#mortual

Blowers — Blowmania (Chaputa)

Jay Reatard has been gone for a decade and a half now, but his spirit lives on in this bludgeoning but tuneful onslaught from Naarm-based Blowers. Blowmania is the foursome’s third full-length, but let’s not look for maturity. The Blowers celebrate hedonism (“Cigs, Beer and Wine,” “Fried Again,” “Mushrooms”) with brio, but the consequences (“Tony’s in Hospital Again”) also sound kind of fun. Even the downer songs like “Wasted on My Own” and “Everyone in the Room Hates Me” are undeniable bops, crashing through the speakers on scrubby guitars, tumultuous drumming and sing-song-y, ear-wormy melodies. Nothing complicated here, but super enjoyable.

Jennifer Kelly

Loren Connors & Suzanne Langille — Crucible (Feeding Tube/Carbon)

In a catalog as deep as guitarist Loren Connors, it’s not hard for a record to transition from looming statement to lost in the weeds. Crucible first emerged as a CD on his Black Label in 1996, at which time Connors was testing the limits of fuzz and density. What made it remarkable was a formal construct; in addition to 11 compact instrumentals, it contained three a cappella performances by Connors’ wife, Suzanne Langille. The placement of their music side by side, but never touching, creates a sense of dialogue under duress that is not quite like anything else in their shared catalog. Since the album is not quite 27 minutes long, the reissuers have chosen to cut it as a 45 rpm release. That choice, plus Taylor Deupree’s typically sensitive remastering, lifts a veil of four track murk that makes this return especially welcome.

Bill Meyer

Liz Durette — Well Up (Feeding Tube)

Liz Durette is a MIDI keyboard player whose previously work has elicited respect and bemusement in equal measures but not a lot of love in these parts. While her command of multiple voices on the fly is undeniable, she’s tilted a little too close to calliope voices for comfort. But Well Up shows another side of her work, and it’s a highly welcome change of pace. Perhaps due to having moved from Baltimore to Massachusetts, there’s a more unhurried pace and a willingness to let her sounds evolve rather than flicker and flare. “Heart” could be synthetic recreation of a Scottish piper’s lament, and “Lake” feels like a folk dance saved for that moment when the guests are gone and the cleaning crew, having mopped up the mess, starts in on the abandoned cups of booze. The side-long “Naga” goes deeper and slower, like a one-woman distillation of David Bowie’s eastern flirtations on Low.

Bill Meyer

Marty Ehrlich Trio Exaltation — This Time (Sunnyside)

With a name like Exaltation Trio, you know that esteem is on the agenda. Marty Ehrlich’s Trio Exaltation celebrates departed musicians who can’t be appreciated enough, such as pianist (and former employer of everyone in the band) Andrew Hill, who is covered twice in the first three tunes, and fellow alto saxophonist Arthur Blythe, who gets a tune named after him. They also give a shout-out to dancer Joanne Robinson Hill, who was Andrew’s spouse, but also a collaborator with several of Ehrlich’s NYC associates back in the 1980s. The music’s up to the task. Ehrlich, bassist John Hébert, and drummer Nasheet Waits channel their shared musical acumen and rapport into tunes sharp enough to snag your ear and open-ended enough for the players to launch into the updrafts, fly a few circuits around the mountain of abstract co-creativity and come in for a perfect three-point landing.

Bill Meyer

Gwenno — Utopia (Heavenly)

Gwenno’s last two albums, Le Kov (2018) and Tresor (2022), were excellent. In my Dusted review I described the latter as “a colorful, evocative dream-pop record.” From a musical perspective, not much has changed on Utopia: the arrangements are rich, crisp, and vivid. However, most of the songs are sung in English rather than Gwenno’s usual Welsh or Cornish, which takes away the mystery and ambiguity that makes many of her songs so beguiling. While opener “London 1757” feels like a throughline from her previous records, “Dancing on Volcanoes” introduces a chiming Johnny Marr-esque guitar riff, the title track evolves into a pulsing dance tune during its back half, and “Y Gath” has a camp Eurovision-style flavor to its chorus. Gwenno is still able to conjure some undeniable magic, especially on “London 1757” and “Hireth,” but what Utopia gains in upbeat accessibility, it sacrifices in hauntological atmosphere.

Tim Clarke

Hekla — Turnar (Phantom Limb)

It is fairly straightforward to describe the facts about Turnar , Hekla Magnúsdóttir’s third LP released under her first name. She plays theremin and cello and adds voice, and Kristján Hrannar adds church organ. It was partly recorded in a French castle that gives it its name. Playing it lasts just under 40 minutes. None of this really even scratches the visceral experience of listening to her music (particularly at night, particularly on headphones). One suddenly feels trapped in some lightless, cavernous, abyssal space, unable to see the walls but terrifyingly aware of a sense of presence, looming and vast somewhere above. Every so often there is a sense of gradual movement, and the constant dread either mounts or subsides. Something is moving; is it coming closer? Hope it doesn’t draw near enough for visibility, let alone anything else. A must listen for anyone convinced there is more to the theremin than the science-fiction-soundtrack stereotypes.

