The Narcotix – Dying
I’ve seen The Narcotix perform live once, and they were one of the rare opening acts that blew the headliner out of the water. There was something mesmerizing about how all elements of their music danced in circles around one another yet managed to cohere into a greater whole. Their debut album is a showcase for that distinctive sound, one that pulls from soukous guitar lines as much as it does indie rock. Their lyrics tend towards the mysterious, conjuring up images both biblical and mythical: sirens, magical gardens, mother figures, gods. Spellling kept popping into my head while listening to Dying, but not because of sonic similarities. Both are artists that seem intent on conjuring up fantastical worlds with their music, and both succeed wildly.
Discovery Zone – Quantum Web
Channel Pressure may be a footnote in Daniel Lopatin’s career, but it’s one of my favorite albums he’s had a hand in. On it, Lopatin and his partner in crime Joel Ford mixed the hyperreal internet aesthetics of vaporwave with some of the cheesiest eighties pop you could imagine; though it easily could have been pure kitsch, it worked because of immaculate production and real songwriting chops. On their latest album, Discovery Zone (the solo vehicle of musician JJ Weihl) grabs the baton from Ford & Lopatin and runs with it. Much like that duo, she also understands that small details are crucial to making this sound succeed. Her production is rich and textured; she writes earworm melodies. Her songs seem to take place in a futuristic commercial wasteland as familar as it is fantastical, a place where giftshops float in the sky and emotions are for sale. As much Orange Milk style experimentation as it is muzak, Weihl nails a perfect balance between the avant-garde and pop.
Dancer – 10 Songs I Hate About You
Dancer are a Glasgow band whose members come from a number of other prominent groups in the international indie underground (Nightshift, Current Affairs). On their debut album, 10 Songs I Hate About You, you can clearly hear the influence of fellow Glaswegians Life Without Buildings. That band, active around the turn of the century, built their sound around the distinctive half spoken, half sung vocals of lead singer Sue Tompkins. You can hear shades of her idiosyncratic approach in Dancer’s Gemma Fleet; Fleet sings around the band as often as with them, virtuosically weaving in and out of twitchy accompaniments that split the difference between indie pop and post punk. The band have gone on record stating that Dancer is a special project for them, and you can hear that in their music. There’s a palpable sense of joy coursing through each song here, whether in bouncy melody of “Change” or the absurdist lyrics of “When I Was A Teenage Horse”.