#3773 Vundabar - Either Light

4.5/5 they don't make em like this any more, blooming with details, shimmering with easy momentum, vintage Shins meets vintage Strokes, some lost '01 classic.

Vundabar's early stuff was fucking brilliant, one angular, surfy hookstorm after another. They never quite recaptured that magic, but this is a clean break*. Synths lead the way like never before, backing vocals swoop in and flank, Hagen's vocals and guitar work showing subtle new depths. Less Dick Dale, more Brian Wilson, the kind of lushness that blurs the seams in its craftsmanship. The kicker's the way it all hangs together, a solid, well-paced front-to-back, put-it-on-again listen that you just don't get too often these days

* never gonna stop missing Antics' drums though

#3631 Zip-Tie Handcuffs - Warm Shadows

3.5/5 rock solid rock with busy beats and silky-smooth gear changes from high to low and back again. I like it; 90s me would've loved it

#3620 Michael Christmas - Baggy Eyes

3.5/5 cheeky. hazy. easy weaving complex. clumsy now and then and not that worried about it. aspirational, that looseness. maybe what you should strive for is to chill the fuck out, Christmas throws out there, in this year of our lord twenty nineteen.

Smooth production, killer flow.

man they say tick tick a lot

#3443 Tall Boys - Homes in Boston

3.5/5 The first spikey little songs remind me of the best plucky 00's weirdo indie bands and I love em. But the slower songs drag, wall-to-wall Greater Boston easter eggs notwithstanding

#3370 Death Pesos - Moon Violence

4/5
How many other bands could make songs about Las Vegas, Saturday night and slow drivers in 2019, and make em pretty fuckin fiery? Death Pesos believe in rock, and bang it out loose and trashy with wit to spare. Fun shit.

#3333 The Del Fuegos - Boston, Mass.

2.5/5
Midtempo middling rock, one step from soft, Tom Petty without the melodies

#3299 Squirrel Flower - Contact Sports

Strummy, low-key rock that lulls you into complacency, so Williams' declarations of hurt and strength can hit all that much harder. I'm pretty jaded but this got me more than once. It's hard not to compare her (favorably!) to Mitski, but I'm trying 3.5/5
(whew

#3298 The Real Kids - The Real Kids

As scrappy punk goes, The Real Kids are more charming than most, trying carelessly to make the best racket they can 3.5/5

#3231 Party Walsh - Not the Same as it Used to Be

Listen / buy here!

The EP undersells their live energy, with the vocals too high in the mix, but it's an agreeable swish of mod-y Americana - not too many folks making music quite like this anymore (School for Robots excepted!) 3/5

#3028 Future Teens - Hard Feelings

Self-described bummer pop and there goes my whole take. Big, thin, whole-guitar chords over moaning resignation that finds some spark of hope in giving up. Sharply observed catharsis rock that knows the only way through is down 3.5/5

#3025 Totalled - Demo

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Perfectly enjoyable, totally unadventurous indie bar-rock, the kind that sounds fun to play and let the chips fall where they may. The sheer fatness of Memorial Day's riff's a highlight, but there's not a lot else that stands out 3/5

#2945 Toby Tantrum - Community for Those That Can Afford It

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That first track's what it's all about. Toby gets it - cutting to a local problem with biting wit, with ruthless efficiency, dodging cliches left and right. Earn that LocalMusicBoston tag. Don't Turn Around keeps the streak with a Kinksian, regretful look back over the shoulder. There's only 2 songs worth of music here though. The last couple tracks sound like lazy studio fuckaround throwaways -- surely there's something better in the clip? 3.5/5

#2836 Vundabar - Smell Smoke

By the time Brandon Hagan turns 30 he's gonna be Neil goddamn Young, rasping and croaking like every breath's his last. Vundabar's always been accelerated, always shown pop prowess shockingly beyond their years. It's only taken a couple years (and no small personal strife) for Hagan steers them away from catchy surf-rock highs into world-weary resignation. The yelping exuberance is gone, replaced with 90's underground chime and chug, layers building, only rarely bursting into hooks. Even the most melodic moments (Acetone and [one of the best pop songs of the year] Tonight I'm Wearing Silk) are awash in alienation and self-annihilation.

Which is to say, Smell Smoke's not much fun, but it's personal and evocative and satisfying to get down into. And god it's well paced -- TIWS is a great track, made triply so by the way it bursts out of Tar Tongue's agonized outro, and that raging buildup of $$$, into a classic 90's last-sounding-sneaky-setup-penultimate track* into a classic offkilter closer. I would have been obsessed with this record in high school.

I call time travel again. Or something. There's something Twilight Zone about the specific way this band is good.

