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TWIABP (photo by Lisa Johnson)
This has been a crazy week that’s left us shocked by the news that co-founding Mastodon guitarist/vocalist Brent Hinds was killed in a motorcycle crash at age 51 after parting ways with the band earlier this year. It should go without saying what a massive impact Brent left on rock and metal during the past quarter-century, and before I go any further with this week’s Notable Releases I just went to send my thoughts to his family, friends, and anyone else who knew and loved him. Rest in peace, Brent.
As for this week’s new music, it’s a very big week. In addition to exciting new singles from Good Luck (off their first album in 14 years), Merchandise (possibly off their first album in at least 9 years), Joyce Manor, and Steve Lacy, we also get several of our most-anticipated summer albums today. I highlight nine below, and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement, including Water From Your Eyes, Superchunk, TOPS, Blake Mills & Pino Palladino, Hunx and His Punx, Adrian Sherwood, Hand Habits, Winter, Tullycraft, and Jim Bob (Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine).
On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Mac DeMarco, Kid Cudi, Offset, Anand Wilder (Yeasayer), Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Nourished by Time, Laufey, quannnic, Hundreds of AU, Wreck and Reference, Arcadea (Brann Dailor of Mastodon), The Planet Smashers, Teyana Taylor, Ciara, Mariah the Scientist, Emma Louise & Flume, Squanderers (Wendy Eisenberg, David Grubbs, Kramer), Scree, Lila Iké, Kathleen Edwards, Delicate Steve, Ami Taf Ra, Ava Max, Jon Batiste, Dean Johnson, UMI, Jobber, Bootcamp, Case Oats, Pendulum, Bask, Malevich, Judy Blank, Old Dominion, Dominic Fike, Rudimental, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Walker Hayes, Sombr, Sir Chloe, Royel Otis, Glitterfox, Three Days Grace, the Goo Goo Dolls EP, the Lupe Fiasco EP, The Dare EP, the Divine Earth EP, the orchestral Jack’s Mannequin EP (that accompanies the Everything In Transit 20th anniversary reissue) and the 20th anniversary edition of Minus The Bear’s Menos El Oso (that we’ve got an exclusive color vinyl variant of).
We also talk more about a lot of this week’s new music on the new episode of our BV Weekly podcast, so check that out too and read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?
The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – Dreams of Being Dust (Epitaph)
The post-rocky emo revival pioneers pivot to metal and hardcore on an aggressive new record that’s unexpected yet suits them perfectly.
A decade or so removed from the emo revival craze that The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die were at the forefront of, they’ve released an album that goes in a much, much heavier direction than anyone listening to them in the mid 2010s would’ve predicted they’d one day go in. Dreams of Being Dust openly embraces hardcore, metalcore, alternative metal, and heavy prog, and it features guest screams from END/Counterparts’ Brendan Murphy, Full of Hell’s Dylan Walker, Church Tongue/Psycho-Frame’s Mike Sugars, and TWIABP guitarist Chris Teti’s studio partner Greg Thomas (END, ex-Misery Signals), who co-produced the album with Chris. If you want more where this week’s Deftones album came from, “Dissolving” is up there with the best Deftones-y songs released this year. TWIABP’s own members contribute some of the screaming too, like when newer guitarist Anthony Gesa takes lead vocals on “Beware the Centrist,” and Chris’ guitar playing in this band has never been heavier.
As unexpected as it might seem, this shift didn’t come out of nowhere. The members of TWIABP have roots in the Connecticut hardcore scene that predate the existence of this band, and elements of metal and other forms of heavier music have popped up on their records as far back as 2015’s Harmlessness. Their last record, 2021’s Illusory Walls, took influence from a handful of heavy bands and frequently reminded me of Circa Survive and Jupiter-era Cave In. Finally, the band (literally) said “fuck it” and made an album that leans all the way in to something that was always lingering beneath TWIABP’s surface.
I also can’t help but notice that it comes one year after Foxing went screamo on their latest album, given the creative cold war and constant leap frogging that TWIABP and Foxing (and The Hotelier) engaged in at the height of emo revival. I don’t know if Foxing’s album had anything to do with TWIABP making a similar shift, but I think both bands doing it have something to do with the state of the world and the state of the music scene they’ve both long been part of. Ten years ago, bands like TWIABP and Foxing were gunning for the indie rock canon. Now, they seem totally unfazed by how they’re categorized or what types of tastemakers are giving them the stamp of approval. And with the world seeming even more dire than it did when TWIABP made their first Trump-era album, Always Foreign–combined with a couple members of TWIABP dealing with personal tragedy–the more aggressive music just suits what is TWIABP’s most overtly political album yet. So many lyrics on Dreams of Being Dust reinforce this point, but here’s one line from “December 4th, 2024” that really sticks out: “With all this corrupt policy, we might as well be paying to breathe.”
