Biita Houdei "This Bed Was Made For Me"
From Father Daughter Records:
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This Bed Was Made For Me is a striking collection of Biita Houdei’s (pronounced “bee-tah who-day”) stirring, signature folk songs, brought into fruition with the help of fellow songwriter Haley Heynderickx, in her first lead production role, and the album’s producer/engineer Sahil Ansari. It’s first release Biita is releasing under her newly-taken name, one that was gifted to her by her auntie and means “unique” in the Farsi language. Recorded across ten back-to-back and full days, which began with fermented tea and ended with a shared meal together, the album touches on themes of love and heritage, of taking chances, the preciousness of time and the impact we all have on the world around us.
It’s a defined moment that brought Biita and Haley together in the physical space, although Haley’s presence drifts through the recordings in a variety of means and ways. Guided by trust and intuition, it’s a relationship some 8 years in the making, the two becoming friends after Biita opened a show for Haley back in 2018. Ahead of their work here, the two went on a writing retreat together, staying in their own small campers in rural Oregon, and they replicated this cosiness for the studio setting too, seeking out a space that embraced both quiet solitude and human connection.
This close sense of comradery is ever-present on This Bed Was Made For Me. Light and laughter dance their way through the recordings, even when the subject matter veers towards its darker corners. The album feels lived in and alive; dust swirls, seasons shift, sunshine appears and is held.
Opening track ‘The Ground Here’, which features Big Thief’s Buck Meek, showcases such aesthetics, the playful idiosyncrasies of the instrumentation allowing Biita’s voice to run wild and free among the scorched grasslands she sings of, the lush rivers she’s left behind. The song is shaped by the generous meeting of Biita and Buck, their voices woven together in beautiful harmony, a dance that is repeated throughout the album and brings the whole thing to life – whether it’s Haley’s voice drifting in or Biita’s own layered vocals.”
Told Slant "What’s Up"
From Tiinitist:
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Told Slant’s latest also includes some of their hardest and most leftfield composition and production choices to date, like Rain Of God, a trance meditation that follows the title track and runs for eight minutes, with all the tension of a devastated narrator who seems on the brink of shouting why or how or god help us. Then there’s I Am A Singer, which they alternately describe as “atonal dance music about the horrors of being an artist,” and an excavation of the “megalomaniacal” tendencies that can haunt those who dedicate their lives to music-making.|
Sean Kiely "Love Live The Low"
From New Jersey Stage:
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“This one may be the thesis of the record: a love letter to the weeds, the dry rot, the small stuff underfoot that nobody’s looking at,” Sean explained. “An acknowledgment and ode to entropy, even when it’s coming for the stuff we love.
“The song started with a line toward the end of Theodore Roethke’s poem ‘Long Live The Weeds’: ‘Hope, look, create, or drink and die,’” he continued. “That in turn led to ‘hope is a carrot, maybe it’s a trick,’ a clear-eyed take on the nature of hope. If the mansion on the hill gets a song, the weeds coming up through the sidewalk deserve one too. Give nature some time and it makes quick enough work of man’s best-laid plans.”
The Cadets "Exile In Marginalia Vol 4"
Put early Built To Spill, Endless Summer-era The Ventures, and Foolish-era Superchunk in a blender during a Florida hurricane and you land somewhere near The Cadets. This retrospective gathers the work of the Gainesville, Florida band, who have been quietly carving their own path since the early 1990s.
Featuring a young Chad Matheny of Emperor X, The Cadets formed after a Man or Astroman? show in 1995 at Einstein A Go Go, one of the area’s few all-ages spaces. Bonded by college radio and underground surf, they built a frantic sound from thundering drums, sharp lead lines, and melodic hooks full of nervous energy.
This lineup toured Japan and the US east coast until 2007, then returned more than a decade later to trade new recordings and push beyond the ideas they first chased as teenagers. Peculiar, immediate, and full of sci-fi charge, these songs channel rock and roll urgency through tales of spies, chimera, refugees, and jilted lovers.