I worry a little bit about the path they're on. Worry a little bit about Brandon if I'm honest. Dude's got a worrying approach to stage presence. And you can feel that same frayed energy in this record, for better or worse, just under simmering reverb 4/5

* eg Sofa of My Lethargy, We're an American Band (YLT), Between Your Ear and Your Other Ear, Sweet Sweet, By Starlight, etc

#2634 Mission of Burma - Vs.

So raw, so rash, so frantic, so packed with riffs and ideas - somewhere between Pavement's shapeless noise and Minutemens' kitchensink precision lies this fucking masterpiece. The kind of album we should all try to make, all blunt force trauma delivered with blistering urgency, thrashing against fences to find the weak point 4.5/5

#2526 Guerilla Toss - GT Ultra

Cars//B52s gone Devo//Polysics, all that shouting uncool//cool splintered through cantcontain energy, all eratic synths, all at lines that make no sense. New Wave taken to its natural destination, just short of unlistenable, the unexpected thrashing just this side of sexy. Never simple, never boring. We'll take it 3.5/5

#2416 Piebald - We are the Only Friends We Have

Piebald just blurts it out. They're a band that's a friend. They tell you about what happened since they saw you last, they barf out their thoughts about the world, they spin out a half-clever analogy without shame. It's all rather pop and I can't help but love them for it. What a bunch of unpretentious greater-Boston goofballs. Easily dismissed if you have the least bit of archness in you, easy to fist-pump and first-listen sing along to otherwise 3.5/5

#2480 School for Robots - Song of the Century

Listen here!

Curtis's got a natural knack for melody, a Davies//Lynne sense of quaint/strange/universal tunefulness - a slightly square sound, and I mean that in the best possible way. Plays a mean guitar too.

This's a pretty good little three-song-glimpse, from the Pink Floyd ecstasy//agony of I Can't Feel Anything, to the overtly Muswell jauntiness of Why Be Depressed. A Boston band with a ton of potential to make something great outside the city's usual scene 4/5

#2453 Sonic Pulse - Lager than Live

Stuck in a rut with all the same bands and all the same scenes, I've taken to searching random words and plucking albums that have interesting names / covers. Cratestreaming. Streamdigging? Workinonit.

Turns out these guys are from Boston, and cover the Adventure Time theme.

Off to a good start.

Just check that logo, with the soniC Pulse battleaxe. Check that impossible cartoon lady, all boobs and beer and boobs. Check songs called Queen of Beers, Bong Zombies, and -- fucking, combining all aspects of DnD nerdery and Andrew WK shitcockery with banal punnishness: Eye of the Beerholder. I've never seen a song title sum up a band so well.

It's all good, dumb as shit fun. Totally committed to a lack of commitment, utterly unabashed lets-get-fucked-up rock and roll, the real Wyld Stallyns, when Bill and Ted grow up and get dumb jobs and get baked and accept the joys of their lives as they actually are.

Accepting the joy of life as it actually is, that's all Sonic Pulse delivers.

Who could ask for anything more 3.5/5

#2428 Heel and Arrow - Heel and Arrow

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Met Brian at the local wateringhole. He's a character. Closet nihilist, believing least of all in the idea that I gave a sincere shit about his music. Well, here's a full-listen review of your album fuckface!

<3

If I'm being honest, for the most part, it's not for me. A metal/hardcord/emo hybrid, in the spirit of Dillinger Escape Plan, full of frustrated shouting and whiplash between straightforward//proggy guitar lines. The real problem's the vocals, reaching outside their range into a reach for metal toughness but ending up kinda hurrrrgggGGGHHHH straining, not finding power, but not embracing weakness.

I'm glad I stuck with it though, because the best moments are the softest and strangest, the Lost Letter suite is a crystaline, unpredictable, affecting journey though chiming post-rock and truly threatening samples and textures - more of that inventiveness, of tipping outside of the expected and these guys might be onto something.

I'm reminded of pet favorite Wetheads Come Running - an album that pulled off that balance, partially because Single Frame was willing to veer off into the weeds at a moment's notice, to make strange instrument choices, to do something that was adventurous in sweeping terms, beyond a fucked up time signature, to go way afield to find something that connected.

This doesn't get there. It's an album by a band that doesn't know its limits and doesn't know its strengths. It's a young sound, not without potential, but not there yet. And I think, Brian, if he's out there, deep down, might agree 2.5/5

#2422 Dame - Charm School

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There's something in the air in Boston, a ripple of rock bands that know that a good, hard-edged synth wash can knock you out of the ordinary - neo-New Order, Cars gone wrong. Dame's a standout example - propulsive, aerodynamic, dangerous, headlong into a wall. The production's brilliant: guitars/sneering, aggresive vocals/bass/that synth, all in perfect balance, bouncing off of new wave and simmering punk, never stopping. Exciting shit 4.5/5