Band: Mastodon Album: Hushed And Grim Label: Reprise / Warner Release: October 29th, 2021
Rating: 8.5/10
Whether it really makes the most of its 86-minute runtime is debatable, but immediately clear is that with Hushed And Grim, Mastodon have thrown all caution to the wind – it’s epic both in size and statue, stacked to the brim with fretwork as striking as it is sophisticated. In the six-minute “Sickle And Peace” alone, the band employ mind-boggling technicality, walloping shreddery and a truly empyrean solo.
Throughout the record at large, they expertly balance the prodigious might of their narrative prowess with the ashy bleakness of their sludge metal roots – there are stoutly cerebral moments that call for deep, contemplative reflection, but just as many moments that beckon an instinctive whipping up of the horns and thrashing of the head. It’s not a “heavy” record, per se, but it is positively intense.
Please note: this review is also printed in #145 of Australian Guitar Magazine, syndicated here because AG’s album reviews are no longer published online.
Hushed And Grim is set for release on October 29th, 2021 via Reprise / Warner. Click here to pre-order.
It’s feels like a whole year has passed since the last roundup! In addition to writing for the ✨New Musical Express✨ every day for the last 13 days, I’ve been apartment-hunting with Milo, enjoying all of my post-lockdown freedoms (I finally saw Shang-Chi! It was fucking sick!!!), planning a trip down to Melbourne (we leave tomorrow!), and doing a whole bunch of other little bits and pieces.
We sent Australian Guitar #145 to print last week, and this week I made my radio debut on The Faction (interviewing the legendary Keith Buckley of Every Time I Die). I even started reading a new book for the first time in like eight months (Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters – so far, it is… harrowing).
It’s been a hectic little while, to say the least. But it’s been great! I’m really looking forward to heading south and seeing my favourite city in the world again – and hopefully, fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc, finding an apartment there. At this stage we’re heading down for five nights, but we might end up extending that depending on what kind of luck we have with the hunt. I’m also working through the whole trip (how else am I going to afford that #citylife?) so I’m expecting next week to be even more hectic than the last couple.
The biggest drop this week was 100% the new Alex Lahey single, ‘Spike The Punch’. I am so, so stoked that she’s signed to Liberation, and I truly cannot wait to see her take over the world with LP3. I have also been absolutely adoring the new Snail Mail album, Valentine, so I’m gonna pop the title track in here too. I already know that next week’s highlight will be the Trophy Eyes song – keep an eye out on BLUNT for our ~exclusive~ interview with John about it on Thursday!
Anyway, here’s everything I got up to at NME over the past couple of weeks!
Band: Every Time I Die Album: Radical Label: Epitaph Release: October 22nd, 2021
Rating: 8/10
In the five years since Every Time I Die dropped Low Teens, shit has, to say the very least, hit the fan. Radical concentrates those five years of social disarray and capitalistic chaos into the Buffalo group’s most vicious and evocative album yet, laden with brutally intense riffage and visceral, incendiary rage.
It’s the more artful and considered moments that stand out, though: the swampy, pared-back plucks on “Thing With Feathers” and the soaring melodies on “Post-Boredom”, for example, or the white-hot angst of closer “We Go Together”. These tracks make some of the more straightforward hardcore stompers (“Hostile Architecture”, “Distress Rehearsal”) fall a bit flat – there’s certainly some mud amongst the opals here – but to say Radical ever overstays its welcome would be patently false.
Please note: this review is also printed in #145 of Australian Guitar Magazine, syndicated here because AG’s album reviews are no longer published online.
Band: Thrice Album: Horizons / East Label: Epitaph Release: September 17th, 2021
Rating: 8/10
A sinuous odyssey through all the lustrous highs and pummelling lows of Dustin Kensrue’s psyche, there’s a gauzy, intoxicating cloudiness that lurks around every corner on Horizons / East. It ebbs and flows between a meditative calm and a baleful storminess, twining glimmers of thrashy and visceral punk-rock with the glittery, pastoral flavours of shoegaze and prog.
The rusty, shred-centric steeze of early cuts like “Scavengers” and “Summer Set Fire To The Rain” pave way for the record’s lighter and more silvery back-end to bloom; riding on the back of the blood-rushing highs of “The Dreamer”, “Robot Soft Exorcism” feels therapeutic – the calm after the storm, if you will, with a soaring and cinematic crescendo that makes the silky, dreamlike lulls of “Dandelion Wire” and “Unitive / East” all the more impactful.
Please note: this review is also printed in #145 of Australian Guitar Magazine, syndicated here because AG’s album reviews are no longer published online.
Band: The Buoys Album: Unsolicited Advice For Your DIY Disaster Label: Spunk Release: October 13th, 2021
Rating: 8/10
Lacquering their youthful, sunkissed power-pop jams with lyrical barbs that shoot straight for the heart, The Buoys’ sophomore EP would feel just as much at home roaring from the PAs at next year’s Splendour In The Grass as it would through a pair of AirPods during a casual quarter-life crisis.
