Le Big Zero—the experimental indie quartet in their final and truest collaborative form—returns with a new EP to follow up last year’s quirky gem, A Proper Mess. Riding upon the shoulders of giants that came before, and citing influences like Parquet Courts, Les Savy Fav, Pavement, and Speedy Ortiz, the band brings mammoth waves of jagged intensity dotted with brief moments of resolve. Opening track “Watch it Burn” immediately boxes your ears with biting guitars wound tight with intricate composition. It’s undeniably punchy, and super catchy, knocking you slightly off balance due to their stylemarked odd time drenched in vocal harmony.
The record is full of nerdy breakdowns and explosive breakouts. Lead single “Toy” however, serves a direct hit, busting through syncopated mood shifts, discord, and toe curling vocal movements. Ben Ross (bass) and Lukas Hirsch (drums) do a lot of the heavy lifting here, rhythmically tying in echoes of The Toadies crossed with that side of Foo Fighters that was trying to achieve Sunny Day Real Estate.
Having evolved over time, finally landing on this lineup of players, the band leaned on each other this go-round in a way that wasn’t possible before due to their prior history of cross-country moves and a rotating cast of crucial but temporary bandmates. The result here was much of the album coming together organically in the rehearsal space, over the course of extended jams. “We knew the new two-guitar approach would wholly change the song-writing process and how songs would develop,” explains Michael Pasuit (guitar, vocals).
Together with Katie Cooney (guitar, vocals, and keyboards), Pasuit has struck the perfect balance. Their voices beautifully interlock like they’ve always belonged to each other and have spend all of existence just searching to coexist. Cooney brings a subtle snark and an almost Tracy Bonham-like quality that offsets Pasuit’s Get Up Kids delivery. Between its big chords, and slacker grunge moments, the angular math rock at its core is only slightly masked by its pop sensibility. In this way, “Nice to Meet You” is the clear hero of this record. It’s a peppy banger who’s quick zig zags and clear hooks are further punctuated by its windier slower sections.
Le Big Zero sets out to defy expectations. Expect the unexpected from the this unassuming band of weirdos as you deep dive into At Arms Length. Maybe for a minute we forget the world is a crazy place and the skies are constantly burning. Maybe we let go of our shitty days and share a brief moment of connection with another human person. Maybe we can take the whole crazy system and turn it on its damn head.
At Arms Length is out now via Mint 400 Records and is available on all major streamers.
Whether you’re ready to check in for a relaxing week at the The Great Northern, or just in the mood for a nice warm glass of Kool-Aid before bed (or anything in between really), the new LP Freak Me Out from your favorite Red/Blue Light noise rockers, A Very Special Episode, is available now everywhere music exists across all the digital and physical realms.
The long awaited and highly anticipated latest release from from the sinister trio comes after one of the most robust and well executed marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen from a local band. You can’t hold a conversation in line for the bathroom at Alphaville or at the bar up on the roof at Our Wicked Lady without someone riffing on the now infamous “It’s not a grift, it’s self discovery” tagline. And to anyone out there who has not yet taken pause to recognize just how good this band has gotten lo these last couple years, that joke is indeed on you.
Following up to 2021 not-so-sleeper hit Fix Your Hearts Or Die, everything is bigger this time around. The loud parts are louder, the textures richer, and much more dynamic in it’s execution than on previous endeavors. The band shows a clear evolution, taking risks regarding songwriting and layered structure, probably somewhat due in part to recording with Jeff Berner at Brooklyn’s Studio G, but mostly because this band embodies extremely synergetic communication through their musical love language. The Alice In Wonderland nod “Deep in the Weeds” is a perfect embodiment of this. “We wanted to allow for more pop-style melodies,” notes singer/bassist Kasey Heisler. “We were inspired by Halsey’s record with Trent Reznor, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. She laid her vocal sensibilities overtop heavier music, and it slaps!”
Freak Me Out wonderfully builds upon the band’s signature sound while at the same time exploring its limits. “The goal was, ‘let’s take every idea we have to their logical extremes,’”says guitarist Patrick Porter. And pushing those limits clearly paid off on tracks like “Neon Stars” which quickly spirals itself downward into the stuff from which nightmares are made. The song feels like Twin Peaks crossed with Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” existing in a realm that’s slowed and warbled as though trying to run through molasses. Chayse Schutter, the band’s cyclone slaughterhouse of a drummer, shares with us his behind-the-kit perspective. “Bands with songs that have slower tempos, like Cloakroom, inspired me to slow the tempo of ‘Neon Stars’ way down, making it emotionally resonate at a higher level.”
There’s no shortage of hit paraders throughout the LP, the preceding trail of lead singles heralding its release alone could hypothetically make up an EP that would top most tastemakers year-ends. From cult classic in the making disco synth bop “Heaven’s Gate” to “5 Dollar Cover,” (the band’s very own homage to their peers in the Brooklyn DIY scene who not only serve as reflective inspiration, but also make up the very substance of their universe), the saccharine sour sensibilities are enough to keep your mouth watering.
However, deep within the tempest onslaught of noise and catchy hooks swimming up against the barrage of heavy rip-tide riffs washed over power-pop melodies, it’s one of the few quiet moments that really draws focus. Right in the eye of the storm, sits the heart wrenching “Perfect Rain” which so beautifully articulates the fleeting nature of our human encounters. Much of its heavy lifting propped up by a single hesitant acoustic guitar riff, the duet between Heisler and Schutter is about as unexpected as the creepy synth line that dots it’s cold and regretful melody before tearing into the album’s most powerful rock moment by far.
