low ends

As much as I love Julie Christmas' solo work from her debut The Bad Wife to her exceptional collaboration with Cult of Luna on Mariner, it was a travesty when she left experimental post-metal band Made Out of Babies. Their visceral instrumentation clashed so beautifully with her fragile and often animalistic vocals belting out her vulnerable and cutting lyrics. The band didn't want to stop shredding so they didn't. Four years later the band resurrected themselves as Bad Powers with Megan Tweed on vocals is what appears to be her frontwoman debut. The album starts off with a bang in the form of New Bruises, though her voice comes off closer to Sleater-Kinney than Sludge in the beginning she delivers on the howl and growl to match the paranoid sound of the guitars. Her style is more subdued which fits the direction Bad Powers takes here, liberal use of after-effects and melodic repose is much more appropriate for the more technical and atmospheric direction. Admittedly though songs like Hit Sniffing Dog and Black Alf carry similar weight to their predecessor's blood-boiling tempos, the stronger points are when they branch out into new territory; it's a shame it doesn't happen enough. Millennium features the indominable Eugene S. Robinson for a chaotic duet, Tweed's wails circling around Robinson's lethargic delivery like so many buzzards. Chineseish stands out at a glance but the sun-bleached acoustic guitar pervading the loud as often as the soft moments while Tweed's wavering delivery follows a death march to the song's conclusion. Bigger Than We Are's penultimate position as yet another chugathon makes the release feel a bit stale at this point but the huge sound akin to Big Brave's early trot and stomp among strings on closer Bread and Butter makes the wait worth it, as Lisa Papineau (of Big Sir fame) makes an appearance for a triumphant duet with Papineau's ethereal, oscillating vox and—cemented with Bad Powers—a solid, underrated performance from Megan Tweed. I wish she'd do more because it bears repeating that this is her only appearance as a vocalist. (7/10)

While Talk Memory, or BBNG V is generally billed and lauded as a return-to-roots, I believe they've transcended. Once again a trio at its core, BBNG have shied away—at least outwardly— from humble beginnings reinventing hip hop staples into honoring their heritage in Jazz music on their fifth release, but there is little here to suggest dredging up the past other than liberal use of electric guitar and strings. To that effect, the only real weakness of Talk Memory is that the nine-minute opener is the best track, but it's not exactly all downhill from Signal from the Noise's blistering guitar parts blossoming like a black rose out of the dissonance of its first few minutes. legend Laraaji lends his wisdom to palate cleanser Unfolding (Movement 73)'s ethereal atmosphere, but the boys owe more to Arthur Verocai, Brazilian jazz-funk virtuoso who adds a special radiance to most of these tracks whether it's the funk guitar or the angelic string arrangements. All in all, the stark black and mostly-white of the albums art reflects the glistening wisp wreathing BADBADNOTGOOD's most accomplished and mature standalone original work. (9/10)

Jazz Fusion quartet BADBADNOTGOOD's signature sound shines in whatever they do, even on an album as stuffed to the brim with instrumentation as IV. In that way, this album is a fleeting glimpse in to the core of Jazz's penchant for experimentation. Every moment of comfort whether its soaring horns (Cashmere) or piano pieces wreathed in cymbals (In Your Eyes) there's of-kilter drum machine beats with unorthodox horn instruments (And That, too) and warbling synth laying down hip-hop beats (Lavender). Even right after laying down a sexy beat for Mick Jenkins to spit bars over, it is bookended by two evocative lounge style instrumentals that sound completely out of time when paired with the somber vocals of Samuel T. Herring and Charlotte Day Wilson. On the whole the album can feel a bit lethargic, but success looks okay on these boys just being dudes. (8/10)

