Why Panda Bear and Sonic Boom Kept Their Best Album Off Streaming Entirely
Panda Bear Sonic Boom A ? of WHEN is deliberately absent from streaming. Harp, steel drum, pedal steel, mariachi. A thesis with a record attached.
How If These Trees Could Talk Turned Three Guitars Into an Orchestra Section
If These Trees Could Talk The Hidden Hand. Ten years of silence, three guitars arranged like an orchestra, one Aphex Twin cover
Why Emptiness Spent Twelve Years Finishing a Sentence Nobody Else Would Have Started
Emptiness Nowhere Speaks completes a riff left unfinished in 2014. Recorded live after four years of rehearsal. Reviewed.
How The HU’s HUN Turns Four Years of Momentum Into Their Most Cinematic Album Yet
The HU’s HUN is out now via Better Noise Music, reviewed in full: four years of touring, an Order of Genghis Khan, and their most cinematic Hunnu Rock yet.
Why Altarage Made a Seventy-Five Minute Album That Should Have Ended Fifteen Minutes Earlier
Altarage Cogwheel runs 74 minutes across seven tracks, four past ten minutes. The longest record of their career, and fifteen minutes too long
Why Fractal Sun Made a Six-Track Album With an Eleven-Minute Closer and No Label
Fractal Sun Divergent Paradox is a six-track concept album from Costa Rica built in mirrored pairs, closing on eleven minutes with Chaney Crabb.
How Allt Turned Inward and Found the Sophomore Problem Waiting There
Allt Ataraxia trades a post-apocalyptic concept for lived experience. The emotional risk paid off. The musical risk did not. Reviewed.
Why The Salt Pale Collective Made the Heaviest Self-Released Album of July
The Salt Pale Collective and God said nothing. Six tracks, thirty-five minutes, self-released, and heavier than anything a label funded in July.
How Holy Wave Crossed a Border to Find the Album They Could Not Make at Home
Holy Wave i’m DADA. Recorded in Ensenada, trading haze for intention. The band’s most deliberate work. Reviewed.
How the Neal Morse Band Wrote Another Concept Album While Nobody Was Looking
Neal Morse Band L.I.F.T. Thirty-eight albums in, another ambitious concept record. Stands toe to toe with Similitude. Reviewed.