Even within the context of Foxing and other emo bands making pivots to aggressive music over the years, Dreams of Being Dust stands out from any other example I can think of. Especially with members of END, Full of Hell, and Church Tongue involved, it’s full of moments that have as much in common with current metalcore as Harmlessness did with indie rock a decade ago. And it’s all done in the way that only TWIABP can, with co-lead vocalists David F. Bello and Katie Dvorak bringing the same distinct chemistry that they’ve honed over the past 12 years to these songs that they’ve brought to all of the other TWIABP records they’ve been part of. Dreams is full of melodic shifts, lyrical turns of phrase, and layered arrangements that couldn’t be mistaken for any other band, all worked into the context of a record that probably very few people ever expected them to make. Not to mention, confounding fans is kind of what this band has been about from the start.
Deftones – private music (Reprise/Warner)
Whether you found this band on TikTok or Headbangers Ball, ‘Private Music’ is beautiful, hard-hitting music that we can all get behind.
Deftones are on top of the world right now. They’re fresh off a tour that had them headlining Madison Square Garden–a much bigger NYC show than the one they played the last time they were here, just three years earlier–and they’re the only band from the original nu metal boom whose new album feels like an event simply because they’re embarking on a new album cycle. Private Music (stylized all-lowercase as private music on streaming services) isn’t a long-awaited reunion album or a big comeback or an album that comes with any narrative that didn’t already exist the last time Deftones released an album (2020’s great Ohms). It’s just a great album from an artist who we always expect to release great albums–like a Radiohead or a Björk, or perhaps most accurately, The Cure, a band who’s long understood how to embrace their influence on younger generations without abandoning their roots, as Deftones should know. The Cure have taken them under their wings on multiple occasions, and Deftones were one of the bands who helped celebrate The Cure’s influence on MTV Icon in 2004 (alongside AFI, blink-182, and Razorlight), the same year The Cure tapped nu metal/post-hardcore studio wizard Ross Robinson for their self-titled album.
Like Ohms, Private Music comes at a time in which Deftones’ influence has extended outside of metal and into post-hardcore, metalcore, indie rock, electronic music, grungy alternative rock, and most notably, shoegaze. And in the time since Ohms‘ release, the interest in shoegaze and the acknowledgement of Deftones’ influence on the genre’s new wave (after they themselves were influenced by the genre’s pioneers) has only grown. With Private Music, Deftones haven’t gone and made a full-on shoegaze album or anything, but they’ve absolutely made an album that meets the moment, an album that fits right in with the modern world of guitar-driven rock music that they themselves have helped shape over the course of the last 30 years. If you didn’t know any better, you could mistake it for one of the many Deftones-inspired bands that have been on the rise these past few years, but it also reminds you that there’s nothing like the real thing. And if you’re a longtime Deftones fan who doesn’t care about their impact on TikTok crazes, the new school of shoegaze, or new music in general, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed either.
Read my full review for more.
Greg Freeman – Burnover (Transgressive/Canvasback)
The Burlington, VT musician’s sophomore album is a country-leaning snapshot of Northeast, non-urban America, and it just might restore your faith in classic indie rock.
Burnover often functions as a series of snapshots of the American, non-urban Northeast. There are frozen-over lakes, open roads, pastures of cows, and specified plant life, all conveyed with the hazy glow of old photos, faded memories, and scenic drive-bys. There’s a sense of longing and nostalgia in Freeman’s scene-setting that’s also there when he wonders if he and the subject of “Gallic Shrug” are “just two people who have too many yesterdays.” And then there are the moments that come startlingly into focus, like when Greg wrestles with human emotion (“If your heart’s not in it, then your heart’s not in it, then my heart’s not in it”), or when he turns a sly metaphor into one of the album’s most memorable one-liners (“I love the world but I think it’s too fucked up to drive!”).
