An iPhone Is Their Acoustic Guitar

It started with the rise of the elusive duo ear. On their recent album Rumspringa, Jonah Paz and Yaelle Avtan’s iPhone recordings feel simultaneously like a ripped page out of a scribbled diary and a dilapidated house party anthem, as if the album is safeguarding secrets but is also fickle in how it carries them. Their music oscillates between bewitching stillness and hypnotic electronic scraps. Then came New York's Nicholas Gay and his Lockimara album Only Sun, Only Moon; and Nashville’s prolific Logan Hornyak, aka Melaina Kol, with his album Okay that’s a great idea if I do that then; and Eau Claire five-piece gash on their full-length at least you know what you’re laughing at; and the duo of Mikaela Oppenheimer and Hayden McGarvey, who just dropped their new EP The Point’s A Truss, My Trusselina under the moniker Trusselina. These artists all conjured some kind of digital rucksack sound, something that feels both introverted and extroverted. Moments across these releases range from electrifying to startlingly naked. Most songs occupy both poles. Melaina Kol’s “Bleater” transforms chopped vocals from Lowertown’s Olivia O. into something shamanic while string pricks are balanced b...