according to her lecturer. However, she did have exactly that compulsion in regards to DJing: “I was obsessed with DJing, there was no question that I had to do it. It wasn’t about the money, I just wanted to DJ somewhere,” she explains. Next Helena enrolled on a degree in Systematic Music Science and Physics. Heading in almost the polar opposite direction to her Fine Art background, it was a highly technical syllabus incorporating maths, physics and acoustics but perhaps on some level this juxtaposition of science and art has shaped her approach to coaxing music from her machines? Helena made her recording debut in 2013 on Werkdiscs / Ninja Tune. She has since partnered with PAN (as Black Sites alongside F#x), Lux Rec, Bunker sublabel Panzerkreuz, Texan cassette imprint Handmade Birds and established her own label Return To Disorder (2015). Most recently she released a 4-track EP “Have You Been There, Have You Seen It” (2017) via Ninja Tune that “pushed her machines to their breaking point… capturing the ironclad force she delivers in her DJ sets while further carving out her own space in the electro landscape” (Pitchfork).

This is album is dedicated to the sacred ego, that wellspring of individuality and unique complexity. Sing the song of the Inner Voice. Recite the hymns to the Celestial Will. Rebuke all desire to succumb to corrosive idolatry—be it the militancy of extremity, the beneficence of untempered ideology, or the divinity of cherished relationships. Rebuke the impulse to capitulation, to hide beneath of hard shell of callous disregard and secede from the world. We surrender our power only to those worthy of wielding it. And we will not hesitate to strip authority from and war against all those that prove unworthy.

In November 2017, Young Fathers announced that they’d completed work on a new album. The trio – Alloysious Massaquoi, Graham ‘G’ Hastings and Kayus Bankole – marked the news by previewing a brand new song, ‘Lord’ and a subsequent accompanying video. Just like their previous standalone 2017 single ‘Only God Knows’ (written for the Trainspotting T2 film and described by director Danny Boyle as “the heartbeat of the film”), ‘Lord’ provided an enticing glimpse of what to expect from Young Fathers’ third full album; something typically unique and exhilarating, but leaner, more muscular and self-assured than ever before. Today, Young Fathers announce full details of that album. Titled Cocoa Sugar, the twelve track album will be released on 9th March 2018 via Ninja Tune and follows the group’s previous two albums; 2014’s Mercury Prize-winning DEAD and 2015’s White Men Are Black Men Too. Written and recorded throughout 2017 in the band’s basement studio and HQ, Cocoa Sugar sees Young Fathers operating with a newfound clarity and direction, and is without doubt their most confident and complete statement to date. To celebrate news of the new album, Young Fathers today reveal a brand new single ‘In My View’. Accompanied by a video directed by Jack Whiteley, ‘In My View’ is available now. Cocoa Sugar will be available on CD, LP, limited LP and via all digital services. It features a striking visual aesthetic, with cover photography from Julia Noni and creative direction from Tom Hingston.

