We had an absolutely tremendous bounty of music this week. I became a sociopath in the way I would cut albums from making this article, but when you see how many albums we have this week, you can understand why. The club is packed this week, and we’re at the point where it doesn’t matter how hot you are, if you’re not on the list, you’re not getting the fuck in. Or something.
Almost immediately, I had four finalists: albums from Wine Fault, Tia Rosa, Echoplain, and Summer Like The Season. But something about the impending eclipse (I’m writing this on Monday before the sky goes dark… perhaps forever??? I dunno… I’ll finish the review part of this article after, so read it to find out!) had me veering less toward noise rock this week and more toward the strange rock-pop of Tia Rosa and Summer Like The Season. The otherworldly strangeness of both projects vibed with this aura around Cleveland that bordered on gleeful ominous. Mysticism has overtaken the area, a feeling like we’ll have been swallowed up by magic a little after 3PM.
I ended up listening to each album back to back to back to back over and over again before I decided which would win Coolest Album of The Week. And as I say all the time, there’s no definitive science to this. It’s a tough choice I have to make in the moment. All four of these finalists were so good that any of them could have won if I were in a different mood a different week. But this week was especially close, and if I could do co-Coolest Album of the Week winners, I would. But I can’t. It’s against the policy.
All this to say, pay extra attention to the finalists this week, specifically Tia Rosa. Pay extra attention to all the recs this week because it was an extra good week.
And to echo the words I’ll have said when the sky goes dark later today, let the dark ritual begin! Let’s check out…
The Coolest Stuff of The Week | April 10th
Vessel – Wrapped in Cellophane
Genres: Post-punk, alternative, egg punk
Saving Throw – SAD BOYS
Genres: Emo, indie rock, punk
Raphael Rogiński – Talàn
Genres: Experimental, instrumental, guitar
Echoplain – In Bones
Genres: Noise rock, post-punk, alternative
Ghost Variations – A Night Mongrel’s Guide To Pareidolia
Genres: Garage sludge, metal, hardcore punk
that’s what she said – slowly but surely
Genres: Math rock, post-rock, indie rock
paulo vicious – ansiedade e guerra
Genres: Experimental, punk, egg punk
RUMEUR – Démo 2024
Genres: Post-hardcore, hardcore punk, screamo
Tia Rosa – Misterio Lounge 3000
Genres: Frog pop, psychedelia, indie rock
Dawuna – Southside Bottoms
Genres: Avant-garde, R&B, experimental
Homework – Easy Money
Genres: Indie rock, alternative
Weak Men – Weak Men DOG
Genres: Post-rock, ambient, indie rock
Hula Girls – III
Genres: Punk, pop-rock, lo-fi
Jane Weaver – Love In Constant Spectacle
Genres: Singer-songwriter, alternative, psychedelic
OSBO – S/T
Genres: Hardcore punk, punk, garage punk
ANTROPODS – Abundant Shores
Genres: Jazz, experimental, improv
Wine Fault – Maybe Scissors
Genres: Noise rock, punk, rock n roll
Punchlove – Channels
Genres: Shoegaze, art rock, psychedelic
Lufthansa – Далеку од вистинското нешто
Genres: Post-punk, post-rock, experimental
Prisão – EP 2
Genres: Hardcore punk, punk
Joy Dimmers – Red Will
Genres: Slowcore, post-punk, indie rock
MДQUIИД. – PRATA
Genres: Post-punk, techno, krautrock
Gustaf – Package Pt. 2
Genres: Post-punk, weird punk, art rock
.22LR – S/T
Genres: Hardcore punk, emo-violence, screamo
Knife Feelings – S/T
Genres: Post-punk, punk, experimental
Bnny – One Million Love Songs
Genres: Indie rock, alternative, singer-songwriter
Drahla – angeltape
Genres: Post-punk, punk, art rock
FACS – Maggot Brain 020324
Genres: Art rock, experimental, post-punk
Summer Like The Season – Aggregator
Genres: Indie rock, art rock, experimental pop
The sky became abstract on Monday like a figure from Summer Like The Season’s abstract music video for “Android Hymn“, almost bacterial in a petri dish. Neighbors stood on their front lawns. We all stared into the sun, apart but united. Even for an asshole like me who doesn’t like anything, it was strange and moving. Honestly, I wish I could go back and witness the eclipse again, experience its fleeting magic, and grasp onto it again for just a moment longer.
If could go back, one thing I would do differently is bring my headphones. Almost immediately, I regretted not bringing them, but I left the house less than ten minutes from totality, and if I went back to get them, I wasn’t sure how much I would miss watching the sun pass behind the moon. In retrospect, this phase was certainly pretty okay, but I made the wrong choice.
The experimental art pop of Summer Like The Season’s Aggregator would have been perfect for watching the eclipse.
Pop bliss bursts out of strange, abstract shapes. Minimalist restraint bursts into maximalist joy. Murk bursts into clarity. Pretty into ugly and vice versa. It’s an album that plays with contrasts like the white outline of a blotted-out sun against a blackened sky. It’s an album that plays with the before and the after like the moment before the moon comes into position the moment it’s in position and the moment it moves out of position again.
Pop like this could move a room. It’s not hard to imagine a club absolutely going off listening to Summer Like The Season live. I doubt getting everyone to move is the ultimate purpose of this album, but the way the songs shift and the arrangements drop in and out as if to remind and coax anxious dancers to just fucking dance already is certainly effective.
But it’s almost easier to imagine this as a communal album — something more along the lines of a less hazy High Places — where you’re playing it with a group of close friends at a house party and dancing in spite of yourselves. Or fifteen years later, you’re a parent, and now you’re dancing with your kids in your living room.
For me, though, I’m no fun. This is perfect headphone music, the fractured details splitting off for my ears alone while I discreetly tap my fingers and toes.
When weird pop can be listened to by yourself — and even be preferred that way — you know you have something special going on. But if you can’t tell by now, Aggregator lives to be studied in the details. It lives to be appreciated for its odd, abstract beauty. For the ways, it can feel both communal and personal at the same time.
Summer Krinsky’s voice will often crunch along and then drift off into space. Sputter and then stop abruptly. She plays everything on this album, and Krinsky’s voice is treated as just another instrument in her arsenal of instruments. But in all the weirdness and genius of song construction, this voice is what grounds the album to reality and humanity. Even afflicted with a myriad of effects, her voice never loses its strength nor its vulnerability.
In that voice, you can hear her going for it on song after song — reaching for every perfect moment that needs to be seized, Krinsky’s voice itself almost searching and yearning until it locks into the perfect burst of pop. Then, everything explodes around her. Summer Like The Season is built around so many of these moments, the moments building up to the eclipse, and then that perfect moment locks in.
About midway through Aggregator comes the song “Quit Your Day Job”, where the following refrain occurs:
cycling again, cycling again
cycling again, cycling again
i don’t really think i’ll see an end
as the sun descends, as the sun descends
as the sun descends, as the sun descends
Damn, that would have been perfect. I really wish I hadn’t forgotten my headphones.
