The Lazy Eyes - "Tangerine"

By Charley Ruddell

If you’ve paid any attention to Australian music recently, you know that psych bands are one of the country’s largest exports following iron ore, coal, and sweet shiraz. Between Tame Impala, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and their respective offshoots—The Murlocs, Pond, and Pipe-Eye to pick a few—Aussie psych rapidly spread and dosed U.S. indie-heads over the last decade with the swift sweep of a panned flanger. Sydney four-piece The Lazy Eyes are the newest group with a buzz from down under, with the release of “Tangerine,” the second single from their forthcoming debut EP. 

What began as teenage camaraderie at a performing arts high school developed into a bounding collective of creative output on borrowed equipment in basement jam sessions. The zippy, acidic “Tangerine” is the first song created from these adolescent fever dreams. Paired with the driven rhythm section comes a trademarked Aussie-psych polyrhythmic melody; lurid Lennon-esque couplets delivered with hushed assurance, the edgy intimacy of DIIV’s Zachary Cole Smith or Pipe-Eye’s Cook Craig bearing influence along the path. 

The unbridled energy that bursts from the pit of “Tangerine” isn’t lost within the bouts of washy guitars in the song’s chorus, or even the clunky deceleration leading up to the song’s climactic, bluesy guitar solo, but is encouraged by the endearing placidity of the vocal delivery. Through its burning three minutes, “Tangerine” is entirely porous and playful in its spirit, with the sleepy eyelids and chugging energy of a teenager who’s been up all night on a tab of great acid.

Margaux - More Brilliant is the Hand that Throws the Coin

By Abigail Clyne

Margaux’s folk-rock EP, More Brilliant is the Hand that Throws the Coin, sees a young artist coming into her own. This impressive debut of meticulously rendered love songs showcase an artist breaking free of authority and asserting her own. Complex but listenable, More Brilliant is the Hand that Throws the Coin is a beautifully crafted and triumphant proclamation from an artist who has much to say.

The grungy bass line of the first track, “Cave In,” threatens to beat the listener, if not Margaux, into submission. Detailing the feeling of being stuck in someone’s perception of you, Margaux does her best to break out of it, “Climbing out of somebody’s memory/ Clinging to what’s clung by family.” The increasing tempo of the chorus “Lay down/ This is your final offer/ Cave in/ Let go of what you wanted,” creates a pressure cooker to test Margaux’s mettle.

Track two, “Faced with Fire,” is a romantic folk gem. The snow globe-like track perfectly distills the overwhelming desire to hole up with a new lover. Ambient guitars, muffled horns, and Margaux’s soft but sweet vocals knit a sonic cashmere blanket to sink into. On the other end of the spectrum, her debut single, “Palm,” is an ambitious affair that pivots around a mid-song transition from one emotional landscape to another. The beginning is cerebral but upbeat, analyzing the complexities of her relationship. But then romantic love takes over, with Margaux singing “My blushing mind is dreaming when I see your face/ Only that I’d love to love you,” and the song blossoms into a lustful sonic bath. The slower tempo and dreamy electronica allow Margaux’s alluring vocals to take center stage, “Call me out/ Your guess is true/ My head and heels/ Are over you.”

“Hot Faced,” a feminist rallying cry against the trap that is politeness, continues Margaux’s journey towards autonomy. Building on themes presented in “Cave In” Margaux grows more comfortable using her voice to push against the bonds of gender norms. “Is it really safe to say/ If I calculate and sing it softly/ Why is yelling not okay/ A woman’s voice is possibly threatening” cheekily encapsulates and eviscerates the hysterical woman trope. Musically, the track is a push and pull, with Margaux’s lilting delivery of the spell-like chorus, “Please and thank you/ Come right in now/ The King will see you/ Let your guard down” contrasted against the free association verses.

The EP closes out with the meditative and musically subdued track, “Smaller Home.” A reflection on childhood and the changes adulthood brings, the song is a fitting end for the Seattle bred, but now New York-based, artist. Her low vocals and the swelling of low brass encapsulate the gravity of growing up. “Older stronger wiser think I am/ I think I am” she sings, a beautiful cap to an EP that’s seen Margaux find her power.

