Essential Releases, October 11, 2024 (original) (raw)
ESSENTIAL RELEASES Essential Releases, October 11, 2024 By Bandcamp Daily Staff · October 11, 2024 
What the Bandcamp Daily editors are listening to right now.
Black Ends
Seattle’s best band don’t disappoint on their long-awaited full-length, neatly cutting through the oppressive cloud of shoegaze, dream pop, and other vibe-based kinds of guitar music currently clogging up our feeds with a non-affected style of grunge revivalism the band calls “Gunk Pop” (capitalization theirs). The music actually lives up to the moniker, too, frontperson Nicolle Swims’ gnarly pop hooks twinkling beneath a thin layer of scum, all bent and bluesy one moment, crunchy and gross the next. And yet, this music wants to be liked, maybe even commercial. Nirvana comparisons seem encouraged; Lori Goldston makes a guest appearance. But if Black Ends have greater ambitions than playing every DIY warehouse in America, well, they should.
– Mariana Timony
Help
PSA to all the noise-rock fans in the audience: seek Help immediately! The upstart Portland wrecking crew have longstanding ties to the Rose City’s indie pop scene—guitarist Ryan Neighbors is the former keyboardist of Portugal. The Man, while drummer Ben Ditson manned the kit for the now-defunct band And And And. Between the screamed declarations of class war, the propulsive dynamic exchanges, and the distorted guitar assaults, though, it’s safe to assume they won’t be making the Starbucks playlist any time soon. But for those of you who prefer their rock mean, raw, and a touch sardonic (think Chat Pile and METZ), Courage is the perfect introduction. Arriving via institutional noise-rock label Three One G, it’ offers two great noise-rock EPs for the price of one: an all-new six-track release produced by Sonny DiPerri (Animal Collective, Protomartyr, My Bloody Valentine), for which it’s titled; and the band’s 2019 debut, which is more lo-fi but no less rowdy. Check it out, and remember to play it loud.
–Zoe Camp
Mustafa The Poet
On his tender full-length debut Dunya, Toronto’s Mustafa the Poet broaches complex emotional truths with a disarming simplicity. Against warm, acoustic arrangements, the Sudanese-Canadian poet-turned-songwriter reflects on the—at times contradictory—roles religious faith, violence, and intimacy play as a young Muslim growing up in the projects. “Whose Lord are you naming/ When you start to break things?” Mustafa asks on opener “Name of God,” directing his scorn to the person he had just prayed next to. His deep vocal tone delivers each verse with an emotional weariness of someone beyond his years, at times taking on a hymnal quality. On “Imaan,” the story of a secret relationship—kept hidden due to either religious or racial prejudice—becomes a metaphor for the tightrope many young Muslims walk when taking part in Western social life and abiding by the values of Islam—not always at the same time. Mustafa brilliantly threads this tension throughout the album through the inclusion of North African and Arabic musicianship alongside American folk-influenced guitar playing. This blend reaches its sonic apex on the devotional “I’ll Go Anywhere,” where fingerstyle guitar picking accompanies hand clapping and the overlapping, polyrhythmic voices of a women’s choir singing in Arabic. Through odes to his late brother (“What Happened, Mohamed”) and childhood friends (“SNL”) Mustafa is able to reflect with novelistic detail on childhood memories colored by gang violence and on the trajectories that trauma took in their lives. By the time we reach the heartbreaking “Leaving Toronto,” he’s ready to burn it all down—the city, the past—but has nowhere else to go. “And if they ever kill me/ Make sure they bury me next to my brother/ Make sure my killer has money for a lawyer,” he intones on the song’s outro. Like its title, which roughly translates to “the world in all its flaws,” Dunya is able to stare down contradictions and yet still find grace in the in-between.
