Now Cameron Keiber is back with second single, ‘Sons and Daughters’, and the track is no less defiant in its message. Written over a decade ago but more thematically salient than ever, the song faces up to the attacks faced by the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalized groups, and looks to dismantle the conservative logic which gives such opinions footing in the world. Built upon a glitchy electronic foundation, the arrangement builds gradually along with Keiber’s vocals, as though his delivery whips up the sound to add weight to the convictions being voiced. And make no mistake, this weight is considerable by the close. There’s no hesitance or lily-livered attempts at peace here, just a clear fuck you to all those who try to impose their own will upon innocent others.

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With the record coming out just as the world shut down at the onset of the pandemic, the band—that is Cameron Keiber (guitar, keys, vocals), David Grabowski (bass, keys), Clayton Keiber (guitar) and Dennis Grabowski (drums, percussion)—saw themselves shelving plans to tour in support of the release and instead returned to the studio. A productive period saw them put over twenty five new songs in the can, and so originated the fifth Eldridge Rodriguez full-length, Atrophy.

The new material is perhaps typified by ‘Megalodon‘, the record’s lead single which shows off new pop and slacker influences. “A sound that’s a little brighter, possessing a carefree bounce however wry and cutting the lyrics,” as we put it in a preview. “As though the band have stumbled across a certain slacker rock acceptance amid the trauma of the moment.” If Slightest of Treason was the alarmed soundtrack to a country sliding ever rightward, then here we find life after such a turn has taken root. More specifically, an attempt to exist in spite of ignorance, cruelty and unvented anger. “The best you can do is move on,” as the refrain offers.

But to live among (and be governed by) bad people requires you to in some way turn the lens upon yourself. To ask whether you live up to such standards. A process perhaps exacerbated by the pandemic and strange blend of isolation and public duty it asked of us all. Hence Atrophy is often more introspective in its themes, seeking forgiveness and redemption as much as anything else. “I’m burying hatchets, I’m making a mess,” as Keiber sings on ‘The Strange Things That Happen to People‘. “Trying to be a better person /gonna be a better friend.” The track is contemplative in tone, bearing the past as an accumulated weight which grows more apparent year on year until there’s no option but to confront it.

This becomes the album’s central theme. Take ‘Have I Gone To Far’, a picture of lockdown loneliness in all of its dull repetition, the taut rhythm contained with an overarching slackness, like an anxious mind stuck within an empty house. “There is a silence in this room,” as Keiber sings, “there is a silence you get used to.” Other tracks place volatility at the forefront, be it the plea of ‘Help Me Help Me’ or the unhinged ‘Casual Jesus’, which plays like patience unravelling in real time, complete with escalating momentum and throaty yelped vocals. By comparison, ‘Without All Your Teeth You Can’t Get into Heaven’ is far more relaxed, though some of the needle and desperation still shows itself. The sense of being judged in some manner, the idea salvation is contingent on the present and perhaps the past too. The fear, ultimately, of being locked out of the possibility of redemption and scratching at the door before it is too late.

Atrophy is out now via Midriff Records.

Cover Photo by Cameron Keiber, design by Bea Talplacido

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The solo project of Australia‘s Keeley Young, Claude offers a warm and reflective brand of folk, its gentle sound utilising restraint to map out the depth of its emotion. New single ‘Tamarind’ highlights the interplay between openness and caution inherent to the style, its earnest tone inviting the listener close while retaining a certain guarded nature. As though aware of both its power and fragility, and understanding what it is able to give away without betraying its own needs.

Too many days passed, without a word.
I think, you’ve liked fucking with me.
But I’m heading home to a house filled with warmth,
and I feel okay with holding your scorn;
and maybe someday you’ll see, how misinformed,
you were.

‘Tamarind’ is out now and is available from the Claude Bandcamp page.

Eldridge Rodriguez – Scars in the Vein (feat. Thalia Zedek)

We’ve covered the music of Boston‘s Eldridge Rodriguez several times, most recently with singles ‘Megalodon‘ and ‘Have I Gone Too Far‘. Both tracks are part of forthcoming album Atrophy, and although the release is still TBC, the outfit have unveiled another song to tide us over. Described as a “rant on the ineffectuality of performance activism,” ‘Scars in the Vein’ tears into the moribund politics of the perpetually online, mourning the energy expended grandstanding and fighting with bad faith commentators when it could be put towards more direct action. The song sees the Thalia Zedek (Come, Live Skull, E) lend her vocals, finding catharsis if not hope in its impassioned cynicism.

Atrophy will be released sometime in the future on Midriff Records, so keep an eye on the Eldridge Rodriguez Bandcamp page for more information.

Jake Tittle – Fair Warning

Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Jake Tittle has put out a number of releases on Anxiety Blanket Records, building a collection of  heartfelt tracks which push beyond acoustic folk into pop and soft rock. With James McAlister on drums and Lexi Vega (Mini Trees) on backing vocals, latest single ‘Fair Warning’ takes Tittle’s sound in a different direction, the backing beats adding a certain brooding attitude to a song caught amid the dark clouds of a storm. “I wrote ‘Fair Warning’ in the middle of a dying relationship,” he explains, “I was so scared of being alone that I refused to accept that it was dying and that hurt me even more.”

‘Fair Warning’ is out now via Anxiety Blanket Records and you can grab it now from Bandcamp.

