The Mountain Goats "Bleed Out (Merge)"
Maybe you are just like John Darnielle: In the depths of the pandemic winter at the end of 2020, the Mountain Goats frontman passed the time trapped at home in North Carolina watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound escapism. But you are not really like John Darnielle, unless the action movies you found comfort in included French thrillers like 2008’s Mesrine, vintage Italian poliziotteschi, or the 1974 Donald Pleasence mad-scientist vehicle The Freakmaker. Or unless watching them brought you back to your formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked your songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings and in turn inspired your 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure—and futility—of vengeance. But there’s no shame in not being like John Darnielle; few people are.
The resulting performance is Bleed Out, a cinematic experience unto itself. One song about preparing to exact bloody revenge begat another song about the act of exacting bloody revenge and then more songs about and the causes and the aftermath of being driven to exact bloody revenge, each delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of their narrators and circumstances.
Dan Friel "Factoryland (Thrill Jockey)"
Two decades into his solo work, Dan Friel continues to push the boundaries of pop and noise, gleefully manipulating explosive drum machines, abrasive found sounds, and a child-sized keyboard and compounding them into clamorous anthems. Friel has a preternatural ability to warp ugliness into rapturous beauty. In both his solo work and his rock trio Upper Wilds, Friel’s playfully rebellious approach to crafting pop songs is anchored by an unending love for new, strange sounds which only Friel could twist into melodies. Factoryland lives at the junction of apocalypse and revelation, reflecting the burden of industrial gentrification with an undaunted spirit that embraces fantasy as a force of resistance.
Sleepyhead "New Alchemy"
The Special Pillow "Mind Wipe (Rough Trade Publishing)"
MIND WIPE is the latest, greatest release from The Special Pillow, a full-spectrum, string-driven sound encompassing concise ’60s-flavored pop gems, dreamy hallucinogenic reveries, and pulse-pounding propulsion redolent of your favorite antipodean indie upstarts of the ’80s. Six synapse-snapping songs that address Greek tragedy, artificial intelligence, and voluntary brain erasure, MIND WIPE will clear your consciousness of everything else.