What the Bandcamp Daily editors are listening to right now.
Diane Birch
Flying On Abraham
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
On Flying on Abraham, pianist and singer-songwriter Diane Birch tunes into the sounds of ‘70s AM radio, channeling smooth soul and jazz, R&B and soft rock on her first offering in over 10 years. Birch sounds perfectly at ease inhabiting the lane of a Carly Simon, her voice as smooth as the pull on a lit Winston, never veering into retro pastiche. This is likely due to the involvement of Paul Stacey (of Oasis and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds) whose clean production blends Birch’s source material into a unified sound and feel, carried by the smooth dexterity of her voice. Her lyrics are likewise endearing in their subtle hand and deeply felt sentiment. “November is comin’ on and the nights are getting longer/ Summer always deceives/ Little promises like the orange leaves,” she sings on opener “Wind Machine” before transitioning into “Jukebox Johnny” which plays like a Hall & Oates joint with its rock ’n’ soul swing, squelching electric guitar, and infectious chorus. “Juno” is a dusky ballad that lights into a Pink Floyd-esque guitar solo while the cheeky “Boys on Canvas” takes a foray into light funk. Elsewhere, twilight-hued synth pads color album stand out “Used to Lovin’ You” which sees Birch shifting the dial from morning oldies to the ’80s slow jam. Graceful and confident, Flying on Abraham is a welcome salve for those who need it.
–Stephanie Barclay
great area
light decline
Coming into the world via Relaxin’ Records—the imprint helmed by the ever elusive Inga Copeland, aka Lolina—great area have a few areas of aesthetic overlap with their label boss. One of those is a love of mystery; it took me a bit of Google digging to learn that great area is the recording alias of UK visual artist Georgie Nettell. The other is a fondness for low lit, moody musical terrain: like Lolina’s brilliant 2014 album Because I’m Worth It, light decline favors deep blues and purples over searing reds and oranges. But that’s where the similarities end; light decline’s ruthlessly minimal songs—bass, keys, vocals, drum machine, that’s it—nod toward the spookier end of UK post-punk (think Faith-era Cure), and its sparse songs house no end of emotional bleakness. On light decline, Nettell isn’t sad or depressed; what she evokes more than anything else is a deliberate emotional blankness—the feeling of someone staring dead-eyed into the middle distance and recounting all of the ways friends and lovers had left them behind. It’s brutally effective—a collection of ghost stories about the scariest spectre of all: the past, and the ways it haunts us all.
–J. Edward Keyes
Khirki
Κυκεώνας
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), T-Shirt/Shirt
Κυκεώνας, the second album from Greek heavy rock trio Khirki, is named for a psychoactive beverage consumed in ancient times by acolytes pursuing divine mysteries: a yummy, yummy slurry of water, barley, pennyroyal, assorted seasonings (honey, herbs, wine, cheese), and (according to one popular hypothesis) ergot, a hallucinogenic fungus. The Athenian band’s version calls for a similarly eccentric, trippy recipe, but the experience here is far more palatable, especially for the metalheads. Soldering ascendant prog-metal to smoldering, stoner doom, Sepultura’s earthy groove-metal percussion to traditional Greek instrumentation (violin, klarino) these songs emanate majesty and mystique at every turn, with distinct Hellenic undertones. You’ve got references to Homer and Hecate, the seven-minute “Συμπληγάδες,” sung in Greek and rhythmically indebted to Greek folk; and my personal favorite, “Father Wind,” a Mediterranean folk-metal song that would make even the most austere Yiayia bang her head. I’m still not sold on mushroom-laced jungle juice as a beverage, but as a sound? Hell yeah!!