'Another Life' is the debut album from Amnesia Scanner, the Berlin-based music duo, performing arts group, experience design studio and production house, created by Finnish-born Ville Haimala and Martti Kalliala. Founded in 2014, Amnesia Scanner's approach is informed by a unique perspective on technology and the way it mediates contemporary experience. System vulnerabilities, information overload and sensory excess inform their work, which has found a home in both clubs and galleries. Building on their mixtape 'AS Live [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]' (2014), Amnesia Scanner’s critically acclaimed audio play 'Angels Rig Hook' (2015) laced a potpourri of dancefloor tactics with a machinic narrator. Their dual EPs for Young Turks, 'AS' and 'AS Truth' (2016), distilled this immersive environment into an abrasive collection of cryptorave tools. The most striking detail of ‘Another Life' is Amnesia Scanner's use of both human and inhuman voices. The latter is provided by the latest addition to the production unit, a disembodied voice called Oracle, which represents the sentience that has emerged from Amnesia Scanner. Oracle's vocal performance ranges from exuberant mania to anxious dread and beyond. Coupled with the pop song structures that Amnesia Scanner employs for the first time, the avant-EDM productions of ‘Another Life’ evocatively explore a schizophrenic present marked by narratives of a slow apocalypse or salvation via technology. Indeed, the lullaby of 'AS Another Life' swings between trill hope and casual threat, lending a precarious gait to the song's staggering rhythm. The album's first single, 'AS Chaos', is its most powerfully direct track, with Pan Daijing’s English and Mandarin vocals taking over for Oracle. At its peak intensity, as in ‘AS Faceless’, Amnesia Scanner's doombahton overheats into nu-metal-gabba. Amnesia Scanner has presented work at art institutions such as ICA London, HKW Berlin, and the Serpentine Gallery Marathon in London. They collaborate with PWR Studio for their design and visual direction. The AS live experience is co-created with Stockholm-based Canadian designer Vincent De Belleval. When unplugged from the Amnesia Scanner stream, Haimala works as a composer and producer with a wide range of musical and visual artists, and Kalliala co-directs the think tank Nemesis. The album is mastered by Jeremy Cox, featuring photography by Satoshi Fujiwara, and visual direction from PWR Studio.

Eternal Return, the fourth full length from Richmond, Virginia's heavy psychedelic quartet WINDHAND represents a new era for the group, a chrysalis moment that takes them to new and unforeseen heights. Across nine songs and 63 minutes, Eternal Return is an infectious display of songcraft cloaked in alluring atmosphere, molten fuzz, eerie psychedelia and ethereal vocals. The album was once again produced by Jack Endino (Nirvana, Soundgarden) with vivid artwork by Arik Roper (Sleep, High on Fire). Equally informed by heavy, fuzzed-out psych along with the iconic grunge / alternative groups of the 90s, WINDHAND have crafted a record brilliant in scope, powerful in execution, and perfect for an era of increasingly blurry yet still heavy borders.

Australia’s greatest cult band, The Necks, has a new piece to offer the world this summer, entitled “Body”. Different again to all previous Necks albums (20 in total), the band has chosen 10 words and phrases that summarize the four richly contrasting episodes of this hour-long, mesmerizing groove. They are as follows: Episodic, Driving, Dynamic, Layered, Celebratory, Soaring, Rocking out, Buoyant, Sustained, Perfectly paced. The album uses, yet again, the combination of Chris Abrahams (piano, keyboards) Tony Buck (drums, percussion, and guitar very much to the fore on this one) and Lloyd Swanton (acoustic bass) with Tim Whitten (engineer), who has recorded and/or mixed the last twelve Necks albums. The Necks hold their own with the best of them when it comes to rhythmic complexity, but they have put much of that to one side for this album in the interests of conjuring their most relentlessly driving album since "Hanging Gardens".