Ian Mathers

Mortual — Altar of Brutality (Nuclear Winter)

Mortual, we are told, is a variety of portmanteau word, combining “mortuary” with “ritual.” That’s pretty good, and it might be the most original thing about this Costa Rican death metal band. Certainly, the rest of the symbols and semiotics associated with Altar of Brutality are about as stubbornly, stoopidly true (trve?) to OSDM as you can get; check out song titles like “Divine Monstrosity,” “Ecstasy of Death” or “Dominion of Eternal Blasphemy.” But sometimes this sort of ferociously thumping, revoltingly gurgling and chunking riffage is precisely what’s needed, to make the ongoing disgust of contemporary life marginally more tolerable — and in a subgenre of music so stubbornly dedicated to rot and festering organic matter, one can argue that freshness has never really been the point. “Necromancy Ritual” scratches a very particular itch, located deep in a tangle of malodorous viscera. Whose gut is that? When it’s steaming in a pile on the floor, does it matter?

Jonathan Shaw

Mourning (A) BLKstar — Flowers for the Living (Don Giovanni)

Cleveland collective Mourning (A) BLKstar pays tribute to forebears and calls for collective consciousness and action on their latest album. An often somber reflection on the Black experience punctuated with joyous outbursts of funk and soul, Flowers for the Living, finds the band exploring a range of late 1960s styles. The gospel influenced title track is built on a thrumming Hammond and the vocal interplay of LaToya Kent and James Longs garlanded by Theresa May’s expressive trumpet which provides melodic and emotional counterpoint throughout the album. FatBoi Sharif makes a telling contribution to “Let ‘Em Eat,” interrupting the slow rhythmic build and smooth vocals, with a slurry rap over clanking chain gang beat and chant. The highlight “Lil’ Bobbie Hutton,” named for the 16-year Black Panther activist shot dead whilst surrendering to Oakland police in 1968, is an impassioned call to speak out against state violence set to a storming funk reminiscent of Bobby Womack and Sly Stone. A song for summer 2025 and a timely reminder that it was ever so. The mourning goes on but M(A)B are looking forward as well as reclaiming history.

Andrew Forell

Noise Trail Immersion — Tutta La Morte in un Solo Punto (I, Voidhanger)

Italian band Noise Trail Immersion creates an angular, rhythmically acrobatic variety of black metal that moves aggressively toward the avant-garde extreme of that subgenre’s sonic continuum. The music’s distortions are mind bending, but not so much in a psychedelic fashion — more so, it’s the sort of disorientation one might experience in fever, or in the psychological desperation accompanying intense physical pain. The songs’ arrangements are artfully challenging, but their textures are still muscular and pulverizing. Songs like “Spire di Sangue” and “Finzione” will hammer your frontal lobes flat, then spread the moist, pancaked tissue across a plane that twists and folds in on itself. Ouch. The performance skews toward abstraction, but the music is immediate, a sort of physical force. Something is made manifest. As vocalist Fabio Rapetti hollers near the close of “Finzione,” “L’inferno è un enigma già svelato.” The rise of fascism in the US and its reinvigoration in Italy make that sentiment feel even more urgent.

Jonathan Shaw

Nathan O’Flynn Pruitt — Songs from Behind a Mountain (Figure & Ground)

Nathan O’Flynn Pruitt moved from Chicago experimental underground to rural California a few years ago and learned to sing again.  His first solo album, Songs from Behind a Mountain, overlays nimble Takoma-style picking with a hoarse and haunted voice. It’s Jack Rose in the fingers, and Wes Tirey on the mic.  “Years Per Minute” flares with hard-strummed but lyrical guitar sound, a folk blues stirred up to a froth, while Pruitt floats tremulous, tortured lyrical fragments over the tumult.  “You’ve seen it all, be…come small,” he whispers, a signal sent up amidst instrumental agitation, a prayer in the flutter and drone.  Pruitt goes to just guitar in long vision-questing “Guidance,” showcasing instrumental prowess and command of wordless mood; if you’re a fan of Imagination Anthem et. all, you might like this one best.  However, “Rearview,” which follows, slips quiet anguish into its flowery arbors of sound, the human voice grounding all we can experience and imagine.  

