The best new albums this week
The albums you simply can’t do without
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Warmduscher – At The Hotspot (Bella Union)
It’s all change for this, the fourth long-player from the Warmduscher camp. Not only have the fuzzed-out London-based outfit moved from one excellent label (Tony Morley’s The Leaf Label) to another (Simon Raymonde’s Bella Union), but there’s been a last-minute substitution in the producer’s chair.
Having been at the controls for the last two albums, Speedy Wonderground’s Dan Carey (the hardest working man in show business) was lined up for this one, but just as everyone was ready to go Carey got blimmin’ Covid. Warmduscher aren’t a band known for hanging around (their last outing, 2019’s frantic ‘Tainted Lunch’, was recorded in four days) so with the clock ticking they turned to Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard and Al Doyle for some expert knob twiddling. The result is still very much the scuzzy Warmduscher we’ve come to love, but this time it’s super-charged with a polished funk sound. “Like stumbling home to your squatted loft after a drunken night at the local disco” say their people. Quite so.
Just to lull you into a false sense of security, opener ‘Live At The Hotspot’ is a late-night smoocher. A kind of tuxe-no-bow-tie set-closing kind of tune, played in a smoky, underground, backstreet jazz bar, you know, the sort of place you’d imagine Clams Baker Jr and co to hang out. It gives way to ‘Hot Shot’, which revs like a motorbike, opening up the throttle as the pressure builds towards ‘Eight Minute Machines’, which is where things really start cooking. Its scattergun Sigue Sigue Sputnik/kosmische pulse locks down as everything they’ve got is chucked over the top.
‘At The Hotspot’ was written on and off during the various lockdowns so when the band managed to get together, as Clams says, “we were just happy to be doing something and seeing each other”. And that’s exactly how this record feels. It’s like a celebration of sorts, the energy pours off it. The ass-shaking ‘Five Star Rated’ has flecks of Groove Armada’s ‘I See You Baby’ about it, while the brilliant ‘Twitchin’ In The Kitchen’ makes me think of Toni Basil’s shout-along ‘Hey Mickey’ – it’s a mash-up waiting to happen (please, someone).
Clams says during the sessions they were feeding off a weird lockdown kind of energy, “Where you’re fed up and you’re kind of angry, but in a good way”. It comes across both barrels on the delicious gutter-mouthed full-blown disco glitterball eruption of ‘Wild Flowers’. Gutter-mouthed? Yeah. “And fuck that old lady that gives you that fucking stink eye / Fuck that little stupid dog with its fucking furry collar / Fuck it all motherfucker I’m going straight to The Hotspot / Whooo!”. We all know that feeling from recent times, that urge to go somewhere to just get away from it all.
Closer ‘Greasin’ Up Jesus’ is a two-for-one song as it changes tack entirely halfway, morphing into a whole different track whose ‘Love Action’ riff is the sort of thing that has us on our feet and clapping like seals at fish time. At six minutes or so it’s also the longest track here. That few of these songs extend beyond three and a half minutes is quite something. Remixers should form an orderly queue, they’d have a ball with this groove machine.
‘At The Hotspot’ is unmistakably Warmduscher, just all buffed up and shiny. It still shimmers with garage rock, but on tracks like ‘Fatso’ they’re channelling the likes of Parliament/Funkadelic… in a post-punk kind of way. The way they ride a groove, as on the smooth funk-fuelled ‘Baby Toe Joe’, is a proper joy.
While it must’ve been a wrench to work without Carey on duty, they’ve lost non of the uncompromising originality that has come to define them. ‘At The Hotspot’ only adds to their impressive cannon. The problem they’re faced with now of course is do they stick with Hot Chip for the next one or revert to Dan Carey? A nice problem to have. This is brilliant stuff.
NM
Hollie Cook ‘Happy Hour‘ (Merge)
Hollie Cook returns with her latest tropical pop meditations with her fifth studio album, presenting some of her finest work to date on ‘Happy Hour’. With a sound rooted in authentic lover’s rock, the British singer and keyboardist brings a contemporary flourish to her music that sets it apart from the strictly revivalist.
Her deeply personal lyrics, occasionally melancholic tone and the powerful sincerity of her vocal performance endow her music with a polychromatic edge, while her heritage extending deep into UK music’s radical core dictates that carrying the torch, in the manner in which she does, is something akin to a birthright. Of course, according to her punk lineage – her father is Sex Pistols’ drummer, Paul Cook – concepts such as patrimony should probably be spat on from a great height. Fortunately, though, since Hollie so inarguably possesses the musical goods, any theoretical quarrelling is rendered redundant. ‘Happy Hour’ begins with the album’s title track, where, true to form, we find Cook’s searingly sincere vocal rise with unquenchable yearning over the syncopated rhythms. Unglossed and unrequited love is the theme here, sung so (bitter)sweetly that all but the most stoic listener would surely be seduced by the serenade.
