As the year has worn on, I’ve found myself more and more drawn to albums that are economical with their runtimes yet manage to conjure up vast worlds within it. Perhaps it’s the events of the past few years finally catching up with me; I’ve found it harder to sit and give my undivided attention to anything for long stretches of time. Below you’ll find a few of these marvels, albums that will transport you away in less time than any Zoom meeting I’ve attended in the past month.
Because it’s Bandcamp Friday, we’ve also prepared a playlist with more recommendations for the festivities. Enjoy and pick up something that excites you.
Kolb – Tyrannical Vibes
Kolb’s debut release on Ramp Local, Making Moves, felt like a breath of fresh air when it arrived in 2018. A near perfect fusion of operatic vocals and soaring chamber rock, it sounded at once completely modern and out of time. I’ll admit that his first full length album and official followup, Tyrannical Vibes, surprised me when I first heard it last month. Inspired in part by karaoke nights, the album features a rotating cast of friends and collaborators as vocalists; Kolb’s voice, always the lead previously, sometimes fulfills that function and at others provides support, its distinctive tenor merely a warble hovering in the background. But it’s also an album that has its own distinctive, easy charm, feeling as much like a casual hang between friends as it does a shambolic pop masterclass.
proxy.exe – Proxy World
I’ve been following Orange Milk Records for years; the label has been responsible for some of my favorite releases of the past decade. I’ve mostly associated them with cutting edge electronic experimentation, but recently they’ve been expanding their universe into avant-pop sounds; Proxy World has the distinction of being one of the first hip hop albums the label has released (following last year’s Aloof and Audi Coma). Tracks like “FUCK YOU” and “PITP” feel like early Young Thug doing Rico Nasty, harnessing the latter’s mosh-pit ready energy while mixing in the former’s signature vocal abstractions. Elsewhere the album flirts with more traditional sounds, but this mishmash of ideas and styles feels just as avant-garde as anything else in the label’s back catalog.
Mindforce – New Lords
New Lords probably shouldn’t exist. Multiple band members suffered severe injuries in the past few years, and Mindforce never even intended to record another album after the modern day classic Excalibur. Yet here it is, and it absolutely rips. Occasionally a hardcore record will bludgeon its way into my subconscious, and New Lords has done just that. It’s everything you could possibly want from the genre: crushing riffs, airtight playing, howling vocals; it’s as much a physical experience as it is an aural one. If you’re into this sort of thing, it’s probably the best thing you’ll hear all year.
Cole Pulice – Scry
Cole Pulice describes their latest album, Scry, as an album about “between-ness”: being caught between the pre-pandemic and some new equilibrium, moving cities in the midst of all that uncertainty, navigating their identity outside the gender binary. Perhaps this idea is most evident in Pulice’s compositions, which tow the line between improvisational flights of fancy and traditional songcraft, but it’s also representative of the liminal zones the album will take you to. From the space cowboy sounds of “Astral Cowpoke” to the meditative ambient jazz of the titular track, this is an album for the heads.
Quarterbacks – Quarterbacks
These roundups (and more generally this site) tend to favor new music, but the fact is that few listeners are feverishly consuming only the new. Sometimes you’ll happen upon an older record you’ve never heard of that blows your mind; other times some memory will be jostled and you’ll be drawn back to an old favorite. The latter happened to me this month when I spent time thinking about Easy Listening, the excellent new album from 2nd Grade. Their power pop miniatures got me thinking about bands who were equally adept at brevity, which led be back to Quarterbacks. The group never released another album after their 2015 swan song, but it contains some of the most affecting one minute tracks you’ll ever hear. Look no further than “CENTER”, a melancholic reminiscence of a lost relationship; it packs more feelings into ninety seconds than most songs manage in quadruple the time.