Though the deceptively complex pop of Quit the Curse marks the debut of Anna Burch, it’s anything but the green first steps of a fledgling new artist. The Detroit singer/songwriter has been visible for the better part of her years-long career singing in Frontier Ruckus, or more recently co-fronting Failed Flowers, but somewhere along the way a vibrant collection of solo material slowly began taking form. Growing up in Michigan, Burch’s fixation with music transitioned from a childhood of Disney and Carole King sing-alongs to more typically angsty teenage years spent covering Bright Eyes and Fiona Apple at open mic nights. By 18 she was deep into the lifestyle of the touring musician, juggling all the regular trials and changes of young life while on a schedule that would have her gone for months on end. After a few whirlwind years of this, exhausted and feeling a little lost, she stepped away from music completely to attend grad school in Chicago. This respite lasted until 2014 when she moved to Detroit and found herself starting work in earnest on solo songs she’d been making casual demos of for a year or so. Friends had been encouraging her to dive into solo music, and one particularly enthusiastic friend, Chicago musician Paul Cherry, went so far as to assemble a band around scrappy phone demos to push for a fully realized album. “Writing songs that I actually liked for the first time gave me a feeling of accomplishment," Burch said, "Like, I can do this too! But working with other musicians and hearing the songs go from sad singer/songwriter tunes to arranged pop songs gave me this giddy confidence that I'd never felt before.” The process was drawn out and various drafts and recordings came and went as the months passed. By now Burch was playing low key shows and d.i.y. tours solo and had released some early versions of a few songs on a split with fellow Detroit musician Stef Chura. Even at a slow, meticulous pace, with every step the album took closer to completion, it felt more serious and more real. After a more than a year of piecemeal recording sessions, Burch was introduced to engineer Collin Dupuis (Lana Del Rey, Angel Olsen) who helped push things energetically home, mixing the already bright songs into a state of brilliant clarity. The nine songs that comprise Quit the Curse come on sugary and upbeat, but their darker lyrical themes and serpentine song structures are tucked neatly into what seem at first just like uncommonly catchy tunes. Burch’s crystal clear vocal harmonies and gracefully crafted songs feel so warm and friendly that it’s easy to miss the lyrics about destructive relationships, daddy issues and substance abuse that cling like spiderwebs to the hooky melodies. The maddeningly absent lover being sung to in “2 Cool 2 Care”, the crowded exhaustion of “With You Every Day” or even the grim, paranoid tale of scoring drugs in “Asking 4 A Friend” sometimes feel overshadowed by the shimmering sonics that envelop them. “To me this album marks the end of an era of uncertainty. Writing songs about my emotional struggles helped me to work through some negative patterns in my personal life, while giving me the sense of creative agency I'd been searching for.” Emerging from years spent as a supporting player, Quit the Curse stands as a liberation from feeling like Burch’s own songwriting voice was just out of reach -- an opportunity, finally, for the world at large to hear what’s been on her mind for quite a while.

Thalia Zedek is an unparalleled voice in rock music. Her music straddles the line between intimate and visceral. Zedek has received wide acclaim for her intense vocal performances and guitar playing in past projects Come, Uzi, Live Skull, and most recently her new trio E with Gavin McCarthy (Karate) and Jason Sidney Sanford (Neptune). Since the dissolution of Come, Zedek has focused her solo efforts on more vulnerable, stripped back arrangements. Her new album Fighting Season combines the grit of her past with the fragility of her solo releases, spinning tales of discord and struggle from the personal to the political and featuring performances by old friends Chris Brokaw (Come) and J. Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.). Through her exceptional songwriting and performances, Thalia Zedek’s fervent passion can be felt more than ever on Fighting Season, from blustering swirls of dissonance to hushed whispers. “Fighting Season” was a term originally coined for the period of time in Afghanistan when winter comes to an end and fighting in the region would resume. Zedek’s reinterpretation of the phrase instead turns the focus on resistance, on a time to fight for oneself or to protest the deteriorating political landscape. The songs across Fighting Season tell heartfelt stories of individuals battling for their own sense of peace. Title track “Fighting Season” exemplifies the album’s rebellious spirit with a steady, marching call to action against senseless conflict. “Bend Again” and “War Not Won” simultaneously explore battles with personal demons and addiction as well as the throes of political upheaval and failure. Zedek’s lyricism throughout beautifully captures a duality of individual and collective struggles, drawn from personal experiences, as well as those widely discussed in the media such as the turmoil in Syria and the plight of refugees. As a longtime advocate for those seen as “outsiders,” Zedek’s voice on these subjects holds a rare sense of poignance that few possess. Thalia Zedek’s band on Fighting Season sees all of the players from her 2015 album Eve returning, including longtime collaborator and violist Dave Curry, as well as pianist Mel Lederman, bassist Winston Braman, and drummer Jonathan Ulman. Masterful arrangements unfold throughout the record which Zedek crafted as reflections of each story. Curry’s searching viola and guest Jonah Sacks’ longing cello lines underpin the melancholy of “We Will Roll.” Two of the album’s standout guest performances heighten the push and pull of album opener “Bend Again,” with subtle sliding guitar melodies by Zedek’s former Come bandmate Chris Brokaw, and the songs dramatic final act guitar solo by J. Mascis. The song had been written with Mascis’s solo in mind, but Brokaw’s contribution was the result of serendipitous circumstance, he and Zedek booking recording sessions in the same recording studio at the same time, just after his move back to Boston. Fighting Season was recorded throughout late 2017 and early 2018 at Kimchee Records Studio by Andy Hong, another of Zedek’s frequent collaborators. The album was written leading up to and following the 2016 U.S. elections For both the recording and writing, Zedek took a more isolated approach than past albums, writing the material on her own and only presenting the songs to the full ensemble shortly before recording. This isolation leant itself towards crafting some of Zedek’s most direct, and emotive songs to date. Thalia Zedek has been lauded for decades for her ability to create such immediate, urgent music and Fighting Season finds Zedek at her sharpest, delivering potent yet raw songs that inspire hope in a time wrought with fear.