Maintaining the mood, ‘Moving On’ is enlivened by the inclusion of a stirring string section, before the cosmic tones and psychedelic synths of ‘Full Moon Baby’ offer a glimmer of hope that flickers like the stars in the Caribbean night’s sky. Jah9 joins the party on the sparkling ode to the sacred herb on ‘Kush Kween’, while familiar themes return amidst the growling bass and ska horns of ‘Unkind Love’. The strings reappear to provide a cinematic feel to the brilliantly ominous ‘Gold Girl’, with its dub delays and stretched arrangement. ‘Love In The Dark’ strikes an atmospheric chord, with ethereal pads and stripped instrumentation providing a gloriously spacey bed for Cook’s celestial lead, and the broken rhythms, rousing horns and dense choral harmonies of ‘Move My Way’ offer a refreshing change of pace. Finally, the honeyed refrains of ‘Praying’ see the album out in fittingly evocative fashion, fanning the flames of the previously teased hope as jaunty organ solos and soothing harmonies serve to assuage our trouble and strife. Magnificent work.
PC
V/A ‘Produto Interno Bruto’ (Percebes Musica)
Lisbon-based Percebes Música show up with their first long-playing various artists compilation, casting the net far and wide on the delectably expansive ‘Produto Interno Bruto’. The label, headed by veteran DJ and producer, Ka§par, have been presenting work from a close-knit band of like-minded creative souls since 2018. Excellent music has arrived from Daino, Sheri Vari, Helder Russo, and Ka§par, among others, and their latest foray allows for some seriously versatile curational game. Here, the Percebes team go all out, presenting genre-busting work from a hand-picked selection of creators. ‘Produto Interno Bruto’ translates as gross domestic product, and, true to the title, the bulk of the work comes from Portuguese artists. A seasoning of kindred international spirits complete the blend, and the net result is genuinely impressive.
The collection starts on a strong footing, with dab hand Leonidas joining forces with TK1 to set the mood via the low-slung chug of ‘Vanilla’. Change Request forges a soul-soothing cosmic-boogie hybrid on the Balearic charge of ‘The Looking Glass’, with its sparkling harmonics and reassuring bass weight. Before we get too settled, 2Jack4U switches the rhythm with the sparse, broken textures of ‘Seamless Dub’, before Basic Soul Unit’s dreamy ‘Right Now’ fills in the gaps with blissfully evolving synth melodies for one of the LP’s highlights.
Elsewhere, Daino brings a futurist d&b flex on the fizzing breaks of ‘Razorback’, before Daniele Monaco and Marco Spaventi dive deep into the cosmos with the heavenly synth waves and chocolatey live bass of ‘Prophet Mysteria’. More forward-facing junglish textures appear in the form of ‘Can’t Handle It’ by AI:X, while the Detroit-infused electro swirls of DJ Flick’s ‘River Rift’ proves another subaquatic delight with its detuned chords and hard-hitting rhythm. The enigmatic pads and distorted drums of ‘Butterfly Effect’ from Cyclonix echo of vintage Luke Slater, before Singaporean producer Eddie Niguel offers his twisted techno interpretation with the wiggy chords and pounding rhythms of ‘Life’. There’s so much to admire here, the collection is bold, atmospheric, and fantastically coherent. If you enjoy underground electronic music, finding at least something you enjoy here should be a pretty safe bet.
PC
Joyce Manor – 40 oz. to Fresno (Epitaph)
For over a decade, Joyce Manor have epitomised pop-punk’s cathartic power. Although they bear some of the genre’s conventions – namely their impassioned expression of suburban angst and songs that breeze by in one or two minutes – they don’t sit squarely within its walls. If you go back through their albums so far, you’ll find traces of Midwest emo, chugging power-pop and delicate, jangly indie rock. Their channelling of influences posits them as one of the most curious yet inventive bands of their ilk.
40 oz. to Fresno evokes the scrappiness of Joyce Manor’s early work but continues the arc they’ve been on since 2016’s Cody. It results in some of the catchiest songs in the band’s arsenal. Take ‘NBTSA’, a 2017 single given a fresh lick of paint. It’s the musical equivalent to dropping Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke; guitars fizz as Thaxton’s drums and Matt Ebert’s bass drive towards the eruptive chorus. As jubilant as the song is, it reflects Johnson’s bubbling anxiety, which intensifies at the titular refrain.
