Band: Tiny Little Houses Album: Misericorde Label: Ivy League Release: November 19th, 2021
Rating: 9/10
The tagline for Misericorde boasts that it chronicles Caleb Karvountzis’ “search for salvation through suffering”. That’s enough to lure in any emo worth their eyeliner, but what’ll keep them buckled in are the gristly, jacked‑up pop guitars, brute-force beats and razor-sharp honesty.
Three years removed from Tiny Little Houses’ debut (2018’s Idiot Proverbs), Karvountzis has levelled up from a tinnie‑slamming sad-boy to a cosmopolitan family man. Thus – and yes, we acknowledge how cliché this is to say – it’s a notably matured album. Such is tangible in the gravity of Karvountzis’ songwriting, but even moreso in the band en bloc’s musicality: the riffs are bold, crunchy and calamitous but never grating or obnoxious, and the hooks, while buoyant and catchy, wield a striking emotional weight.
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 in the intro for the last roundup, two weeks ago, I mentioned that Milo and I were heading down to Naarm/Melbourne for a week to look at a couple of apartments (see: 18 of them). We ended up finding one that we adored – the second one we looked at, on our first day in the city – and we managed to have our application processed and approved within a day… So, uh… We live in Naarm now! Postcode 3000, baybeeeeeee!
We moved everything in yesterday. I am… Very exhausted 😅
So with that said, I’m not gonna do much of an intro this time around. But I have linked two songs from the past fortnight that I have been frothing HARD – ‘27 Club’ by Trophy Eyes and ‘Say It To My Face’ by DZ Deathrays – and the new film clip for ‘The Man Himself’ by Gang Of Youths, because it is just spellbinding.
Nevertheless, here’s everything I got up to at NME over the past couple of weeks!
Artist: Courtney Barnett Album: Things Take Time, Take Time Label: Milk! / Remote Control Release: November 12th, 2021
Rating: 8.5/10
CB’s 2015 debut was brisk, bright and lively, like a summer’s day at the beach. Its follow-up was sharp, ripping and acerbic, like the storm that night. So, naturally, LP3 feels like the morning after: foggy and humid, debris from the wind scattered over the lawn. It’s clear Barnett is much more comfortable in her storytelling these days – the songs are reflective, inspired, and distinctly human.
Production is loose and experimental; percussive clicks and pops meld with raw, cerebral fretwork. The soundscape is overall very sparse and relaxed, letting tracks like the drowsy, pseudo-celestial “Here’s The Thing” and the groovy, buoyant and punchy (if far too short) “Take It Day By Day” really shine.
Though certainly not as immediate or memorable as Barnett’s earlier work, Things Take Time is beautiful and brilliant in many ways.
Please note: this review is also printed in #144 of Australian Guitar Magazine, syndicated here because AG’s album reviews are no longer published online.
Things Take Time, Take Time is set for release on November 12th, 2021 via Milk! / Remote Control. Click here to pre-order.
Band: Snail Mail Album: Valentine Label: Matador / Remote Control Release: November 5th, 2021
Rating: 9/10
Equally as glittery as it was melancholic, Lush – the aptly titled debut from Maryland indie stalwart Snail Mail (aka Lindsey Jordan) – had a notable ‘lightning in a bottle’-esque quality. It wowed with meticulous production and conscientious songwriting, but it also shone for its blithesome looseness and brazen confidence, Jordan committing herself wholly both as a classically trained musician with an ear for technicality and a dorky queer teen living in the peak of meme culture.
Three years on, Jordan doesn’t try to recreate that magic. It would seem she isn’t so keen, either, to reinvent herself – she knows she has a niche, and she’s happy to lean into it – but there’s a clear determination to evolve and experiment. Where warm, fuzzed-out Jaguar chords laid the groundwork on Lush, they’re just one small chunk of a much broader, more vibrantly vegetated soundscape on Valentine. We open with the title track, filmy and ethereal synths flooding the mix as Jordan’s cool, honeyed rasp dances over them – until about a minute in, when she and her band erupt into a bold and emphatic chorus.
There’s a fierce, St. Vincent-channelling swagger on “Ben Franklin”, and a dip down into the doughier, more pensive indie flair of Jordan’s early work on “Headlock”. In succession, these three tracks paint an orphic and arresting picture of the album as a whole: rich, soul-baring songwriting twined around poignant and pictorial – and above all, interesting – melodies.
But as the album continues to unwind, so too does it continue to surprise – whether it be via the folky acoustic fingerstyle and warm violin on ‘Light Blue’, heady tinges of blustery ‘90s pop on ‘Forever (Sailing)’, or subtle, smoky prongs of bass guitar on ‘Madonna’, tastefully accented by eerie stringwork and a warbling synth. Even the most zealous fans are bound to blindsided by something unpredictable – yet entirely welcomed – as not a second of Valentine feels like it was penned without the utmost care and consideration.
Jordan’s use of space is especially admirable. A track can have two guitars, a kinetic beat, strings and synths in abundance and her own dryly sung, kaleidoscopic quips, yet never feel cluttered. In fact, the record often sounds distinctly lowkey, Jordan maintaining a prudent tact throughout despite such a dense array of colours and tones at her disposal.
This, too, is reflected boldly in her lyricisms – sharp and stormy, but delivered in such a way that makes Jordan come off as down-to-earth and reticent. She never teeters on vaudeville, but the dramatisation of her inner turmoil is always gripping and grandiose. She drums up a wealth of emotion, potent and impassioned, and makes it all look effortless in the process.
So, on Valentine, Jordan doesn’t look to recreate the magic she made with Lush; instead, she makes a whole new kind of magic – one that is endlessly more… Uh… Magical.
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.
Valentine is set for release on November 5th, 2021 via Matador / Remote Control. Click here to pre-order.