–Zoe Camp
The Reds, Pinks & Purples
Unwishing Well
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
America’s capital city of beauty and depravity, home to an independent music scene that will never die, San Francisco plays civic muse to the prolific Glenn Donaldson on his roughly 80th release under the Reds, Pinks, and Purples moniker. (No, that is not an accurate number; no, I am not going to count.) Unwishing Well is formatted like a Sherwood Anderson-esque story cycle, each song a little vignette delineating various aspects of life spent messing around in the underground, from that magical moment of falling in love with a band to the creeping resentment you feel about your friend’s band being more successful than yours (the nerve!) Donaldson’s knack for penning timeless-sounding, melancholy indie pop songs with nothing more than a guitar, some software, and a kitchen table to set it all up on is well established and Unwishing Well doesn’t disappoint on that count—this is a sad, jangly record. But even if you’re just here for the hooks, stay to soak in the tiny details of Donaldson’s grumpy but empathetic tales of woe and wonder in which, if you are very lucky, you might even recognize your own self.
–Mariana Timony
Torn Boys
1983
Vinyl, Compact Disc (CD)
I can remember hearing the song “Mack the Knife” on my grandparents’ stereo when I was a kid and being profoundly confused. As near as my young brain could work out, it was a song about a serial murderer. Shouldn’t it sound less…jaunty? Somewhere in Stockton, California—at probably around the same time—the Torn Boys were thinking the same thing. If only I was able to pick up California radio station KDVS, I would have been able to hear them doing a spine-chilling version of the Weill & Brecht number that was more in line with my expectations, and is a highlight of the excellent new Torn Boys compilation from Independent Project Records. The Torn Boys may have been the very definition of marginal, but their members—particularly young guitarist Grant Lee Phillips—would go on to achieve indie fame in other outlets. But 1983 makes a solid case that the group’s scant output warrants re-examination. Imagine a cross-wiring of Bauhaus and the Soft Boys and you’re close to approximating the group’s distinctly spooky take on ‘80s psychedelia. Frontman Jeffrey Clark’s doomy vocal style and skeletal, spiky guitar work make every second feel as ominous as a crypt—the droney “New Drums” out-Joy-Divisions Joy Division. Couple this eerie music with IPR’s trademark, stunning letter-press packaging and you’ve got an album that rewards your investment several times over.
–J. Edward Keyes
UTO
When all you want to do is be the fire part of fire
, T-Shirt/Shirt, Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
An exemplary batch of old-school drum loops, sticky hooks, and Y2K-styled synth bops, UTO’s 2022 debut, Touch the Lock, cast the Parisian duo as one of the most promising new pop acts around, a more dignified, but no less catchy, alternative to the then-emergent cultural blight the kids call “indie sleaze.” That’s not to say Neysa May Barnett and Emile Larroche are immune to nostalgic alchemy or easy thrills. On the contrary, their second album, When all you want to do is be the fire part of fire, is dominated by the musical shorthand of the past three decade, most noticeably on “Napkin,” which transmutes Lyn Collins’s “Think (About It)” —one of the most-sampled songs ever made—into a kaleidoscopic jock jam that hits like Screamadelica-era Primal Scream, all full-spectrum synths and throbbing bass. What separates UTO from the pack, then, isn’t a matter of individual signifiers so much as spontaneous, profound dialogues: dynamic nuance and textural interplay are their greatest strengths, as illustrated by standouts like “2MOONS,” a shuffling trip-hop oddity that blossoms into luscious, orchestral electronica in its closing moments, jangling acoustic chords ringing out in the ether. They’re familiar yet fresh, surrealistic yet sharp, intricate but never over-choreographed. Fans of Magdalena Bay, KNOWER, and Hot Chip will definitely want to give this one a spin.
–Zoe Camp
Vessel
Wrapped in Cellophane
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Skronky, sorta dancey, super fun post-punk hailing from roundabouts the same area where such styles bloomed so righteously on American soil, Wrapped in Cellophane from Vessel will bring to mind bands like Pylon, Maximum Joy, or the much-missed French Vanilla, with whom the Atlanta band share a perfect blend of being both keyed up and ready to fall apart, as if all the screws holding together the shouty vocals, bouncing bass lines, crisp drumming, and blasts of sax have been just slightly loosened. But that is why they call it punk!
–Mariana Timony
