The early Covid days were a really hard time for me. The immediate need for stark societal sacrifice came at a time of intense personal change. I lost touch with a lot of things that define who I am. When a friend sent me a coworker’s new album, I lost a whole afternoon thinking about what made it so great. Twitter was the ideal place for me to share my thoughts, but it’s not exactly known for it’s blog-friendliness. So I kept’em short, and put out the call for more albums. If it was one I had yet to listen to, I’d buy it on Bandcamp, and draft a micro Twitter review.
Here’s a collection of some of my favorites.
Shore by Fleet Foxes
Cleansing. Wise. Confident. Playful.
Shore marks an evolution for Fleet Foxes. It feels wiser, calmer, and more confident than ever. Whereas the previous two albums feel restricted by the weight of expectation and anxiety, this album feels free and loose. It’s an album defined by 2020. It goes with the flow, and at each turn you can sense the joy of discovery and play.
Released on the autumnal equinox, Shore is a piece of art that bids farewell to a previous age and welcomes a new one; that does not attempt to contain or define itself; that says that life is change. The album is not the easiest to listen to, and sometimes challenges the listener. But for those patient enough, a true gem emerges worthy of any collection.
Favorite Track: Sunblind
Spiritual Instinct by Alcest
Reverent. Isolating. Reflective. Dreamy.
Spiritual Instinct has the soul of a black metal behemoth locked inside a hazy shoegazey dream to capture what some have started calling “blackgaze” The ensuing exchange is a spiritually arousing and evocative soundscape that echoes equally in the heart as in the mind.
Just because that searing metal edge has been softened doesn’t mean the music slouches. On the contrary, leaning into the haze has broadened the avenues Alcest can explore with their tones. And unbound from a defining genre, Spiritual Instinct drifts effortlessly between dark and ominous, and dreamy and ephemeral.
Favorite Track: L’île Des Morts
Titanic. Savage. Uncompromising. And dark.
I Don’t Care is an album that leaves your senses stunned. The music is often unrelenting and disorienting in the best ways. It attacks and retreats to regroup and double down. The juxtaposition of frantic, nearly incomprehensible drumming laid over the top of gargantuan guitar riffs are the places this album excels ,seconded only by the instances of disturbing or unsettling attempts at melody in tracks like “Hospital Fat Bags”
Straight from the center of the Mormon world, I Don’t Care feels like it attempts to hold a dark, or dare I say black, mirror to the face of America, exposing the fleshy disgusting growths we’d rather forget come Sunday… It serves as a roadmap, not of the afterlife as the title might suggest, but where we are now.
How this album escaped me for 14 years, I can’t say.
Favorite Track: Hospital Fat Bags
Peripheral Vision by Turnover
Dreamy. Nostalgic. Honest. Warm
Peripheral Vision opens with a dreamy song that comes to your minds eye as though a well worn VHS tape. The lyrics are honest and the music is easy and warm.
Never does the album build to an emotional or sonic crescendo — but never does it dip. Rather, it finds a rare equilibrium — carrying you along, listless on an aural life raft, nothing but a warm summer night sky overhead and gentle waves cradling you in and out of nostalgic daydreams.
Favorite Track : Cutting My Fingers Off
May You Be Held by Sumac
Hypnotic. Reverent. Primeval. Raw.
May You Be Held is a nearly 60 minute metal sermon – a guided meditation – that invites you to examine your preconceived notions of what an album really is. Through pitch blackness and cold, distant soundscapes will you be led blindly into a pseudo-hypnosis, only roused when the distant, howling vocals cut through the din. Pockets of relief are found littered throughout the ebb and flow of chaos, allowing you to reorient yourself in time with savage guitar riffs delivered with the persistency of a mantra.
The final passage of “Consumed” is your body on fire. The drums crash like the tide and the guitar riffs radiate aural heat straight to your brain. “His eyes lift to behold the stars. Each breath a hymn to a world reborn” the lyrics say. The music is a wildfire ablaze, uncontrollable and brilliant until it inevitably burns itself out.
But on the last track we are reborn. And the final 90 seconds we are invited to rest – a shavasana – to contemplate our journey.
Favorite Track: Consumed.