PINCH POINTS WRITES, REHEARSES, PERFORMS AND RECORDS ITS MUSIC PRIMARILY IN NARRM (SO-CALLED 'MELBOURNE') ON THE LANDS OF THE WURUNDJERI PEOPLE OF THE KULIN NATION. INDIGENOUS SOVEREIGNTY HAS NEVER BEEN CEDED TO THE CURRENT ‘AUSTRALIAN’ STATE, WHICH WILL REMAIN AN OCCUPYING FORCE AND ILLEGITIMATE STATE UNTIL SOVEREIGNTY IS ACKNOWLEDGED AND TREATIES SIGNED

Manchester duo Children of Zeus, a.k.a. Tyler Daley and Konny Kon, have said that when you live in a city that never stops raining, there isn’t much to do except sit inside and make music. Despite the gloomy conditions, the pair\'s full-length debut is a warm and intoxicating fusion of hip-hop, jazz, and soul. Their vocals float between rapping and singing with ease, maintaining a meditative pace made for Sunday-afternoon lazing. Keen to showcase more of Manchester\'s rising talent, they invite R&B vocalist \[ K S R \] to smother “All on You” with his honey-smooth voice, while rapper/singer Layfullstop contributes to the laidback ode to positivity “Fear of a Flat Planet.”

It’s been a long road leading to this album for Tyler Daley and Konny Kon. They first embarked on their expedition into the music game two decades back - Tyler entered the scene as a songwriter, producer and vocalist, originally under the moniker Hoodman, whilst Konny began MCing, DJing and beat-making for hip hop crews The Microdisiacs and Broke’n’£nglish, along with DRS & Strategy. To date, Children of Zeus have released three sell-out singles on First Word (‘Still Standing’, ‘I Can’t Wait’ and ‘Slow Down’) and a compilation EP comprised of tracks made by the duo over the last decade entitled ‘The Story So Far…’. Children of Zeus are finally at the stage where they are releasing their debut album proper; the over-riding ethos of which is about keeping their eyes on the road ahead, whilst shedding the baggage they’ve accumulated over the years - ‘Travel Light’. Features mainly come from Manny family; [ K S R ], LayFullStop, Metrodome (Levelz) and former Broke ’n’ £nglish spar DRS. Guest production comes in the form of Switzerland’s Sebb Bash, Nottingham’s Juga-Naut, and London’s Beat Butcha, and there’s your favourite DJ’s favourite DJ, Mr Thing, slicing up the turntables on two tracks too. There’s a few extra special ingredients on this album, along with their trademark sub-heavy, rhodes-laden hip hop soul hybrid. Reggae music has always been an integral piece of the CoZ sound-system ethic, so we see Tyler putting on his lover’s rock hat for ‘Hard Work’, and they invite soul queen Terri Walker to join them on the fierce ‘Sling Shot Riddim’, while the album closes with the epic K15-produced jazz-bruk opus, ‘Vibrations’, on which Konny breaks it down quite simply: “high frequency means that you travel light, so get lifted yo, we’ll live gifted”. Long as the journey has been, the time for looking back is over. This is about the present and future of Children of Zeus. A shining light in Manchester’s now-school, and rightly heralded by many as the best new act to emerge in British soul music in the past decade. Aside from the above features, this project is written, performed and produced entirely by Tyler and Konny. Since the crew first took flight, the end destination has never changed, the aim remains the same - to create timeless music, in their own unique style, without compromise, irrespective of industry and life distractions. The moral being this - travel light.