Since Jazz's heyday there's been purists and maximalists. When every lick has been explored the only thing to do is up the volume, but BADBADNOTGOOD escews both. The Toronto trio entered the scene with two phenomenal debut albums primarily consisting of covers of hip-hop songs. The energy of these releases were unmatched and despite the premeditated nature of covering music, the organic, gnarly sound and blood pumping intensity exposed a beating heart reminiscent of albums like Bitches Brew and Head Hunters before it. The modern sound and technique translated perfectly into their first fully original album III, trading enough intensity for dividends of atmosphere. At it's worse, it only sounds pedestrian but at its best? Timeless. Triangle opens III with angular, telepathic interplay that swirls around the piano elegantly, leading into Can't Leave the Night's skeletal, percussively driven builds that work as prologue to bigger numbers that rival huge ensemble movements from their contemporaries with horns from then-guest Leland Whitty. The shining star of the album in my opinion is Differently Still, with brushes and impressionistic piano playing that honors Bill Evans while presenting a seeping intensity that sits just below the surface. (8/10)

Side two opens like a drunken sonnet, the drums attempting to corral the rest of the instruments and it is here that I realize the essence of that chaos. That Free Jazz is always degrees of letting that primordial instinct overtake you, but being able to understand and harness it at just the right moment. Arthur Brooks as frontman clearly has a seasoned hand on the neck of the music, the band cools down at about the half way mark in waves not unlike the tide until only the cello and guitar are left humming to nothing. the horns are most evocative here of the storm, where they swelled and pulsated on side one, here they crash and strike against the percussion, forcing Sydney Smart on the drums to respond in kind. It never picks back up but instead fizzles out and the atmosphere here reminds me so much of Aethenor, one of my favorite "post jazz" outfits in the way the instruments stop feeling like they're creating music and instead are just making this glorious noise. But isn't it all music? (8/10)

Arab Strap died fifteen years before they rose from the dead with a banger of a lead single in The turning of Our Bones which sets the stage for their comeback album As Days Get Dark. Initially I didn't care too much for it but on repeated listens it grew on me. Gone are the days of the bedroom pop moaning about blue balls and older women. In place we have gothic post-disco celebrations of aging, still being able to get it up, and pushing your life to its carnal limits. Aidan Moffat has grown as a songwriter with my favorite release of his being Everything's Getting Older with Jazz maestro Bill Wells. He brings his masterful emotive songwriting to embrace Malcolm Middleton's aged-like-wine rhythm with soaring solos, live drums and synth drones which felt awkward at first, like an ill-fitting suit. The solution they create is consistently good over twelve tracks upon digestion as the stories get more fantasy-inspired, wringing out exciting and dramatic emotions against the tick of the fancy drum machine on songs about fucking like The Turning of Our Bones and Compersion pt. 1 while meditations on morality and the ramifications of debauchery like surprise centerpiece Here Comes Comus ring with the same darkly sexy misanthropy of their earliest masterstrokes but with an air of drama and song structure that gets in your head and compels the feet to move. Even when speaking of the banality of rifling through photos, the duo manage to play it out like a trashy novel in the absolute best way possible. As far as comebacks go, this one's a winner. (8/10)

As a follow up, Philophobia is everything that Arab Strap's previous album is not. It is doubly vulgar but manages to be more mature and intimate in lyricism; Packs of Three opens the album with "it was the biggest cock you've ever seen/but you have no idea where that cock has been". The drum machine feels less like a timekeeper and more like an accessory to the music on songs like Packs of Three and Islands. Most of the songs have a build and release even, but something is lost in the transition. The sardonic sense of humor has been scrubbed out in favor of reaching closer to the soul of romance. The songwriting is superb, better than The Week Never Starts Round Here, but the production is so much cleaner that the authentic amateurism has been lost. The only exception to this is New Birds, its conversational reminiscence of meeting an old flame with embers still warm to the touch and finally pouring it out, along with its explosive instrumental climax, encapsulates a compositional ideal for the band going forward. (8/10)

