In a few weeks, the great Texan garage-punks Radioactivity will release Time Won’t Bring Me Down, their first new album in a decade. Time has not brought them down. When the band shared the title track last month, it was our favorite new song of that week. Today, we get to hear another one.
The music that Travis Egedy makes under his Pictureplane alter-ego has never fit comfortably into any bucket. In the very beginning, he seemed to exist on the furthest edges of the blog-house universe. Then maybe he was witch-house. Or maybe he was making rave music for warehouse noise shows. These days, he’s doing, what, gothed-out Euro-house? You can always hear connections in his music, but the combinations keep changing, and nobody else sounds like this guy.
Irish indie rockers Just Mustard do something really cool on their new track “Endless Deathless.” It’s a shoegaze song in a lot of ways, with bleary guitar effects everywhere. But Katie Ball’s lead vocal has a dreamy, mocking quality that reminds me of the generation of college-rockers and janglers that came just before the original shoegaze wave. The rhythm section, meanwhile, goes for a fast, busy herky-jerk attack that comes off more as OG post-punk. So we’re going with at least three different genres of underground rock here without quite lining up with any of them. I like that. I like that the song is good, too.
This past weekend, Bad Bunny was announced as the headliner for next year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Bad Bunny is one of the biggest stars in the world, and he previously appeared as a guest during Shakira and Jennifer Lopez’s performance at the 2020 Super Bowl. He seems like an obvious choice for this year’s show, especially given the NFL’s failure to lock down Taylor Swift. But you will probably not be surprised to learn that plenty of people in the extended Donald Trump universe are taking Bad Bunny’s booking as a provocation, and they’re already making threats.
Anytime you can be a benchmark for celebrity fitness is probably pretty cool. Or, at least I thought. Standing on the sidewalk about 70 feet away from SiriusXM’s Manhattan offices, Juvenile’s just told me he needs to get his ass back in the gym, motioning to his stomach before pointing to my own gut to make his point. “I’m getting a ‘you.’” Of course, l’m really handsome and amazing, so I laugh it off and don’t silently commit to walking two miles home today. It’s no big deal. Talking to a rap legend kinda is.
Things are not looking good for Sunset Fest Cabo, the destination music festival that markets itself as the “Woodstock of yacht rock.” The festival is supposed to go down in a few weeks, October 24-26 at Medano Beach in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, but most of the festival’s lineup has dropped off. At least for now, though, the show is supposedly still going to happen.
The ridiculously fun Portland pop-punk trio Suzie True will release their new album How I Learned To Love What’s Gone in a few weeks, and you should be fired up about that. Suzie True recorded the LP with producer Chris Farren, while Eve 6’s Jon Siebels recorded and mixed it. We’ve posted the early tracks “LEECHES (PLAY DEAD!)” and “Get Prettier Overnight!!!” Today, they’ve got a new song that doesn’t have any exclamation points in its title. I guess you could say the exclamation point is implied.
Atlanta’s Upchuck will share their new Ty Segall-produced album I’m Nice Now this Friday, and judging by the singles we’ve heard so far, it’s shaping up to be a good one. They’ve shared one final advance track today called “New Case.”
In a couple of weeks, Helen Ballentine’s hazy-reverie project Skullcrusher will follow 2022’s Quiet The Room with the new album And Your Song Is Like A Circle. We’ve already posted her songs “Exhale,” “March,” and “Dragon.” Now, just before the LP drops, she’s dropped another sad-lullaby bomb on us. This one is called “Living.” L-I-V-I-N, man.
Earlier this year, Circuit Des Yeux unveiled the extravagant album Halo On The Inside. Now the art-pop musician is back with an expanded edition called Halo On The Inside: Director’s Cut.