HAUSMO73 - LP / CD / T-Shirt / DIG

For VINYL and CD, plz visit Slumberland Records online: www.slumberlandrecords.com/catalog/show/322?ret=catalog or visit here: slumberlandrecs.bandcamp.com/album/modern-meta-physic :)

“The Lamb was written during a time of intense paranoia after a home invasion, deaths of loved ones and general violence around me and my friends,” says Lillie West, the Chicago-based songwriter behind Lala Lala. “I started to frequently and vividly imagine the end of the world, often becoming too frightened to leave my house. This led me to spend a lot of time examining my relationships and the choices I’d made, often wondering if they were correct and/or kind.” West initially started Lala Lala as a way to communicate things that she felt she could never say out loud. But on The Lamb, her sophomore LP and debut for Hardly Art, she has found strength in vulnerability. Through bracing hooks and sharp lyrics, the 24-year-old songwriter and guitarist illustrates a nuanced look on her own adulthood -- her fraught insecurity, struggles with addiction, and the loss of several people close to her. Originally from London, West moved with her family to Los Angeles, where she spent her teenage years, and later to Chicago, where she enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Inspired by those cities’ DIY music communities, she started Lala Lala as an outlet where she could process her new experiences, which often involved toxic relationships and partying around the city with beloved friends. The turbulence in West’s life throughout that period resulted in an abrasive but tender debut album, Sleepyhead (self-released, 2016). West decided to quit drinking, and she began booking her own DIY tours across the country. Sobriety provided her with a newfound sense of self and clarity, and she began writing the songs for The Lamb while also starting the process of re-learning how to live her life. Across the album’s 12 tracks, West carefully examines the skeletons in her closet for the first time, hoping to capture honest snapshots of her past selves. Many of the songs show West asking herself agonizing questions about her life with a clever and hopeful curiosity. On the album’s first single and opening track, “Destroyer,” she reflects on feeling self-destructive and the delayed realization something in the past has irrevocably hurt you. In “Water Over Sex,” West laments her old precarious lifestyle, while trying to readjust to her newfound sobriety, and ”Copycat” confronts her feelings of alienation and boredom. “Some of this album is about being frustrated that everything is always repeating itself and being bored with your own feelings,” she explains. “‘Copycat’ in particular is about how everyone talks exactly the same on the Internet and how it sometimes feels futile to try and be yourself.” The catalyst for the starkly titled “When You Die” came when West’s friend Jilian Medford of IAN SWEET texted about the band getting into a car accident. In the song, she grapples with her lack of control over certain things and the inevitable regrets that come with it. Though that experience served as the song’s initial inspiration, “When You Die” also reflects on a string of three months in 2017 when West experienced several close deaths. The spare and stunning album highlight “Dove” further explores this tragic string of events; West explains, “It is very plainly about the death of someone I loved a lot and the guilt I had, and still have, afterwards.” After testing a handful of the new songs while on the road, The Lamb’s final form came together while recording at Rose Raft Studio in rural Illinois. Performed by West with Emily Kempf on bass/backup vocals and Ben Leach on drums, the musical arrangements of the album -- blending post punk with dream pop influences that incorporate vibrant synths, a drum machine, and even saxophone -- find a balance between light and dark, reinforcing these dynamic and intimate songs that will surely resonate.

