Somehow, 2022 may be the strangest year of Undrcurrents’ existence. Though things were undoubtedly bleak in the throws of the pandemic, we’ve less emerged from it than decided its pretty much over; we’ve largely returned to life as we know it, even though the circumstances haven’t really changed. I’m still trying to figure out how to calculate individual risk and navigate this new normal. I’m sure many of you are as well.
Through all this, music has continued to be a salve and escape from the brutality of the world, pandemic-related or otherwise. Since we’ve officially passed the mid point of the year, we want to take a moment to look back and celebrate some of our favorite releases.
As always, I have no doubt this list could and would look different if I had the time to listen to everything that gets released each week. All I can say is that these twenty albums have been on heavy rotation throughout the year, each one absolutely worth your time for its own reasons. Releases are listed in roughly chronological order by release date.
Claire Rousay & More Eaze – Never Stop Texting Me
Texas musicians Claire Rousay and Mari Maurice are nothing if not prolific; the two have emerged as major musical forces over the past few years, releasing both solo works and collaborations with artists from across the experimental underground. Their latest collaborative release, Never Stop Texting Me, is an unabashed pop record, one where where pop punk riffs rub up against PC Music maximalism and the emotional rawness of emo rap. But what makes Never Stop Texting Me so joyous isn’t its embrace of pop but the friendship at its core. Whether they’re singing about their bad luck with boys, spending money earned from Bandcamp Day on food delivery or waxing philosophical about their friendship, each song here exudes the warmth of an afternoon hang.
Black Country, New Road – Ants From Up Here
Black Country, New Road’s debut album For The First Time arrived on a wave of breathless praise. They were declared the best band in Britain, maybe even the world; the album was called an instant classic. This type of hype can be a blessing to a burgeoning band’s career, but it can also ratchet up the pressure on a group of young musicians still growing and developing. It certainly seemed to be the case here: days before their second album Ants From Up Here dropped, the group’s lead vocalist Isaac Wood left the band and the group committed to dropping the songs written with Wood from set lists going forward. The album’s sweeping, pastoral epics would have been considered a triumph regardless of the circumstances of their release, but in this context they felt even more powerful, elegies to one of the most magnetic groups of musicians we’re likely to hear this decade.
caroline – caroline
caroline initially formed in 2017 as trio, but as they’ve slowly added members over the intervening years they transformed from what was supposedly a conventional guitar band into something entirely different. The formula for most caroline songs is quite simple on paper. First they lay down a backbone, usually a simple musical phrase or riff that can and will be repeated ad infinitum. Then start building atop it; add strings swooping in and out between notes, free drum solos, spindly guitar riffs straight off a Bill Orcutt record, incidental noise. Their compositions fly off in seemingly infinite directions, everything from improvised flights of fancy to folk inspired ballads. One thing is eminently clear from this debut album: caroline are artists, and what they’ve created is a work of art.
Poorly Drawn House – Home Doesn’t Have Four Walls
Poorly Drawn House purportedly began their existence as a slowcore band. Though the glacial tempos and guitar work on their latest release, Home Doesn’t Have Four Walls, certainly feel rooted in those origins, this record portrays them as a band determined to stretch their sound to its limits. Their songs are mesmerizing yet seem to barely cohere together, conjured out of field recordings and impressionistic washes of sound that slowly drift towards the periphery. It’s some of the most audacious and singular rock music I’ve heard this year, pushing a genre often derided as dead into strange and exciting new places.
WiFiGawd – Chain of Command
I’ve seen WiFiGawd touted as one of the most important underground rappers of his generation, but Chain of Command was my introduction to his musical world. Within the album’s opening few moments, I could immediately understand why he is so revered and influential. The influence of Memphis greats like Three 6 Mafia and Kingpin Skinny Pimp linger in the margins, but WiFiGawd turns those sounds into something less ominous and more swirlingly psychedelic. From skewed phonk tracks like “365” to woozily beautiful ones like “Slide Thru”, Chain of Command is a record with the power to appeal to both new and old school rap fans.
Hamid El Shaeri – The SLAM! Years (1983-1988)
At this point, Habibi Funk is one of the foremost curators of Arabic pop music for Western ears; many of the musicians they reissue are stars in their home countries, but the label’s lovingly curated and carefully researched releases bring them to the attention of a whole new audience. This is the case with Hamid El Shaeri, a legendary figure in Egyptian pop music and the subject of Habibi Funk’s latest compilation The SLAM! Years. El Shaeri was best known as one of the foremost practitioners of the popular Al-Jeel genre, but the recordings collected on The SLAM! Years represent his earliest (and less commercially successful) output. Mixing everything from disco and lounge to funk and R&B with Arabic pop sounds, it’s the kind of music that cratediggers dream about: genre-fluid yet accessible, and most of all unquestionably fresh.