Jennifer Kelly

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters—The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Corbett Vs. Dempsey)

Look at the personnel — Mette Rasmussen on alto sax, Lukas Koenig on drums, Gabriele Mitelli on piccolo trumpet and electronics, Mariam Rezaei on turntables — and you’ll reasonably suppose that improvisation is involved. You’d be right, but that still would not prepare your for this album’s nine determinedly messy assaults. Bolts of sizzling electricity lance hunks of ragged rhythm, test tones tip over a bowl of microphone bumps, zig-zagging synth lines stumble uncaringly over open-throated screams. When a sustained blast-beat or a harmonious horn chorale surfaces out of the turmoil, it’s a bit of a shock. Live, these folks are witheringly loud. If you want to find the music inside the noise (or hear them at all if you live in one of the world’s semi-closed empires), this record’s just the thing.

Bill Meyer

Smut — Tomorrow Comes Crashing (Bayonet)

Smut’s latest album Tomorrow Comes Crashing makes some hearty noise but leaves little debris in its wake. Founding trio Tay Roebuck, Andie Min and Sam Ruschman are joined by a new drummer Aidan O’Connor and bassist John Steiner. The quintet takes their template from the angsty authenticity chasing cadre of 1990s arena adjacent indie bands. Roebuck is an undoubtedly charismatic vocalist, and the band has a ball revisiting the formative sounds of their youth. But Smut hews too close to the cathartic loud quiet template and rarely relaxes into a groove. At their best on “Burn Like Violet” the band plays loose and almost catches the ragged glory of The Replacements, but too often Tomorrow Comes Crashing feels exhaustingly bombastic.

Andrew Forell

Sublux — Disorder in the Machinery (Disforia)

Sublux’s Disorder in the Machinery is an exciting punk tape from a band with a sort of built-in litmus test: the singing of vocalist Linsey, which is pitched somewhere between a keening holler and an outright shriek. For comparison you might summon elements of Eve Libertine’s brilliant turn on “Shaved Women” or the most desperate squeaks Ari Up issues on that first Slits record. Those are heavy references, but Linsey and the rest of Sublux warrant them. The compelling anarcho-punk of songs like “Hunting” and “Pendulum” is layered with harmonics; you have to listen closely for Lula’s synths, but they are inevitably doing something fairly interesting. So are the lyrics: on “Burn the Witch,” Linsey yells, “A novice executioner is just as deadly!” Yikes. Even better, on “Flooded,” she asks, “Whose skin was I wearing when I thought I knew myself?” Is there a better way to articulate the kind of reflective insight that punk can foster?

Jonathan Shaw

Uniflora — More Gums Than Teeth (Charm Co-Op / Shuga)

While fellow young Chicagoans Lifeguard bristle with explosive post-punk energy, Uniflora are much more subdued, slightly awkward yet deeply charming, mustering the kind of first-thought, best-thought songwriting that brings to mind dorky, funky bands such as Talking Heads and They Might Be Giants, and, at times, the mighty Deerhoof. Quinn Dugan’s guitar, Theo Williams’ bass, and Ruby O’Brien’s drums tessellate in surprising ways, Dugan’s vocals are deliciously deadpan, and the band throws in some instrumental experiments along the way, such as “Cosmic Sound” and “Typewriter.” Standout “Elongated Cat Fist” takes the main riff on distorted guitar, detours into an accelerating tangle of clean guitars, then adds a second section of the main riff with clean guitars to finish. And why not? It’s good to hear a group of friends having fun, trusting their instincts, and making music that’s unselfconscious and playful.

Tim Clarke

Chad VanGaalen — Full Moon Bummer: First Night of Summer (self-released)

Chad VanGaalen’s last release on Sub Pop / Flemish Eye was 2021’s World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener, an eclectic, questing collection that reflected its pandemic-era gestation. Since then, VanGaalen has been releasing music at a consistent clip on Bandcamp and withdrawn his catalog from Spotify. Fittingly, on this new album’s “Heavy Metal Violence,” a convulsive garage-rocker, VanGaalen screams, “Murder of the internet! Yeah we have to snap its neck!” On the following song, an instrumental called “Baby Puke,” he channels the clanging, dissonant guitar leads of Trout Mask Replica-era Magic Band. It’s certainly the heaviest we’ve heard VanGaalen in a while, but not at the expense of tunefulness. Opener “Let Love In” has one of the catchiest riffs VanGaalen has laid to tape, and the woozy synths of “Ants in a Line” could soundtrack an episode of his trippy animated short “Thrift Drifters.” While this release is only eight songs and 24 minutes — and isn’t quite as wonderful as last year’s Full Moon Bummer 2 — it’s still an addictive listen. Fingers crossed VanGaalen’s next “official,” widely publicized release is coming soon.