Green/Blue "Offering (Rough Trade Publishing)"
From Hozac Records:
Green/Blue have thrust forth their second-born Offering to the gods of noise, washed in hypnotic barbed-wire guitar slices wrapped in troubled dreams of paranoid isolation, it’s the perfect cerebral soundtrack for these endless, draining days.
Pedro The Lion "Havasu (Polyvinyl)"
Back in 2019, David Bazan reactivated Pedro the Lion and returned with the band’s first album in 15 years, Phoenix. A truly great comeback, Phoenix added to PTL’s legacy with songs that picked up right where the band left off and never felt like rehashed versions of older material. Turns out that Pedro the Lion is really back in it for the long haul, and Phoenix was apparently the first album in a five-album series, each one named after and inspired by a different place David Bazan has lived. The second, Havasu, was surprise-released this week. Picking right up where Phoenix left off, Havasu feels like classic Pedro the Lion, and you don’t need to be a nostalgia-seeking longtime fan to appreciate it. Pedro the Lion’s emo/indie rock crossover was ahead of its time — there are way more bands that toe that line today than there were 20 years ago — and the reunion has felt like a way for the band to come back into a future they helped create. As on PTL’s past albums, what really makes Havasu stand out is David Bazan’s highly detailed, personal songwriting. Sonically, Havasu isn’t a major departure for Pedro the Lion, but it’s the depth of the songs that make them resonate as strongly as the band’s classic material. Havasu reminds you that, perhaps more than anything else, David Bazan is just a great storyteller.
– Andrew Sacher, Brooklyn Vegan
No Bragging Rights "No Bragging Rights (EP)"
Don’t call it a comeback. After an extended hiatus, California’s No Bragging Rights have returned with their first new music since 2014’s The Concrete Flower. Like that record, this self-titled EP is being released on Pure Noise, which was actually started by Jake Round in order to put out the band’s 2009 album, The Consequence Of Dreams. Now comprised of vocalist Mike Perez, who started the band in 1999, Martin Alcedo (drums/vocals), Daniel Garrow (guitar/vocals) and Anthony ‘Tron’ Laur (guitar), the four-piece produced these seven songs themselves. Recorded between Laur’s home studio and Decade Sound Studio, both in Tacoma, WA, it’s an invigorating blast of melodic hardcore that pays homage to their past while also bringing them into the present.
“Daniel and I would write these songs,” says Laur, who also engineered the record, “and give Mike and Martin blanket ideas – like ‘This one is kind of triumphant but has no resolve to it, so I don’t know what that means to you but you should aim your writing towards that’ to help curate the attitude and personality of each song.”