More Brilliant is the Hand that Throws the Coin is out now on Massif Records.

Corridor - Junior

By Phillipe Roberts

Thrilling down to its triumphant final fadeout, Junior is the brilliant finale of Corridor’s ascent from ragtag Montreal punks to SubPop’s first ever Francophone signing. Listening to their previous album–the shimmering, shape-shifting Supermercado–it’s hard to imagine Corridor taking their grounded, elemental rock and roll sound any further. An uncompromising stunner, Supermercado’s carefully-crafted eleven tracks formed a distinct, ornately-detailed sonic universe, dense with the kind of golden melodies that could make any one of them a hit. With Junior, Corridor have achieved a bold new evolution of their style and produced a cohesive, invigorating album that’s far too energizing to listen to sitting down. This is the one you dance to.

Junior’s laser-focused continuity could be boiled down to the duress under which it was created; a week was all the band had to produce the masters in time for a 2019 release. That urgency translates directly into the grooves on the record, as Corridor have never made an album that sounds so focused right out of the gate. Trading Supermercado’s winding elegance for suckerpunch immediacy, the band dives decisively into opener “Topographe,” laying down a lush thicket of guitars as vocalists Dominic Berthiaum (also bass) and Jonathan Robert (also guitar) spar in reverb-drenched call and response. Drummer Julien Bakvis blasts through the wall of sound with a melodic drum part–if Animal Collective ditched their samples for guitars once again for a louder Sung Tongs, this might be where they’d land. 

The next three tracks conjure up more familiar sounds for Corridor, as they dig down into the hook-laden, dreamy indie rock that they know best with a new vigor. It’s a breathless sprint: the mysterious riffing of “Junior,” the gritty krautrock pulse of “Domino,” and the rambunctious, seasick “Goldie” with its heavenly synthesizer jam and detuned, ambient outro. Guitars are everything in a Corridor song, and these three tracks are as much an exhibition for Robert and second guitarist Julian Perreault’s deft interplay as they are expertly crafted rock tunes. The pair have never sounded better, and they push each other to symphonic levels of bombast. “Agent double” is especially bombastic, the duo playing off Berthiaum’s bass for a climbing post-punk outro that suggests danger around every corner. 

True to the spirit of their rousing live shows, Corridor earns every second of these delirious jam-outs. “Domino” in particular feels like it could stretch out even further, invoking the measured lullaby of Deerhunter’s “Desire Lines,” while piling on the feedback at the pace of Parquet Courts’ Velvet Underground-worshipping best. You’re left with the sense that the band had to be reigned in just before disappearing completely over the event horizon.

Synthesizer additions and the gentle balladry of “Grand Cheval” aside, Corridor sticks to their guns throughout Junior, preferring to augment their guitar-driven sound with effects when necessary, rather than bow to the impulse to burn it all down. These experiments, like the race car crashing into the opening drum hits on “Milan,” or the arena rock drum fills and skronking sampler solo that kicks “Pow” into the great beyond, feel necessary. They never crowd the band out of existence, or suggest any hesitancy. On Junior, everything lands on sure-footed instinct, precisely on cue.

As the instrumental fireworks crest on appropriately-titled album closer “Bang,” sending the band off into the sunset with Spaghetti Western guitars and a positively tear-jerking synthesizer solo, I find myself reflecting on the first time I saw Corridor live. Packed beneath the hardly eight-foot high ceilings at L’Escogriffe in Corridor’s hometown of Montreal, the four-piece whipped our swirling mass of bodies into a frenzy, song after song. Now, as they soundtrack their own curtain call, fading steadily for over 30 seconds, it feels like the end credits to this chapter of a whirlwind underdog story. Here’s hoping that this release–and the next–launches them into an even brighter future, bringing new crowds to their feet and into the air for years to come.