Alongside peers like MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Florry, and Ryan Davis, Greg’s been emerging as part of an exciting new crop of indie rock musicians who openly embrace country music and fill their songs with rural and small-town imagery. Like MJ Lenderman was early on, Greg was frequently compared to indie-country pioneer Jason Molina (Songs: Ohia, Magnolia Electric Co) when he put out his 2022 debut album I Looked Out on the small DIY label Bud Tapes. The album’s slow-building, word-of-mouth buzz helped establish Freeman as an artist to watch in this space and helped him ink a deal with the larger Transgressive/Canvasback for Burnover. On the new album, comparisons to Molina and Lenderman are still helpful ways to recommend Greg Freeman’s music to someone but not something he ever sounds locked into. Burnover is just as likely to recall Pavement’s propulsive slacker rock (“Point and Shoot”), The Replacements’ scruffy bar rock (“Gulch”), and the experimental Americana of Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born (“Wolf Pine”).
Read my full review for more.
Earl Sweatshirt – Live Laugh Love (Tan Cressida/Warner)
Contrary to theories that this might all be an elaborate prank, Earl Sweatshirt’s new album is here, and it’s cut from the same hazy, surrealist cloth as his other recent triumphs.
When Earl Sweatshirt threw his listening party for his new album Live Laugh Love last Friday, a lot of people thought it was a prank. First of all, would Earl really name an album Live Laugh Love? And secondly, Earl never showed up at his own party. Instead, he had an obvious imposter in his place, and comedian/rapper Zack Fox filmed the whole thing. One reviewer wondered if the whole thing was a Zack Fox comedy sketch. But Live Laugh Love is a very real new Earl Sweatshirt album–his first since his 2023 Alchemist collaboration Voir Dire–and it’s now here. As for the surprising title, Earl’s new bio says that “what started as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the irony in the phrase developed into a genuine examination of the nostalgia of joy and the simplicity of genuine connection.” “I named it before I wrote it,” Earl himself said. “And then everything started clicking.” The album has production from Theravada, Black Noi$e, Navy Blue, Child Actor, and Earl himself, and it’s cut from the same abstract rap cloth that most of Earl’s music has been cut from since 2018’s career-altering Some Rap Songs. Its 11 songs are all relatively brief (half of them are two minutes or less), the production is hazy, and the lyrics are full of surrealist imagery. There’s an ode to the late Trugoy of De La Soul (“Gamma (need the love)”), and a song about food called “Infatuation” because that word “has fat and it has ate in it.” As with most of Earl’s recent work, it can all sound like a blur from a distance, but the deeper you dig, the more you discover the intricate moments that it’s filled with.
Hot Mulligan – The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still (Wax Bodega)
As they come up with increasingly dumb-on-purpose song titles, the emo/pop punk torch-carriers’ music remains dead-serious, soul-baring, and cathartic.
Hot Mulligan makes pop-punk-ified emo (or is it emo-ified pop punk?) that always sounds like it’s about to explode. Even while dishing out some of the catchiest, brightest emo/pop punk around, it feels like every other line is at least half-screamed–like The Starting Line or The Wonder Years in the midst of a manic episode. Even their few softer moments, which can be devastatingly beautiful, are just calms before more and more storms. Hot Mulligan perfected that formula on their biggest and best album yet, 2023’s Why Would I Watch, and now they keep the catchy chaos going on The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still. As they come up with increasingly dumb-on-purpose song titles (“Monica Lewinskibidi”?), their music remains dead-serious and soul-baring. The whole album is just one cathartic release after the next.
Wolf Alice – The Clearing (RCA)
The fourth Wolf Alice album puts a modern shine on many different corners of ’70s-ish music: glam, folk, soft rock, hard rock, and more.
For The Clearing‘s lead single “Bloom Baby Bloom,” Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell said she wanted to write “a rock song, to focus on the performance element of a rock song and sing like Axl Rose, but to be singing a song about being a woman.” It’s the kind of rock banger that ’70s/’80s Kate Bush would make at her most jagged, and along with the glammed-up “Bread Butter Tea Sugar,” it makes the case for Wolf Alice as the bombastic classic rock torch-carriers that the current generation deserves. It’s also just one of many hats that Wolf Alice wear on their fourth album, which reaches back to many different corners of ’70s-ish music with a very modern shine (thanks in part to producer Greg Kurstin). Echoes of Sandy Denny and Fleetwood Mac reverberate through folk rock songs like “Leaning Against the Wall,” “Passenger Seat,” “White Horses,” and “Midnight Song.” The same era’s sweeping, ornate balladry comes through on “Thorns,” “Safe In the World,” and “The Sofa.” You might even call the soulful “Just Two Girls” yacht rock. Impressively, it rarely if ever comes off as pastiche. Instead, it comes off as Wolf Alice using elements of the past as tools to shape the here and now.
BigXthaPlug – I Hope You’re Happy (UnitedMasters)
The Texas rapper delivers a full-on 50/50 country/trap hybrid album, with a guest country singer on almost every song.