Born during a very exciting time in the musical zeitgeist between the gnarly, vulgar lo-fi was the brainchild of multi instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton and singer/songwriter Aidan Moffat. Together the duo craft incredibly candid diaries of the physical aspects of love, for better or for worse, half sung and whispered to an uncaring drum machine ot the morose strum of an acoustic guitar. All the ingrown hairs of fickle women on songs like the Clearing, I Work In A Saloon, and Wasting would be hard to take if it weren't for songs like General Plea to a Girlfriend and Blood which turn the lens on the narrator in a spectacularly self-aware fashion. The washed out quiet-loud dynamic and amateurish production errors add to the humanity of the album but the centerpiece The First Big Weekend encapsulates the idea of the seedy underbelly of youth, capturing the fleeting dopamine in the ephemeral two days before the grind starts again. (9/10)

What made Fetch the Bolt Cutters' release stand out to me among the series of stellar releases that year wasn't what was new, but what wasn't. Fiona Apple's music remains uncompromising and visceral, as though the music emanates from her spirit, resides in her blood. the poetry and metaphor is still here but in a fly-on-the-wall manner of writing rather than a jazz-rock dance hall and the dogs in the background frame that perfectly against the backdrop of cacophonous percussion. Apple's music has always been kinetic in that manner, skeletal piano and drums creating patchwork melodies as she howls poignant political and romantic comedy but Fetch the Bolt Cutters is much more confrontational, the instrumentation is at odds with itself as much as it is the vocals as Fiona Apple candidly cries testimonies of two-timings and long asleep sentimentality. Above all, the music injects refreshing humanity in a time we needed it the most. (9/10)

Aphex Twin is as influential as he is uncanny. Prolific and ethereal, Peel Session 2 is a unique insight into this obfuscating music in a live setting for the venerable John Peel. There are some issues with the recording but the character it adds is a good accessory to the organic feel of these live tracks. The live environment isn't where the significance of this album ends, most of these tracks comprise alternative styles of their orignals, or the incarnations here are actually the first recordings of some of these songs. From the atmospheric and eldritch Slo Bird Whistle to the pulsating p-string this brief release works just as well as a forgivingly brief primer as it does glimpse into the humanity fo Aphex Twin. (7/10).

When The Antlers got its start as solo project of Peter Silberman, it felt like a tragic bedtime story, singing lines like "the universe is going to catch you" over toy piano blowouts and infectious melodies in the style of The Microphones on PBS, but when looking at Hospice in comparison it feels like a turn even more intense than MCR's The Black Parade, if only because the metaphor is thinner than a hospital gown. Described as a concept album about an abusive relationship, the concept draws parallels between a too-young/too-old couple and their rushed decisions concerning the life of an unborn child and the relationship between a greenhorn hospice worker and Sylvia, a dying hospice patient. The entire thing is thin ice and splintering glass: Silberman's vocals lash out against angular explosions of brass and guitars on songs like Sylvia and Kettering, but the music eventually parts like curtains to expose the beating heart of the release and its central tension of vulnerability. Bear, Two, and Wake are all very simplistic in composition but wreath very simple lyrics of regret in frozen flowers; the entire release in turns floats in an icy fog despite the very conventional song structure. Unfortunately as the intrumentation gets better, more emotional, the lyrical content begins to creak under the simplicity of its writing, though the Epilogue closes the whole release with just Silberman and an acoustic guitar, evoking feelings of losing everything with the juxtaposition of this very plain first half of the song against the comparatively radiant rest of the album before it. The whole song crumbles away in a very similar way to how it began in the Prologue music wavering and breaking up until it fades into nothing. With no happy endings in sight, the concept itself plays very nicely as a depressing story of lovers of indeterminate amount (Silberman has yet to divulge the exent of which Hospice is explictly about himself), but the moral is obscured by the soaring horns. (7/10)