ALBUM PRODUCED BY THE LASSO "an intoxicating mix of West Coast G-funk... intergalactic head trips a la Maggot Brain, and the kind of gritty dirty South hip-hop that provided the backdrop for Outkast’s Aquemini." J. Edward Keyes Lando Chill makes music which is classified as hip-hop, but isn't tethered to a single genre, encompassing elements of funk, gospel, jazz, indie rock, psychedelic, and folk. Lance Washington was born and raised in Chicago, but moved to Arizona to attend college. His debut full-length For Mark, Your Son arrived on Mello Music Group in 2016. The album was an intense self-examination inspired by the loss of the rapper's father, who died of a heart attack when Washington was four years old. Lando Chill's second album, The Boy Who Spoke to the Wind, appeared in 2017 and was named #26 on Bandcamp Daily's 100 Best Albums of the Year. The album was influenced by Paulo Coelho's book The Alchemist, and contained a more abstract, experimental sound than his prior releases. Since 2016, Lando Chill has teamed with multi-instrumentalist and producer The Lasso, resulting in a singular sound only possible through a true symbiosis of vocalist and producer. Once again, the duo has taken a leap forward with Lando Chill’s upcoming release, Black Ego; a collection of songs that is equal parts west coast funk and desert trip-hop, threaded together by Lando's bold vision. Black Ego is slated for an October 12th release on Mello Music Group.

The eighth album from Marissa Nadler, For My Crimes, is the sound of turmoil giving way to truth. The songs stare down the dark realization that love may not be enough to keep two people together through distance and differing needs. By asking these difficult questions about her relationships, Nadler has found a stronger sense of self and a sharper voice as both a songwriter and a vocalist, culminating in her most evocative entry in an already impressive discography. The album is set for release on September 28, via Bella Union and Sacred Bones. Following the release of 2016’s acclaimed Strangers, Nadler’s relationships were put to the test as she left the Boston area on tour. She wrote throughout 2017 about this tension, and ended up with three times as many songs as she needed. But after reviewing the demos with her co-producers Justin Raisen and Lawrence Rothman, Nadler wrote a flurry of tight but no less intense new songs in the week before arriving at Rothman’s Laurel Canyon studio, House of Lux, in early January. She considered it a challenge to herself, applying new strategies and structures to the craft of “slow music” she’s honed over the last 15 years. From that group of songs came nearly all of the singles on For My Crimes, some of the most indelible of Nadler’s career. The opening title track is classic Nadler: a sweeping, vaguely Southern drama of voices, strings, and acoustic guitar, that walks the fine line between character song and personal indictment by metaphor. “For My Crimes” spawned out of a songwriting exercise in which Nadler wrote from the perspective of someone on death row, but the song casts a dark shadow over an album that turns marital conflict into inner reflection. Helping Nadler dig down into the song’s remorseful soul is her old friend Angel Olsen, who serves as a distraught echo from beyond in the chorus. “Blue Vapor” has an intoxicating raw energy luring you in, somewhere between Springsteen and a grunge band playing MTV Unplugged back in the day. It feels at once tight and improvisational, balancing on little more than Nadler’s steady strumming and vulnerable harmonies with Kristin Kontrol (of Dum Dum Girls), until the heavy, purposeful style of Hole drummer Patty Schemel conjures chaos in the second half. This slow burn feeling is all too appropriate for a song centered around repeating patterns and creeping numbness in a relationship. “Blue Vapor” names that strange ambivalence and turns it into a chant that hangs in the air long after the song ends. Dreaminess and eeriness have often been two sides of the same coin in Marissa Nadler songs. Where “For My Crimes” and “Blue Vapor” come from her dark side, the album has plenty of moments that twinkle in their sadness and sentimentality. “I Can’t Listen to Gene Clark Anymore” is one of those highly specific songs you’ll get if you’ve ever lost a favorite band to your own broken heart. It sways perfectly in its bittersweetness, like a slow dance you never want to end. After the strings swell and the bass pedals kick in, Nadler coos, “Cause I remember/The songs you sang/To me when it was you/I was falling for.” Later, closing track “Said Goodbye To That Car” turns a final odometer reading into a rhythm for a catchy, wistful hook: “1-1-9-6-5-7, and the engine blew/“1-1-9-6-5-7, and I thought of you,” Nadler lulls, harmonizing with herself. It’s an ingenious way to capture the end of an era in one small moment, and she moves as delicately as you would handling an old photo with her sweet oohs. Bolstering the intimacy of these songs is the strong feminine energy that defined their recording. Between Rothman’s fluidity with both gender and genre (as heard on his 2017 album The Book of Law), and Raisen’s track record of successful collaborations with strong women (Olsen, Kim Gordon, Charli XCX), Nadler felt empowered to explore without judgement in the studio. With the exception of a single saxophonist, every player on the album is a woman of notable pedigree and distinct style, many of whom have played with Nadler over the years. In addition to the cameos by Angel Olsen and Kristin Kontrol, Sharon Van Etten sings backup on “I Can’t Listen to Gene Clark Anymore” and “Lover Release Me.” Mary Lattimore joins on harp for “Are You Really Gonna Move to the South,” while the great experimental multi-instrumentalist Janel Leppin plays strings throughout the record. These women and others helped make For My Crimes as dynamic as it is intimate, but Nadler’s mesmerizing voice—stripped of nearly all reverb—is what sits at the center of these songs. You can hear the emotional range of her performances more than ever before, from the spectral harmonizing of “Are You Really Gonna Move To The South” to the cheeky boredom of “All Out Of Catastrophes,” two other highlights. As a singer, she has never sounded more confident than she does here. Adding to the album’s deeply personal feeling is its abstracted artwork, featuring Nadler’s original oil paintings. Though Nadler is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a semi-retired art teacher (she has one student left—a 95-year-old named Doris), For My Crimes marks the first album cover bearing one of her paintings. She also channeled the album’s themes into paintings corresponding to specific tracks, which will be included as prints in the limited edition version of For My Crimes (and in some cases, for sale as originals on Nadler’s website).