As country and rap continue to cross paths, Texas rapper BigXthaPlug has emerged as an artist responsible for two of the most addictive country/rap hybrids in recent memory, “Drink Don’t Need No Mix” with Shaboozey and “All The Way” with Bailey Zimmerman. The Shaboozey collab (which appeared on Shaboozey’s 2024 breakthrough album Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going) led to a second collab from those two, “Home,” and now “Home” and “All The Way” appear on BigXthaPlug’s new album I Hope You’re Happy, which features a different country singer on almost every song, including Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Thomas Rett, Tucker Wetmore, and more. It opens with the soulful, bluesy title track featuring Hootie & the Blowfish singer turned country solo artist Darius Rucker, and it goes on to deliver one super catchy song after the next that captures the same charm as “All The Way” and “Home.” Even in the era of Shaboozey, Lil Nas X, and Cowboy Carter, a full album going 50/50 on trap and country the way I Hope You’re Happy does feels relatively novel, and this infectiously drawling Dallas native knows how to make it all sound effortless.
Innumerable Forms – Pain Effulgence (Profound Lore)
The metal supergroup with members of Dream Unending, Sumerlands, Power Trip, Iron Lung, Genocide Pact, and more are back for another round of punishing death-doom.
The members of Innumerable Forms are very busy musicians. Band leader Justin DeTore currently also plays in Dream Unending and Sumerlands, and his list of past bands is nearly endless (The Rival Mob, Mental, Boston Strangler, Mind Eraser, Magic Circle, Righteous Jams, and many others are all on there), and the lineup also includes guitarist/bassist Chris Ulsh (Mammoth Grinder, Power Trip, Devil Master), guitarist Jensen Ward (Iron Lung), and drummer Connor Donegan (Genocide Pact). As you can tell from that list of bands alone, these musicians are masters of tons of different types of heavy music, and this band finds them dishing out beastly death-doom. The band put out their first EP in 2010 (when Innumerable Forms was Justin’s solo project), and they more recently solidified their full lineup and started ramping things up. Their last album (2022’s Philosophical Collapse) was considered one of the best metal albums of that year by a lot of trustworthy people, and the new Pain Effulgence has plenty more where that came from. The nods to the band’s ’90s-era influences are easy to spot (they namecheck early Paradise Lost and Anathema in press materials for the new LP), and Innumerable Forms’ own mix of ominous atmosphere and blunt force stands tall next to any of them.
Ghostface Killah – Supreme Clientele 2 (Mass Appeal)
The Wu-Tang Clan member’s mostly widely-loved solo album gets treated to a sequel, 25 years after the original.
Ghostface Killah remains prolific–just last year, he released the new album Set The Tone (Guns & Roses) to little fanfare and mixed reviews–but there’s a lot more riding on his new album Supreme Clientele 2, because it’s the sequel to the extremely classic album that he released 25 years ago. The original is widely considered Ghostface’s best solo album, one of the best Wu-Tang Clan-related albums, and just one of the best rap albums ever in general. So, needless to say, people are gonna be listening to a sequel. And on top of that, the album gets another boost because Nas’ Mass Appeal label is releasing as part of its Legend Has It series, which already includes the surprisingly good Slick Rick album and the reliably good new Raekwon album, as well as upcoming albums from De La Soul, Mobb Deep, Big L, and Nas & DJ Premier. There’s strength in numbers, and the Legend Has It campaign is putting a lot of eyes and ears on classic ’90s New York rap right now. And when that leads to clicking play on Supreme Clientele 2, you’re treated to a hard-nosed New York rap album that reminds you Ghostface can still rap his ass off. The beats sound like throwbacks to the original Supreme Clientele style, most of the guest verses come from other venomous vets (fellow Wu-Tang Clan members Method Man, Raekwon, and GZA; Nas; M.O.P.; Styles P; as well as a standout verse from newer likeminded torch-carrier Conway the Machine), and the album is peppered with Dave Chappelle skits that sound straight out of the CD era. It’s also a very CD-era rap album in that it would probably be tighter with less than its 22 songs, but minor gripes aside, there’s no denying that those looking for a Supreme Clientele nostalgia trip will get it here. Ghostface’s pure athleticism as a rapper is enough to carry this album on its own.
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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Water From Your Eyes, Superchunk, TOPS, Blake Mills & Pino Palladino, Hunx and His Punx, Adrian Sherwood, Hand Habits, Winter, and Tullycraft.
Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive.
Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new podcast BV Weekly.
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