Purling Hiss "Drag on Girard"
The colliding circles of time bring us back to the brink of the Hiss at last. Classic rock singing/screaming guitars fuse with Mike Polizze’s hope-n-dreamz feels and explode into fresh heartbreak, happening right now today, as sweet tunes and crushed guitar harmonics pour off the turntable and run out in the street, just like in the old days.
Darren Jessee "Central Bridge"
Darren Jessee is a familiar presence to alternative music fans thanks to his long tenure as the drummer / backing vocalist in Ben Folds Five. (He also co-wrote that group’s biggest hit “Brick.”) Outside of that outfit, he’s logged time touring with Sharon Van Etten and Hiss Golden Messenger, as well as fronting the indie rock ensemble Hotel Lights. But perhaps Jessee’s most affecting work has been the three albums he has released over the past five years under his own name. On these recordings, he scales everything back to the purest pop essentials, with strings, acoustic guitar, and a smart application of vintage keyboards serving to put further emphasis on his languid vocals and plainspoken, yet elegiac lyrics. Jessee’s latest full-length Central Bridge is his best yet. A hushed understated affair recorded primarily in the artist’s North Carolina home, the album revels in the small details of life—a crumpled pack of cigarettes found in an old jacket, a pile of wet swimwear on the floor—that somehow leave a lasting impression on a person or stir up deep seated memories.
Litgury "93696"
From Pitchfork:
For over a decade, Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix has cloaked her shapeshifting metal band Liturgy in a dense matrix of symbology. Diving into her Substack and YouTube channel, where she connects dots between Marxist thought, the Upanishads, Thomas Aquinas, and Aleister Crowley, can be as enlightening as it is mystifying. For all of Hunt-Hendrix’s theorizing, though, the music has always been thrillingly physical. It’s one thing to read about her concept of the “burst beat” and how her rapid-fire rhythms are intended to induce a state of awakening and transformation. It’s another thing to simply feel it.
Devotees willing to trawl through Hunt-Hendrix’s countless diagrammatic wireframes may notice a recurring theme, perhaps best encapsulated by the title of one of her videos: “What Will Heaven Be Like? (Part 1).” Hunt-Hendrix’s music reaches toward utopian catharsis, reshaping the craven and nihilistic timbres of black metal into blissful, glowing pillars of sound. In her manifestos, she’s described a desire to create music that pushes listeners toward self-discovery and actualization, a goal that’s taken on more personal weight after she came out as trans in 2020. “Gender dysphoria is a huge part of what made me make this music,” she told the Needle Drop. 93696, whose title is intended to mean “heaven” according to Hunt-Hendrix’s interpretation of Thelemic numerology, plays as its name suggests: This is Liturgy in their purest form, tapping all of their strengths to reach their most radiant incarnation yet.