Tony Kill - Love High Speed

By Phillipe Roberts

A genre-less expanse of frayed ideas, Love High Speed is a series of sonic detours taken with giddy abandon. Conducted by Washington D.C.-based artist Tony Kill, the EP presents seven smeared tracks that play right into the enigmatic presentation of their creator, offering little to no clues as to who, or what, we’re listening to beyond fragmented voicemails, clipped field recordings, and twisted singing that phases in and out of audibility. Let the constant distortion wash over you for the first listen, however, and you find yourself in a rich sonic world that makes a virtue out of misdirection. It keeps ambitions high even as the fidelity crawls deeper and deeper underground.

In contrast to the rest of Love High Speed, opener “Dolin Blanc” whistles its way in and keeps things smooth, much like the sweet vermouth that serves as its namesake. A sensuous bassline rumbles under gently splashing drums before dislocating from the groove entirely, playing against ambient swirls of guitar as the scene dissolves away from the pleasant morning reverie. Suddenly, a pen scratches out a signature, and a desk attendant asks if you need help with your bags. You’re fully checked-in to his surreal hotel now, and Tony Kill is free to really let loose for some twisted fun. Because for all of the sweetness and order of “Dolin Blanc,” it’s the rough-hewn weirdness of the rest of the EP that allows Tony Kill to really shine, unhinged from the expectation of providing anything for you to comfortably grip onto.

With the bouncing bass from “Dolin Blanc” still present as a holdover, Tony Kill begins his descent on “Heaven Sent,” charging through church organ swells with a chorus of Tonys proclaiming “You’re Heaven Sent” ad nauseum. Other indistinguishable vocals pour in, crying out with a kind of impassioned religious ecstasy that crashes over the main vocal in waves–a brilliant effect that sounds like watching someone have a mental breakdown in the middle of Sunday service.

Crafting these sharp moments of emotional tension is something that Tony Kill does remarkably well across the EP. Particularly so on “Drive,” where distorted shouts pile on top of a screeching guitar solo, which mellows out into a light, bluesy twang, before erupting again in chaos in a perfect mirror of the lyrics–“Intruder alert / Intruder alert.” But with all of this dissonance, Tony Kill isn’t afraid of a satisfying groove. Like the aforementioned “Dolin Blanc,” much of the EP ruminates on stretching simple ideas out into flavorful instrumentals. From the undeniably catchy krautrock pulse of “Gotta Turbo (Truck Stanley),” which almost sounds piped in from a Stereolab or Broken Social Scene rehearsal, to the industrial throb and burbling vocals of “I Am This Close,” it’s clear that Tony Kill knows exactly where to turn on the head-nodding charm.

Love High Speed ends with the instrumentally slight and vocally dissociative “Anyone.” Tony unspools a yawning manifesto, “I don’t fear anyone,” just twice over a creeping groove that hardly shuffles past the one minute mark. Thought it follows the disorienting, dubbed-out odyssey that is “Suddenly Unknow Everything,” “Anyone” feels like the perfect place to conclude his latest adventure–fearless and unphased, laughing in the face of any potential detractors before they even get a chance to respond. Love High Speed keeps you on your toes–and is well worth the disorientation–but don’t expect any congratulations from Tony for making it through to the other side. He’s above it all, distinctly unimpressed that you’re finally on his level.

Alpenglow - Speculator

By Jordan Feinstein

Alpenglow is a psychedelic indie rock band based in NYC. Their newest single, Speculator–off their upcoming album Oceans in Between–searches the bounds of space and time for a deeper understanding of the self. How focused on the future should you be, if that focus means your present is just passing time at work.

“Yeah it matters where you’re going, [but] take a moment to be out of ticking time,” he sings. Does existing solely in the present make you “adrift,” and does being adrift have value in itself? The song compares the narrator, working a barback job but spending his days out and about living life, with a second character who commutes and works a boring, full time job. More subtle than any conclusions as to who’s living their life correctly are the songs final lines: “Lay your life on my / I’ll give mine to you / Don’t mind if I stare / I know you’re staring too / I know you’re staring into.” Both of these characters wonder about what the other has, both of these characters wonder about what they’re missing. Look at me, it says, and don’t mind if I look at you. Maybe we’d both wonder less if we shared more together.