Little Hag "Now That’s What I Call Little Hag"
Little Hag is working through her issues and has a brand new album to prove it. Now That’s What I Call Little Hag aptly showcases the wide ranging songwriting of Avery Mandeville. Using 8 different producers and studios she delivers punk rock bangers, deep disco dives, torch songs, folk ballads and much more.
She rages against capitalism when things go awry while working at a Jersey bar in “1000 Birds.” She skewers an ex in “Would It Kill You?” and “You Blew It!” but she can also turn the lens around and scrutinize herself (“God I’m So Annoying,” “HHSTTHN”). The songs “All 3” and “Oops!” ponder the private vs. the public persona, while “Suck Out The Pain” imagines a way to surgically remove heartache. Finally, she finds new love on the sappy sapphic track “King Cake.” Oh yeah, there’s also an ode to her vibrator (“The Machine”) that might just be a metaphor for the coming AI revolution.
The Medium "City Life"
The third album from beloved Nashville indie rockers The Medium, City Life is the first they’ve produced on their own. Recorded in their homes with the help of a few friends (Johnny Hopson and George Rezek), this grassroots approach to recording captures them simultaneously at their most relaxed as well as their most airtight. Ironically, City Life presents the quartet sounding their most country yet – sonically embracing some of the musical territory of their hometown (“Ghost in the Garden”) as well as lyrically wrestling with the challenges of its rapid changes (“Sellout City”). Songwriter/singer/guitarist Shane Perry’s whip smart writing always leaves room for the cosmic joke to wink right back, though – his delivery by turns sensitive and deadpan. The band’s penchant for saccharine harmonies, hypnotic riffs, and earnest ballads cohere everything into a uniquely relevant take on a classic 70’s rock sound. Inspired by the yearning refrain at the end of Harry Nillsson’s “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City,” the record envisions ‘city life’ as a call for a better world – a society driven by care over productivity; by community over profiteering.
Nicole Miglis "Myopia"
From Sargent House Records:
Nicole Miglis, the multi-instrumentalist and voice behind revered indie pop band Hundred Waters, has announced her debut solo album Myopia is set for release August 23rd on Sargent House and shared the song “Autograph,” an unrepentant electronic earworm that surges out of the gate with infectious syncopation amid pleas for presence and authenticity. The song is an apt demonstration of Miglis’s mesmerizing ability to synthesize experimental production, pop melodies and classical form into a musical language completely her own. Throughout Myopia, Miglis crystallizes interwoven states of obsession, love and loss alongside an eclectic array of sounds, both organic and digital, while expounding on the album’s theme of being unable to look past the immediate in favor of the bigger picture. “There’s the myopia of desire, love, obsession—the feeling of only being able to see that one person in everything, everywhere,” she explains. “There’s also personal myopia of not seeing your potential or your power, of not zooming out; limiting beliefs.”
Brian Gibson "Thrasher"
Brian Gibson is an artist and composer whose career is defined by uncompromising creativity. As the bassist for legendary duo Lightning Bolt or as a composer and artist on video games, Gibson consistently tests boundaries by injecting wonder and excitement into his singular body of work. Gibson’s 2016 release Thumper, produced by Drool, was an award-winning smash hit game and soundtrack. Thrasher is Gibson’s triumphant return to VR, a fantastical whirlwind co-created with Mike Mandell via their partnership Puddle. The soundtrack harnesses Gibson’s otherworldly visions with bright musical clarity, trading the “rhythmic violence” of Thumper for expansive and sublime atmospheres punctured by cascading, serpentine arpeggios embodied by otherworldly creatures.
Gibson and Mandel call the game “a mind-melting arcade action odyssey and visceral audiovisual experience.” The game was designed as an immersive virtual reality experience following a kind of evolving space centipede from “crawling from the depths of primordial gloom to the heights of celestial bliss, culminating in a heart-pounding reckoning with a cosmic baby god.” Gibson’s start in game designing began at Harmonix working on tentpole titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Thrasher breaks from Gibson’s history in rhythm-centered games. Arpeggiated synths and undulating textural loops mimic the segmented art style of the centipede, as well as the game’s more open and nuanced emotional core. Through these intricate sequences, Gibson imbues the soundtrack’s ceaseless propulsion with melodic mystery and tensions. The crystalline twirl of “Magenta Machine” expands and contracts like a living, breathing biosphere. Tracks like album opener “Metal Maze” and “Mica” harken back to the trance-inflected movements of Lightning Bolt’s Hypermagic Mountain. The existential dread of Thumper carries over to pieces like “Timekeepers” and “Mad Moon,” but across the album Gibson infuses that dread with an equal share of awe.