Loose Wing "Miracle Baby"
From Drum & Wires Recordings:
Loose Wing hasn’t cleaned up completely since its critically praised debut album — “Loose Wing are serving as an example that the area’s still got it,” says UPROXX. Instead the band, led by songwriter Claire Tucker, has further focused its pounding and present sound via their sophomore release Miracle Baby.
Miracle Baby delivers an even more potent version of Loose Wing’s ability to capture themes of “isolation, intimacy, and teen angst that has yet to be outgrown” (The Big Takeover), recalling Neko Case or Low — Tucker recently organized a benefit concert to benefit Low’s surviving member Alan Sparhawk following the untimely passing of Mimi Parker — set loose through the lens of Throwing Muses.
Drop Nineteens "Hard Light"
Hard Light is every bit the ride that Delaware was, diverse in its sounds, with surprises at every turn. Drop Nineteens have brought clarity and cool in 2023 to the genre they helped create. A portrait of a band 30 years later, as talented and dedicated to their craft as ever. To put it more bluntly, they’re at the top of their game.
The Mountain Goats "Jenny from Thebes"
The Mountain Goats’ catalog is thick with recurring characters—Jenny, who originally appears in the All Hail West Texas track bearing her name, as well as in “Straight Six” from Jam Eater Blues and Transcendental Youth side two jam “Night Light,” is one of these, someone who enters a song unexpectedly, pricking up the ears of fans who are keen on continuing the various narrative threads running through the Mountain Goats’ discography before vanishing into the mist. In these songs, Jenny is largely defined by her absence, and she is given that definition by other characters. She is running from something. These features are beguiling, both to the characters who’ve told her story so far and to the listener. They invite certain questions: Who is Jenny, really? What is she running from? Well, she’s a warrior and a thief, and, this being an album by the Mountain Goats, it’s a safe bet whatever she’s fleeing is something bad. Something catastrophically bad.
Jenny from Thebes is the story of Jenny, her southwestern ranch style house, the people for whom that house is a place of safety, and the west Texas town that is uncomfortable with its existence. It is a story about the individual and society, about safety and shelter and those who choose to provide care when nobody else will.
