It’s November 2023. My kids had their first snow day of the year yesterday, and I killed my back shoveling less snow than I’d like to admit. Yes, it’s the time of year when we finally kick fall to the curb and admit that we are in the grips of another miserable winter. But not all is lost, friends. I have some music recommendations for you that should alleviate at least some of your misery.
Oh, and that’s not all. Starting this month and ending never, every month, I will choose one album as the Coolest Album of the Month. Does that make it the best album? Nah, art doesn’t work that way. It’s just an album I want to highlight as particularly cool.
This is Cool Stuff For Cool Lifeforms: November 2023
Marnie Stern – The Comeback Kid
Everyone loves this album, and for good reason. It’s a goddamn delight. Joy radiates from Marnie’s voice and fingertips when she sings and plays. The timing dexterity and sheer playfulness she displays in each song bring a smile to my face no matter how many times I’ve listened since this thing dropped. Honestly, anyone who can’t find happiness while checking this thing out probably doesn’t deserve happiness. Honestly.
Staraya Derevnya – Blue Forty-Nine
Part of the BLUE TAPES series of releases, this is by far my favorite one. This multinational band makes indescribable music that I guess I’ll call kraut-rock because that’s what they call it, but really it’s almost like post-punk if you came across it in a forest and your initial thought was, “Oh fuck, what did I come across. I have to get out of here because I am not supposed to witness whatever is going on.” Yet, you’d be so captivated, that you would likely stay and either be sacrificed or have a really lovely time. I’m not sure which way this band leans. I just know this album is atmospheric and out there and needs to be listened to loud and at night. If you like it, also check out their 2022 album Boulder Blues next, where most of these live tracks are originally from.
Feeling Figures – Migration Magic
This is such a cool album. It bounces from moments of chamber pop to freaked-out guitar solos to everything in between with abandon, and you know that’s my goddamn jam. You can’t pin a genre on Feeling Figures. They’ll go anywhere and everywhere at a moment’s notice without giving a shit about it being too poppy or too weird. And the fact that they’ll go anywhere makes it all feel sort of weird and all feel sort of accessible at the same time, and that’s what gives it a light-hearted but deeply arty cohesion. That’s cool as shit.
Hit Bargain – A DOG A DEER A SEAL
A lot of the focus with this album will rightfully be placed on the cutting lyrics, delivered in an equally cutting manner, but fuck focusing on that. I’m going to focus on how driving the rhythm section is. Every song gets propelled forward, pulled almost against its will at times. Nasty guitars balance it all out. The album notes describe this as a snapshot of a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and sure, I get that. But even more accurate is this album sounds like a nervous breakdown, but one you could mosh to.
Cel Ray – Piss Park
Cel Ray fits more ideas into a single song than some bands fit into entire albums. That’s pretty difficult to do, considering their longest song on this EP doesn’t go much longer than two minutes. People are going to take this the wrong way, but aesthetically, they’re like a post-egg-punk Fiery Furnaces if that band decided to compress all their songs into the shortest amount of time possible and just be really chaotic. I love it.
Foyer Red –Yarn the Hours Away
Group vocals, constantly shifting dynamics; weird everything. This album has it all. It feels like living inside a fucked up dreamscape that sometimes turns very nightmarish at times. And musically, yeah, this really is comparable to dream logic. Strange riffs come out of fucking nowhere before birthing fucked up basslines all while a sweet melody is sung over top. Or not. Things get really weird. That’s what I love about this arty masterpiece. Just listen to it.
Beige Palace – Making Sounds For Andy
I don’t even know where to begin with this one. It’s an absolute blast, unrelenting from the very first moment to the very last. Vocals traded off and spat more like a hip-hop group than a post-noise-punk group, everything feels urgent and necessary, prescient and present. There’s no fat here. There’s nothing to trim. The snare feels like it’s being hit by sticks crashing down from the sky. The guitar rips everything to shred. And the bass, my god, the bass, it is the omnipresent glue keeping this whole thing together and grooving. Anyway, this is my first pick for Coolest Album of the Month. It’s perfection.
Phony – Heater
This is certainly a less experimental and more hook-based album than Phony’s previous joint, and on a surface level, that would make you assume that’s a step back in songwriting maturity. That’s not true here, though. While definitely catchier, the arrangements here are such a huge step forward for this band. The paths they take aren’t the obvious pop-punk structures even when the songs might feel of the genre. Similar to contemporaries Oso Oso, Phony has found ways to take familiar sounds and themes, but they arrange them at angles just odd enough, just unfamiliar enough to feel like a bittersweet memory.
All Structures Align – Cut the Engines
Like all good post-rock bands, All Structures Align knows how to build drama in their compositions, allowing tension to build before their songs explode. And man, when they explode, they explode. These songs churn and then simmer and then go. It’s like if Explosions in the Sky and Slint and Elliott all merged into a post-music super band. This is one for post-heads out there everywhere. The drums rule.
Le Almeida – I FEEL IN THE SKY
Here’s another album that goes anywhere and everywhere. Lê Almeida seems to be influenced by an all-around love of music, where picking out genres to describe this would be useless. Instead, I’ll describe this album like this: I imagine Lê thinking of the album he wants to make while drifting off to sleep. These songs play in his head in a half-conscious state, fuzzy with no defined shape. Drums roll in and out. Melodies drift. A bass crawls grooves into the half-dream and grounds it into a semi-reality while everything swirls around it, still in a half-state. That’s how this album feels, and it’s wonderful. This is an album by a man who loves music for people who just, frankly, love music.
Before I go, girl, two things:
1. If you are a band or label with a newer, lesser-known band with music similar to the kind of music I typically highlight in this column, shoot me a line at pizzafriendsrc at gmail.com and I’ll check out your tunes. Will it make this article? Probably not, but I’ll check it out.
2. Here are some honorable mentions from this month’s shortlist:
If you enjoyed Cool Stuff For Cool Lifeforms of November 2023, please check out previous installments here