Bloodz Boi – 365
Beijing based rapper Bloodz Boi has been dropping excellent singles on Soundcloud for years; a Bandcamp compilation of those tracks was a highlight of last year. His debut album continues that winning streak. Over moody, drifting beats provided by producer Quit Life, Bloodz Boi gently raps and croons songs of love, heartbreak and loneliness. The album’s gauzy sonics build a sepia toned world of melancholy, but I’ve been most struck by the moments of fragile beauty that permeate it: a plaintive piano melody, twinkling synths, vocals that cascade over themselves and seem to melt into the ether. Where Bloodz Boi’s earlier compilations painted a portrait of an artist experimenting and searching for their musical identity, 365 is the sound of an artist fully formed.
Pinch Points – Process
The term “pinch point” refers to a common mechanical hazard: the place where one or more objects move towards each other, crushing anything that comes in-between them. It’s also the name of Melbourne four piece who pair jangly post punk melodies with razor sharp lyrics that are as lethal as their namesake. The most successful songs on their latest album follow this same basic formula: one liners and unsavory truths delivered in the same breath, all while teetering on the edge of oblivion. Its vicious sense of humor is a key selling point, but Process is also a work of deep empathy, never forgetting all the anxiety and suffering detailed in their songs is a shared experience in the modern era. Pinch Points are a band that intimately understand the complex reality we all face by merely waking up in the morning, and Process is one of the few albums I’ve heard this year that perfectly encapsulates it.
Soul Glo – Diaspora Problems
Soul Glo’s 2020 EP Songs to Yeet At The Sun may have been the Philly punk band’s breakthrough moment, but the band had been plugging away at their music for over half a decade before reaching that milestone. They subsequently signed to Epitaph Records, and Diaspora Problems, the first fruit of that partnership, is one of the rare albums that lives up to feverish hype surrounding it. The band is primarily comprised of people of color and write about their day to day experiences living in America, and though it’s a crucial facet of their music it’s also reductive to talk about it in only those terms. Plainly put, this album fucking rips. It’s a set of songs that is intellectually and musically dense while managing to remain a completely visceral listening experience. We’ll undoubtedly be digesting this album for years to come, but I can guarantee this is a watershed album for hardcore, one that will set the standard for excellence in the genre for years to come.
Jailbird Y – Duality
Hiroshima based noise punks jailbird Y have been making a racket for years, but their discography remains slim. Their second album was written and recorded over the past few years, its A-side constructed remotely during COVID lockdowns and its B-side culled from recordings made during a pre-pandemic tour of Taiwan. The connective tissue between them is the band’s madcap energy, which flows from one side of the album to the other. Perhaps the only place where you sense the difference in circumstances is the final track, a live recording where the energy of the room during the band’s extended nine minute freakout feels palpable; as a closer, it lands like an elegy to a world that may never fully return. Duality deliver on the promise of its title, giving us glimpses of jailbird Y that straddle our collective past and present realities.
MJ Lenderman – Boat Songs
When we reviewed MJ Lenderman’s album (Ghost of Your Guitar Solo) last year, we compared Lenderman’s writing to his hero David Berman. Much like Berman’s best work, the songs on that album poked fun at the absurdity of everyday life while illuminating deeper truths about the human condition. Boat Songs doesn’t radically change that approach; these songs are still filled to the brim with moments of quiet contemplation, laugh out loud humor and confessional candor. What has changed is the music’s sense of focus. Though still resolutely lo-fi, Boat Songs is tighter, hits harder and covers more sonic territory than its predecessor. At times Lenderman brings to mind artists as diverse as Gram Parsons and Pavement, but mostly Boat Songs just sounds like a stone cold classic.
Real Lies – Lad Ash
Back in 2015, Real Lies seemed like they was poised to break through in a major way on the strength of their debut album Real Life. Rather than capitalizing on that momentum, Real Lies seemed to just disappear into the ether. After seven years of shifting personnel and professional setbacks, their long awaited second album functions as a triumphant return. A more focused effort than its predecessor on the surface, Lad Ash sees the group shedding the eclecticism of their previous work and leaning more heavily on the electronic, dance heavy facet of their sound. However, the band’s instrumentals have always existed in service of their narratives, used as as a way to animate and enhance them, and Lad Ash is no different. It’s throbbing, melancholic sonic palette is a pitch perfect backdrop for the album’s half forgotten memories of late nights and wasted youth.
Hey, ily! – Psychokinetic Love Songs
Though a lot of chiptune music falls flat to my ears, Hey, ily!’s ability to mix the genre with emo hooks feels both wholly original and deeply nostalgic. There’s a fantastical element to their writing that feels like an appropriate match to its musical backing; the band conjure worlds filled with tales of robots and telepathy, not unlike what you might encounter in a typical RPG. But these fantasy elements only help to heighten the very human emotions and desires at the core of each song: anxiety, fear, loneliness, a longing for connection. It’s a shoo in for one of the most original and affecting rock albums of the year.