Building from a reputation of arresting live performances and critically acclaimed releases Puce Mary breaks new ground with The Drought, evolving from the tropes of industrial and power electronics to forge a complex story of adapting to new realities. Remnants of noise still exist, sustaining the penetrative viscerality offered on previous records, however The Drought demonstrates an intention to expand on the vocabulary of confrontational music and into a grander narrative defined by technical and emotional growth. Bringing together introspective examination with literary frameworks by writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Jean Genet, Puce Mary’s compositions manifest an ongoing power struggle within the self towards preservation. The traumatised body serves as a dry landscape of which obscured memories and escape mechanisms fold reality into fiction, making sense of desire, loss and control. The Drought presents both danger and opportunity; through rebuilding a creative practice centred on first person narrative and a deliberate collage of field recordings and sound sources Puce Mary injects an acute urgency across the album seeking resilience. “To Possess Is To Be In Control” makes use of lyrical repetition as an ambiguity of two selves, or a divided self, attempting to consume one another, while “Red Desert,” named after Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 film, portrays the individual subsumed by surrounding environmental forces. The seven-minute epic “The Size of Our Desires” acts as the emotional tipping point of the record; amongst the ominous drone and dense feedback flutters almost-beatific melodies, while the lyrics reveal a romantic call to be swept up in the midst of an increasingly uninhabitable world. Rather than escape, The Drought dramatises a metamorphosis in which vulnerability is confronted through regeneration. Noise and aggression no longer act as an affront to react against but part of a ‘corporeal architecture’ where space, harmony and lyricism surface from the harsh tropes of industrial music. The Drought chronologises a transformation through a psychological famine, new ways of coping akin to plant survival in a desert – to live without drying out. The album is mastered by Rashad Becker, featuring cover art by Torbjørn Rødland.