Anathema were one of three bands with My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost that polularized the Death/Doom subgenre of heavy metal music in the early nineties, but when they all suddenly decided to shed the identiy, it was Anathema that had the easiest time adapting.Anathema was releasing some of the more consistently interesting rock music of the trio, and way already full nu-prog by the early 2000's. We're Here Because We're Here is a watershed moment for Anathema as their concept grew beyond rock music into a more symphonic direction, thought very little of the energy they had at the time was lost. The album begins with the one-two punch of Thin Air and Summer Night Horizon, both of which upping the ante with blistering syncopated percussion and beautiful harmonies. The former, the opener This Air carries parallels form their previous album A Natural Disaster of flying as a metaphor for anxiety. While the rest of the album is lethargic in comparison, the spiritual nature of the lyricism is profound enough to work as the focal point, especially as the vocal interplay only deepens, eventually coming to a head with the centerpiece of Angels Walk Among Us and Presence, more meditations on mortality and coming into contact with the divine. The rest of the second half of the album becomes more sardonic, a tinge of cynicism in Frontman Vincent Cavanagh's voice acts as the harbinger for some dizzying, intense instrumental highs, the onyl misstep being the frenetic Get Off, Get Out, maximalist production paling in comparison to the trio of longer tracks that build into satisfying release from the dark refrain of A Simple Mistake to the soaring solos and explosive percussion of the closer, Hindsight, the likes of which Anathema vehemently try to replicate but never quite reach again, though the quality of the rest of their discography from here to their untimely demise in 2020 evens out in the best way possible. (9/10)

An improvement in every way from People and absolutely oozing with humanity, Knife Man hits the nail on the head and this dirt-punk masterpiece stays perfectly relevant even now. The cutting cynicism of the songwriting matches the immediacy of the music and the production's sheen does not obfuscate the intention the message goes after. The kitchen-sink structure of the release makes the 40+ minute runtime blow by. (9/10)

Simply beyond description. Ilyas Ahmed dissolves completely into Jefre's field recordings and emerges a part of an entirely new world. Both artists' music tend to evoke setting the most in my opinion, but together the soundscapes laid to wax here are somehow both familiar and uncanny at the same time, hearing the familiar, sentimental chords of Ilyas Ahmed against the spacious field recording and electronic treatments sounds like a moment captured in life; a snapshot of dew on a window overlooking a sunshowered field or an old car long forgotten, overturned in an abandoned lot. Must be heard to be believed. (8/10)

Working with Electrowoodwind duo Golden Retriever imbues Ilyas Ahmed's unmistakeable folk sound with an entirely new dimension on the meandering beauty of Aftershock and Your Sunday Best while Face to Face and Mirrored Image comprise the dark, cacophonous center of Dreamboat rife with sonic atmospheres more foreboding and beautiful and either colalborator could have made alone. (8/10)

With more of a focus on the acoustic guitar, Ilyas Ahmed's sophomore for Immune Records feels like a response to With Endless Fire's slightly egotistical call. It's a more mature release that holds onto each sound more gently, allowing the space to fill with the warm, radiant tones. His voice inches closer to the forefront, and the drone is relegated to two stellar instrumental tracks, the divorce between melody and drone and the reflective electric guitar on the song they bookend elevates I Am All Your Own from mid-career high to sonic journey. Success and time has not dulled Ilyas Ahmed's unique brand of folk music and the blindingly bright tones are mouthwatering foreshadowing for future endeavors. (9/10)

Ilyas Ahmed's first release for Immune Records is suitably huge, but success hasn't diluted the mystery and the atmosphere. It drones right out of the gate for nine minutes with Now Sleeps, buffeted by chimes and driving percussion. It's here that I realize that he's released multiple songs clocking in over ten minutes, but they never overstay their welcome, the gauntlet of improvisation and repetition keeps things fresh throughout his discography. There is a cockiness I find in the artist described "oil in a pan" solos that dot this album, the way that the huge sound of the electric guitar buzzes against the bright and comparatively wiry acoustic with Ahmed's vocals at the forefront is like touching a live wire, and is in every way an advancement and spiritual successor to his self-released Midwest exile beginnings. Emphasis on spiritual. (8/10)