–Stephanie Barclay
Klô Pelgag
If only there were a word—a single, silly word—that could bring to life our heart’s desire! Like the desire to believe in something wholeheartedly, unselfconsciously, and without cynicism. POOF. Uncertainty is gone! Well, unfortunately you won’t find that in Abracadabra, but Klô Pelgag is looking for it. There are moments when the French-Canadian can be found offering consoling words to some figure off-stage, blaming their blues on a bad winter, reminding them of the taste of mangos (“Le goût des mangues”). Despite its attempts at magical thinking, Abracadabra is a charmed but troubling landscape. A carnivalesque mélange of synth-driven art pop, baroque orchestration, and psychedelic chanson, Klô Pelgag (real name Chloé Pelletier-Gagnon) traverses sonic realms that span the pretty and pensive (“Sans visage”) to the nightmarish (“Décembre”). Even its lead single, “Libre,” though sweetly danceable, is colored by icy synths that flurry into dark maelstrom by song’s end. (To those of us who have trekked to a rave during a Montreal winter, you can sympathize with the overall vibe.) Notably, Pelletier-Gagnon took over production duties on this record, making Abracadabra a real creative triumph for this ever exploratory musician.
–Stephanie Barclay
Sixpence None The Richer
Everybody’s got one: The artist most of the world considers a “one hit wonder,” but whose one Big Hit doesn’t do their full catalog justice. (The Verve is probably the ideal example of this). In 1999, Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” became so synonymous with Rachel Leigh Cook taking off her glasses to discover that she’s beautiful that you’d never believe the album it came from was a stark, despondent affair that stared down artistic failure—the group was three albums into their career at that point—in lyrics like, “This is my forty-fifth depressing tune,” and “We’re all dying and we’d like to know/ If we/ Should pack our tents, shut down the show.” The group’s return with the short, sharp Rosemary Hill EP is sure to please fans like me—people who were there before the hit and who stuck around afterwards. There are only slight tweaks to the group’s formula—sparkling, beatific jangle-pop a la The Sundays —but where they happen, they pay off. For example: “Julia,” a honey of an alt-radio track whose chugging guitar calls to mind later career singles by The Pretenders or Blondie and whose lyrics give frontwoman Leigh Nash the opportunity to inject some wry sarcasm into her tone. (There’s an audible eyeroll in her delivery of the line, “Back to mama and her new boyfriend/ Another new boyfriend/ They got a new place.”) Sixpence seems to have stumbled into the perfect time to re-emerge: Sabrina Carpenter has been covering “Kiss Me” live, and Blackpink member LISA incorporated bits of it into her new single “Moonlit Floor.” Hopefully some percentage of this new generation uses that song as a map back to the album that contains it (…and the album that preceded it, and this new EP…) where some musically radiant and emotionally raw alt-pop awaits.
–J. Edward Keyes
The Submissives
. 00:10 / 00:58
The Submissives make the exact kind of lightly dissonant, Raincoats-meets-the-Shangri-Las post-punk with floaty female vocals that some people will instantly love and others will find annoyingly unlistenable, and you probably already know which camp you fall into. If you count yourself amongst the fans of this particular style, there is a lot to enjoy about Live at Value Sound Studios, which has fragmented hooks picked out with spidery guitars, woozy flutes and violins, and a persistent sense of a screw being loose somewhere, just rattling below all those prettily trilled lyrics about Betty with a head full of spaghetti.
– Mariana Timony
Vega7 & Ayo Shamir
Griotes of the 3rd Rail, the new record from Vega7 the Ronin is aptly named. Throughout the record—a collaboration with gifted producer Ayo Shamir—the Queens rapper operates with the knowledge that the same thing that gives him power might be the very thing that ends up killing him. The album is an airtight examination of the prizes and perils of pursuing a career in hip-hop, and across its 12 tracks, the enemies are never far from view. But what makes Griotes so distinctive is Vega7’s nuanced understanding of the obstacles; on album centerpiece “War Flowerz,” he threads his way through an internal wrestling match with focused, bracing writing: “I hate my art/ left for the audience to judge/ was uncomfortable with positive words when I caught a buzz/ all the hate absorbed in my blood/ if I’m honest, I felt more at home with 80 followers back when I had to crawl through the mud/ So I create ‘enemy’ narratives that can support my grudge.” Vega7 has been building a name for himself over the last two years with that kind of dextrous, dazzling wordplay, and on Griotes, his skill reaches new heights. At points, Vega7 digs so deep that it takes multiple playbacks to appreciate the layers of meaning in each bar. (Although props to Tillz for a bar that made me actually LOL: “A buncha George Clooneys out here/ men who stare at GOATs.”) Ayo Shamir supports his efforts with production that ranges from dreamlike synth backdrops (“Changing of the Guard”) to anxious chipmunk soul (“Ronin”). Unflinchingly honest and utterly cliche-free, Griotes continues Vega7’s winning streak.