As innovative as it endearing, as imaginative as it is self-aware, A Very Special Episode’s Freak Me Out is not only the best thing they’ve released as a band, but also is the best release I’ve had the pleasure of unpeeling in recent memory. But you don’t have to take my word for it, you can listen to it yourself. Just be sure you follow them on BandNada first.
Freak Me Outis available now via EWEL Records and available on all major streamers. Read our Q&A with the band to find out more about the making of the record.
After crossing paths with Idaho Green at a Halloween show we played together years ago, I quickly fell in love with the lo-fi quartet. We shared a mutual love for their fellow Montana-based legacy punkers, The Lillingtons, and that’s bond that can never be broken. The Big Sky fellas are back with a grimy new EP that’s catchy as all get out. As much Fifteen at its core as it is Dinosaur Jr. is is on the edges, the whole thing is glued together with a Superchunk feel that once again showcases the band’s ability to highlight the best elements of the last four decades of music and still deliver a cohesive sound to a new generation of kids on the fringe.
The new EP feels like a classic Side A / Side B with “Dreams of Double Ashley” and “I Will Wait” holding up as stand-alone pop tunes. Sugar sweet with a fuzz punch attack, it’s nasty guitars and impassioned distorted vocals in all the right ways to keep your toes tapping. “Virgelle Victor” and “Polly Pocket Will Have Her Revenge” (nice nod to the Nirvana classic, “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle”) have a wilder heavy attack. Seamlessly functioning as a single track for the virtual B side, they are ripe for head bangs, floor punches, and circle pits, with a guitar onslaught that would make Thurston Moore smile.
The band has said “The rednecks don’t like us ’cause they think we’re art kids, the art kids don’t like us ’cause they think we’re rednecks,” and no truer words have been spoken. So if you find yourself a lonely punk wandering somewhere in between, you may just LOVE Idaho Green.
Double Ashley / Virgelle to Victor is out now via Bandcamp and all major streamers.
“One tricky thing about turning big traumas directly into songs is that it compartmentalizes the memory and takes you away from the horror of it, and into a round of mix notes, but that’s Hollywood, baby,” expains Eva Lawitts, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist of project Stimmerman, as she describes the band’s latest album Undertaking. At times reminiscent of Elliott Smith, other times seeming to nod toward Chicago—often times both within the same phrase—we here at Full Time Aesthetic have been keeping close tabs on this release since they unraveled upon us their nervous breakdown single “House Party” back in February (see our thoughts here).
Much of the record exists in the moments of early 2020, following the death of Lawitts’s close friend and the onset of a global pandemic that shutdown their world on a number of levels for a multitude of reasons. The unassuming album opener “Growing Under” employs delicate fragility, exposing acoustic tones and a vulnerable vocal, common on this record, but largely absent on prior releases, that closely follows the melodic rhythmic pathways ushered in by the herald of trumpeting horns. It’s a thread that returns and twists it’s head in warped and warbled ways through “Fast & Never,” which Lawitts explains is specifically about the hours she spent standing around on her phone, informing all of her mutual friends one after the other that their friend had just died.
“These topics seem heavy I guess, but they also feel like they’re impossibly far in the past,” Lawitts explains. “In 2020 and 2021 there was a lot of ambiguity, confusion, fear, blame, previously unfathomable loss etc. We can’t always say what it was all about.” Songs like “Hungry God,” are definitely a bit more ambiguous and far more frantic in nature, with angular guitars and uneasy panic in the saxophones.
Shapes and shadows are a common theme in the lyrics as noted by Dylan LaPointe (of Debbie Dopamine), who recently described the music as “dynamic, tender, punishing, chaotic, gorgeous, and full of motifs that tie each album together. Eva’s music hits that part of you that wants to scream, cry, laugh maniacally, and maybe eat some cured meats at 2 in the morning.” On tracks like “Promise U Will,” Stimmerman takes us indeed from menacing triumph to doom and back to the allure of familiar sorrow and the constant pivoting of restless emotion. It’s only at the end of this fitful sea of soul and spirit that Stimmerman cauterizes the distorted existential journey with strangely odd pop dissonant “Ruptured Lung” closer which feels like slightly sickened deep cut from a lost Muffs session.
Undertaking is a complete and total freefall from the weight of feeling; its ugly beauty lies in continually knocking you off balance every time you achieve even a modicum of emotional closure. The permanent pinballl ride is one we all take together, but the random course that chooses us is ultimately traveled alone.
Undertaking is out now and available via Bandcamp and all major streamers.
Rarely do a band name and record title both land so on point. But just in time for the hot New York City summer, the sun soaked beachy vibes of Brooklyn jangly surf rock quartet, Jelly Kelly are fully dialed in on their latest release. Led by Keith Kelly (guitar, vocals), the group is fleshed out by Dom Bodo (bass), Jared Apuzzo (drums) and Nicolas Dube (guitar), and together provide a warm fuzzy bedrock for cool crisp melodies to coast their way across the tracks. Bodo and Apuzzo are in perfect rhythmic lockstep on tracks like “Love Language” and “Warm Water” carving space for the guitars to slide in and out and the vocals to breathe and soar across the gaps.
This EP is much more than a surfy groove crossed with killer throwback 80s pop sense, and retro tones though it is also that. Coupled with a visually fun and stimulating music video illustrated and animated by Brendan Sullivan, “Vitamin D” juxtaposes concepts of confinement and space, drawing a murky line in the sand between imagination and reality between head boos. Questioning the truths of your existence in relation to that of those around is, however, much more palatable waist deep in the refreshing tide of Rockaway Beach. That is simply the atmosphere in which this newest EP achieves maximum gravitas; waves, shades, a cool drink, and 18 minutes alone with the inside of your head.