Zoe Catterall and Hilary Geddes’ yin-and-yang fretwork sears with a frisky, jangly grunt, contrasted wonderfully by Courtney Cunningham’s rounded and propulsive basslines. Teeming with energy even at their lowest point, the band often veer scarily close to the edge of overkill – you know what they say: if you ain’t redlining, you ain’t headlining – but they always know just when to reel it back in. Case in point: the dizzying bends and bubbly hook on slow-burner “Lie To Me”.
Please note: this review is also printed in #145 of Australian Guitar Magazine, syndicated here because AG’s album reviews are no longer published online.
So I’ve been trying something new this week. Bruno has been getting rather ✨chonky✨ throughout lockdown, and Milo and I have been neglecting his usual walkies and/or trips to the dog park by proxy of my work piling up, and Milo’s study piling up. But rather than continue to watch Bruno progressively get rounder, we decided on Tuesday to take him to the park with my laptop, and have Milo supervise while I tried smashing out some work from a park bench. It wasn’t entirely optimal, but it worked – and the dogs weren’t nearly as distracting as I thought they’d be (however it was indeed extremely difficult not to spent the whole time petting them all) – so we ended up doing the same on Wednesday and Friday.
NSW also hit its 70% double-vax target on Wednesday, so we are OFFICIALLY OUT OF LOCKDOWN TOMORROW, BAYBEE! I have the day off, too, so Milo and I are heading out for breakfast at one of our favourite cafés, then to the movies (ya bitch is finally going to see Shang-Chi, and they cannot fucking wait), and then maybe to the arcade after if we’re both up to it.
So with all of that said, here’s everything I got up to at NME this week. The highlight for this week was easily the new Gang Of Youths track, but I didn’t write the piece about that because the UK team is just too good at breaking shit-hot Aussie news. Goddamn it. I think the best thing I wrote about this week is the new Flowerkid song, “Vodka Orange Juice”. It is so powerful, emotional and cerebral. This dude just does not have it in him to write a bad song, does he? Absolute GEM of a track.
Band: Sam Teskey Album: Cycles Label: Ivy League Release: October 8th, 2021
Rating: 6.5/10
On his long-awaited solo debut, Sam Teskey eschews the blues in favour of hazy, fuzz-laden psychedelica. Albeit rather derivative – Teskey mines the ‘60s like a proud fanboy, but adds little of his own flair to the fray – the talent employed on Cycles is undeniable; from the Hendrixian swagger of “If The Dove Is Sold” to the Dylanesque twangs of “Til The River Takes Us Home”, or the Floydian fizz of “Let The Sun Bring The Light” and “Then Love Returns”, Teskey nails every strum, pluck and solo like the seasoned virtuoso he is.
We could’ve done without the plodding intros and outros (which occupy over a quarter of the album’s real estate), but they’re not entirely egregious. All in all, Cycles makes for a decent Sunday evening apéritif. Serve chilled, preferably at dusk.
Please note: this review is also printed in #145 of Australian Guitar Magazine, syndicated here because AG’s album reviews are no longer published online.
It is a muggy Sunday morning here in Western Sydney, and I am currently buried under a veritable mountain of blankets (with a fan blasting at full power about 20cm from my face, because… contrast). September was a pretty hectic month – hence the last two NME round-ups not even having intros – but I’m currently enjoying a chill day off and mentally preparing myself for an even more insane October.
On that note, we’re only a week out from COVID restrictions (supposedly) easing in NSW, which means I should be able to start house-hunting (and finally see Shang-Chi, holy shit) later this month! I’m just crossing my fingers in hopes that the border to Victoria opens soon too, or that we’re at least able to start applying for permits to cross it. Right now my LGA is a grey zone, which means we aren’t able to cross any interstate borders unless it is an absolute, extreme-case emergency. But hopefully that’s gonna change soon!
My highlight this week is the new track by Whatever, Forever – a pop-punk/emo/hardcore-ish outfit from my own batting grounds of Western Sydney – which landed on Friday. Five EPs down and they still won’t commit to a full-length album, but at least we’re getting new music from them at all – and fucking sick music, at that. I’ve linked “Ghost Of Me” after the jump, but in the meantime, here’s everything I got up to at NME this week:
I hope everyone reading this had a fantastic month, and has an even better October. I don’t really have much to report on my end (we’re still in lockdown, but it’s looking more and more likely that we’ll actually get out of it next month), so here’s everything I got up to around the Internet throughout September.
I think my favourite album this month was Sleigh Bells’ Texis, which feels like the definitive distillation of their warbly, off-kilter pop and rock ebullience – dare I call it hyper-rock? – into an ultra-bright eruption of fun and fucked-up production perfectly suited for the rollercoaster ride that has been 2021. Here I’ve tacked on my favourite track from the record, ‘Tennessee Tips’.