Mura – 2008-2021
Mura’s origin story is a familiar one: three high school friends (Kota Inukai, Masaki Endo and Sho Shibata) decide to start a band. Remarkably, their youthful endeavor has endured for well over a decade, finally culminating in their debut album. Most bands’ sounds evolve tremendously over a decade plus of existence, and based on this album Mura are no exception; from contemplative ballads to twitchy indie rockers, the band cover a lot of territory. Counterintuitively, it’s this eclecticism that binds the album together. It’s the sound of a band pushing themselves and their sound to the limit, reconfiguring themselves over and over again into a dizzying constellation of possibilities.
Say Sue Me – The Last Thing Left
Korea has long asserted global musical dominance via its pop star machine, but Busan based band Say Sue Me feel out of step with their country’s most recognizable sonic exports. The group first rose to international prominence with their 2018 album Where We Were Together, but the band soon suffered many setbacks in the face of their success: founding band member Semin Kang tragically passed away in 2019, and soon after the COVID-19 pandemic ground live music and touring to a halt. In spite of these hardships, the band has emerged stronger than ever on their latest album. The group’s vision of pop allows doo wop harmonies to exist next to fuzzed out indie rock; seeped in nostalgia with a healthy dose of melancholy, it’s a near pitch perfect contribution to the modern indie rock canon.
Maria BC – Hyaline
The base musical elements Maria BC uses throughout their debut album Hyaline are instantly familiar: a guitar, their classically trained voice, synths, field recordings. But perhaps unexpectedly for a bedroom pop record, they choose to largely eschew traditional song structures in favor of conjuring up all-enveloping sonic landscapes. They describe this approach to songwriting as “sonic collage”, and each knotty track feels more like a natural occurrence than manmade song; they float, billow, drift across your periphery, unhurriedly unfurling on their own time. Paired with lyrics that tow the line between character study and personal history, their songs take on the power of lived experience, each one enveloping you and seeping into each and every pore.
Derek Bailey – Domestic Jungle
For the past few months, I noticed rumblings on Twitter about the existence of a set of mythical Derek Bailey recordings. During the heyday of pirate radio and jungle music, the jazz guitarist would supposedly improvise along to broadcasts. A select set of these experiments were home recorded and privately distributed to interested parties decades ago, seemingly lost to the sands of time. Without any pomp and circumstance, the recordings suddenly appeared on Bandcamp as a pay what you want download about a month ago. Bailey’s guitar weaves in and out of its unconventional accompaniment, matching its madcap energy note for note. And though the record is extremely lo-fi, it works perfectly in this context; the entire thing has the loose feel of a late night radio broadcast, static and all.
Crake – Human’s Worst Habits
Crake’s debut album was delayed for months, which felt unfortunate; its drawling melodies and barren landscapes feel tailer made for the cold winter months, which were much closer to its original release date. Late is better than never though, especially when the music is this good. Crafting a sound somewhere between loner folk and slowcore, the group’s music is centered around the idiosyncratic vocals and storytelling of singer-songwriter Rowan Sandle. Though many of the album’s songs grapple with the death of Sandle’s close friend Anna, she also mixes in lyrics about esoteric flora and fauna like slime mould and brittle starfish. Delicately beautiful and deeply odd, it’s an album that has yet to leave my regular listening rotation.
Linda Ayupuka – God Created Everything
Though it’s not uncommon to hear her voice emanating from car or portable speakers in her home region Bongo, an area in the northeast of Ghana, prior to her debut album the only readily available recordings of Linda Ayupuka’s music for American audiences could be found on the 2019 compilation This Is Fra Fra Power. The eight tracks that make up God Created Everything are infectious, with Ayupuka’s auto-tuned vocals soaring above complex, percussive polyrhythms. Though many of the lyrics are religious in nature (Ayupuka is largely known as a gospel singer in her home country), the songs would feel as natural on the dance floor as they would in a religious setting. More than anything, it’s music that radiates an infectious sense of joy.
Camp Trash – The Long Way, The Slow Way
We’ll have more to say about Camp Trash in a day or two, but for now just know that that their debut album is easily one of the strongest of the year. Using the building blocks of emo and power pop, the album perfectly captures the ups and downs of your teens and twenties. There’s all sorts of ennui explored here, from the claustrophobia of your hometown to destructive behavior patterns, but it’s not all doom and gloom; personal growth and genuine human connection can act as salves and serve as beacons of hope towards the end of the record. The Long Way, The Slow Way is an album full of songs steeped in lived experience, each one ringing true to its last note.