Terry Gross "Huge Improvement"
Few bands are as primed to capture their ecstatic live energy in masterful sonic detail like Terry Gross. Composed of three renowned engineer/producers whose studio doubles as their jam spot and communal gathering place, the trio are able to document their longform psychedelic escapades with granular precision. The potency of the fellowship formed by drummer Phil Becker, bassist Donny Newenhouse, and guitarist Phil Manley (Trans Am) lies in their ability to utilize their prowess as both players and recording engineers to translate feeling with immaculate clarity. On their second full-length Huge Improvement, Terry Gross embody a complex web of emotion with songs as ferocious and precise as they are agile and care-free, delighting in the catharsis of excising tension alongside one’s most trusted peers.
Huge Improvement’s tongue-in-cheek title is rightfully earned. Like their debut Soft Opening, the pieces on Huge Improvement began as improvised studio jam sessions without expectations. The trio’s ability to plug in, play and have each experiment thoroughly documented opens up unparalleled avenues for further exploration and honing. The bulk of the songs were constructed from their now tried-and-trusted process of excerpting the best sections of their lengthy jams and sculpting them into more refined shapes. “Sheepskin City”, a gallivanting ode to impermanence, runs at full-tilt, pushing repetitive riffing to sonic extremes and invoking prog-rock drum and guitar heroics. Terry Gross’s vocal melodies shine with tight harmonies that borrow from Manley and Newenhouse’s time playing in bluegrass bands. “Sales Pitch” implodes from a motorik groove into a sludgy dirge rich with textural nuance hidden in the crunch. The languid “Full Disclosure” is a testament to Terry Gross’s craftsmanship and undeniable chemistry as both a live and studio band, chronicling one of the trio’s jams in its entirety without edits or overdubs. Closing track “Effective Control” draws out an astoundingly pop-inflected edge to their rollicking thunder as it nears closer to the album’s exhilarating conclusion.
Nada Surf "Moon Mirror"
Moon Mirror, Nada Surf’s new record, has everything fans love and expect from them. Bittersweet anthems that begin quiet but explode into soaring harmonies? Check. Songs that are play-on-repeat heart punches? Check. Songs that are poetic and thought-provoking while also being absolute belt-at-the-top-of-your-voice-with-the-windows -down masterpieces? Check. It’s all here.
For the past 30 years, Nada Surf has had the same core lineup: Matthew Caws, Daniel Lorca, and Ira Elliot. Moon Mirror, their first for New West Records, was produced by the band and Ian Laughton at Rockfield Studios in Wales. For the recording, Matthew, Daniel, and Ira were joined by their friend and longtime keyboard player Louie Lino.
Moon Mirror is a thrilling and moving leap forward for Nada Surf. The songs on the album are true to the human experience—as meaningful and mysterious and sometimes absurd as it is. There’s love, yes, but also grief, deep loneliness, doubt, wonder, and hope. These are not the songs of a band in their 20s. There is hard-won wisdom here, and hard-won belief in possibility—the kind that comes from falling down and getting back up.
Jade Hairpins "Get Me the Good Stuff"
On Get Me the Good Stuff, Jade Hairpins—Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk of Fucked Up—waste no time fulfilling their second album’s titular demand. From its harmony-drenched opening note to its baroque-anthemic conclusion, Get Me the Good Stuff is positively loaded with musical ideas, an absurdist buffet of sound and aesthetic that comes with one hell of a floorshow as the Hairpins stack those ideas higher and higher, almost daring them to crash to the floor. Instead, those elements—punksploitation, power pop, baggy, funk, and Italo disco are just some touchstones—are not only held aloft, they defy gravity and convention.
BAD MOVES "Wearing Out the Refrain"
When people sing together, is it necessarily cathartic? Is catharsis necessarily rejuvenating? And what if the aftermath of catharsis turns out to be the same old frustration? With their third full-length, Washington, D.C.’s Bad Moves have expanded their founding artistic identity — a candy-coated guitar-pop shell surrounding a bitter lyrical core — by refracting their ideas through a new set of musical forms that weaponize repetition. On the new Wearing Out the Refrain, recorded once again with producer Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Algernon Cadwallader), Bad Moves propose that the flip side of the delirious harmony of the basement show singalong is the volatile, accusatory antiphony of a community divided by strain, shouting the same desperate hook back and forth at one another.
There is a pervasive perception that in power pop, hooks often come at the expense of lyrical sophistication, even intelligibility — that long vowels and crisp consonants are merely the empty frame on which to hang those euphoric bridges and serotonin-rush outros. But perhaps not since Chumbawamba has a group so effectively combined pop architecture with focused and hyper-detailed narratives (the band recalls “cleaning literal shit from a dive bar toilet” in “New Year’s Reprieve”) of class rage and communal despair. The group’s collective songwriting allows for a conceptual unity, in which an album about feeling caught in repetitive cycles expresses that theme not just lyrically — as in the recurring imagery of swirling riptides and drain-circling undertows — but sonically, intentionally beating a riff into the ground to make a point. The structure of the New Pornographers-esque “Let The Rats Inherit The Earth” is Sisyphean fatalism defined, stopping and starting over every time the music is about to reach a peak.
Bad Moves’ tag-team vocals, which forgo centering anyone one member, also let the traditionally confessional “I” become the “we” of a community, or generation. Witness the ambitious climate change metaphor of “Eviction Party,” which understands the union of sugary pop and genuine angst embodied by 1960s girl-group songcraft, and uses it to expand a personal story to planetary scale. “It’s my eviction, I’ll cry if I want to” Bad Moves shouts, channeling the dawning millennial midlife crisis. The personal may be political, but what if both feel weighed down and trapped in circular, inescapable ruts?