The dichotomy between fragility and buoyancy is well-trodden ground for Johnson. 40 oz. to Fresno is strewn with familiar weariness. On pop-punk throwback ‘Gotta Let It Go’, he reminisces about walking aimlessly at night and hitching a ride in his friend’s stolen car, ultimately coming to terms with his lost youth. He’s at his most direct on ‘Don’t Try’, where he achingly admits to his loneliness (“I feel so far away/I missed you so much today”).
It’s Joyce Manor’s ability to meld disparate styles that still sets them apart. Whether it’s the wistful ‘Reason to Believe’ with its chiming guitar, or the heartfelt Weezer soundalike ‘Secret Sisters’, every song is quintessentially them. While their pop-punk peers stagnate, Joyce Manor continue to take interesting and surprising shapes.
MDW
Yatra – Born Into Chaos (Prosthetic)
Maryland death-sludge trio, Yatra, make their despicable return on the highly anticipated fourth full-length, ‘Born Into Chaos.’ Marking their first offering of new material since 2020’s one-two punch that gave us the double offering of ‘Blood of the Night’, and, ‘All Is Lost’, one can’t shake the looming sense of a band not content with their own ferocity.
The notable increase on sludging, brutal death metal fury is evident from the first moments of the unforgiving ‘Death Cantation’, while the deeper the hellscape goes, the more challenging the walls of viscera soaked uncertainty become to climb.
Pushing out their compositional approach to lengthier cuts than ever before, dense visceral mammoths such as the 6-minute, ‘Wrath of the Warmaster’, or colossal closer, ‘Tormentation’, serve as the most expansive yet simultaneously abrasive work of their relatively short career.
With squelching, muted vocal work crushed under the sonic weight as well as being smothered by compression, there’s an unnerving sense of hearing a dying creature bellowing from beneath its early grave.
Part brutal death revival, part harsh sludge-doom, on ‘Born Into Chaos’, Yatra not only decimate their own preceding releases, but stake a claim for one of the most brutal albums of 2022.
ZB
Deathwhite – Grey Everlasting (Season Of Mist)
Pennsylvania gothic-doomsters, Deathwhite, mark their decade long tenure with a desolate, devastating, yet disturbingly vindicating collection on ‘Grey Everlasting.’
Following on from 2020’s grandiose, ‘Grave Image’, the atmospheric, near-tranquil bombast of their compositions has been placed even further underneath a microscope, in the group’s own terms, in order to search for the muted beauty within their cacophony.
Tackling ever-present themes of political corruption, the failings of the human condition as well as toying with the prospect of ensuing extinction, might seem like weighty, difficult material to process, but the ethereal clean vocals, balanced against malodorous walls of trudging venom, conjure aural depictions that hit home far more than any listener will care to admit.
From the thundering, distant malice of ‘Earthtomb’, to more despondent fare such as standout track, ‘Formless’, a notable lack of reference grants the material a sense of uncertainty and loss throughout.
With blistering production presided over by Erik Rutan, whose credentials boast the likes of Cannibal Corpse and Hate Eternal, it’s hard to ignore the seal of approval subconsciously granted. Continuing down their own carved out path where gloom and revery intertwine with no clear consequence or closure, ‘Gray Everlasting’, is the epitome of a metal group with absolutely no concern for reception, or reservation, just conception in all of its valiant, triumphant, bleak glory.
ZB
A Will Away – Stew (Rude)
It’s been a long five-year stretch since A Will Away wowed the emo-revival scene with their exceptional sophomore effort, ‘Here Again.’
The follow-up ‘Soup’ EP would also mark the Connecticut outfit’s last project with genre procurators, Triple Crown, before opting for a new labelhome with Rude Records. Stew’ marks the band’s full transition from self-described “cookie-cutter pop-punk” to “eighties pop-rock on acid,” showcasing complete and utter disregard for the machinations of their peers.
Foregoing the shoegaze/dream-pop route a hefty percentage of modern emo/pop-punk acts perceive to be their only natural option, cuts like the serene single, ‘I’ve Got A Five’ or the emotive slacker-grunge hew of ‘Spittin’ Chiclets’, mark just how purposefully far removed, seasoned and mature this long-gestating material is from their preceding works.
Even initial single, ‘Karma’, released all the way back in October of last year, teems with Prince-like 80’s pop finesse without ever getting bogged down in artificial cosplaying enhancement (here’s looking at you, The 1975). Removing any and all preconceived genre confines from their youthful beginnings whilst managing to retain the initial charm and relatability that captivated fans half a decade ago, ‘Stew’ is the sound of a band growing up and sharpening their skillset yet refusing to become slaves to nostalgia.
ZB
This week’s reviewers – Neil Mason, Patrizio Cavaliere, Oli Warwick, Zach Buggy. Matthew D Watkin.