Lori Goldston – The Waves And What’s Under

Composer and cellist Lori Goldston has had a wide ranging career. From scoring films, operas and dance productions to collaborating with the likes of David Byrne and The Wedding Present, not to mention touring with Nirvana in the early nineties. Stylistically her work is equally plastic, reaching across classical, folk and post-rock styles, and forthcoming album High and Low is no less ambitious. The ‘High’ portion of the record consists of solo cello pieces written for and toward the late Geneviève Elverum, and single ‘The Waves And What’s Under’ highlights the mournful beauty of the sound. During her illness, Elverum described feeling “herself floating in the air above a mountain.” Goldston explains. “I had a kind of vision about playing music that would help keep her floating easily there, and at the same time sustain the ripples of her presence in the world.”

High and Low is out on 7th October via SofaBurn and you can pre-order it now.

Mamalarky – Mythical Bonds

Mamalarky have announced brand new LP Pocket Fantasy, coming out on Fire Talk Records later this year, and lead single ‘Mythical Bonds’ shows off the new direction of their sound. After last year’s double single Meadow / Moss, Livvy Bennett, Michael Hunter and Noor Khan push into a brighter, more playful sound, its mischievous energy geared towards a sense of fondness. “I really needed to write something to accurately show Noor how much her friendship means to me, and our journey as musicians and friends,” Bennett explains. “We need more songs about friendship.” Check out the video directed by Ambar Navarro below:

Pocket Fantasy is out on 30th September via Fire Talk Records and you can pre-order it now.

Mark Mulcahy – Won’t You Be My Neighbor

Back in January, Perpetual Doom released Stayed Tuned: Season One, a TV theme covers compilation which saw the likes of Macie Stewart, Karl Blau and Dawn Riding take on everything from the themes of Twin Peaks, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse to those of Cheers and Fraiser. This month sees the beginning of a brand new season, with a new cover released every Thursday and acts like Accessory (AKA Dehd‘s Jason Balla), Bill MacKay, Wild Pink, Vetiver, Sarah La Puerta, Leon III and others promised. This week sees Mark Mulcahy take on Fred Rogers’s ‘Won’t You be My Neighbor,’ adding a shadowy strangeness while keeping the sentiment at song’s heart.

Stayed Tuned: Season 2 is up and running now on Perpetual Doom and you can follow it on Bandcamp.

nina gala – we looked like angels

After releasing a couple of EPs, Baltimore’s nina gala is set to released her debut full-length album swan heart this autumn, and lead single ‘we looked like angels’ gives a glimpse of what to expect. A sweet track where romance and melancholy marble together, the bright shimmer of the guitars evoking the celestial imagery as gala’s vocals hark back to some lost love. “One day I’ll call you again / you’re a memory till then,” she sings, “something I can reach out and touch / but can’t touch back.” Left for now to remember fondly, hoping the heavenly being might descend again.

Nothing Really – Backseat Driver

The time since Melbourne‘s Nothing Really released their debut EP Yuck has been anything but easy, various personal upheavals and losses compounding an already difficult period. New single ‘Backseat Driver’ emerges from this phase, a track shaded by discouragement as though turned cynical by recent times. But within the despondency lies something else. An attempt to recognise the value of persisting despite everything, and in doing so helping others too. Indeed, vocalist/guitarist Vic Austin describes the track as “a reflection on how to care for others while also giving them the space to make their own mistakes. These lyrics are really about learning how to be a better friend.”

‘Backseat Driver’ is out now and available from the Nothing Really Bandcamp page.

Oh Lonesome Ana – MEG/\DETH TEE

Sacramento’s Oh Lonesome Ana released their debut full-length MEG/\DETH TEE earlier this month. The collection is inspired by and built around the poetry and prose of friend Johnny Allen, adapted into music by the band’s Evan Bailey. The title track offers a glimpse of the kind of melancholic yet wryly humorous tone which results. A meditation on the passing of time which identifies what changes, what is lost and what remains behind. “Am I too old to wear this Megadeth tee?” asks one such verse. “How could anyone / After all these years / Still like me?” Like Allen before them, Oh Lonesome Ana might not have an answer for such questions, but in ensuring they are still asked, offer hope in the very process of searching. Of continuing on in spite of everything.

Pat Keen – Love & Drugs

Writing of album Cells Remain back in 2020, we described Pat Keen‘s music as a “complex web of arrangements […] experimentation devoid of pomposity or pretension,” which attempts to conjure the nuances of a person’s inner life. The Minneapolis-based artist returns this month with ‘Love & Drugs’, a new single which furthers this ideal, exploring how chemicals might alter the appearance and texture of life, and how care is required to get the balance right. All delivered with a bright yet understated confidence, Keen’s vocals barely more than a murmur. Like confessions told directly into your ear.

Precocious Neophyte – AIWA

Haling from Seoul and based in Chicago, Precocious Neophyte is a songwriting project that germinated from a period of demoralization. “I decided that I would never play the guitar in front of people,” explain the liner notes of new album Home In The Desert. “I shut myself in. Cocooning. Just read Korean novels, a little poetry.” But their thoughts eventually turned to past times, old friends, watching the dawn over Hongdae. And thinking about home led to the guitar again. Solo jams at first, eventually a band. An album with singles like ‘AIWA’, which offer the past like dreams to experience anew.

Titus Andronicus – (I’m) Screwed

This autumn sees the return of Titus Andronicus with brand new album The Will to Live on Merge Records, and latest single ‘(I’m) Screwed’ finds them as passionate and furious as ever. Patrick Stickles has carved out a place among the best songwriters in the country over the past decade and more, and the new album is no less ambitious. A meditation on the fragility and beauty of life, and a railing against all those things which refuse to grant it the respect and reverence it deserves. “Naturally, though, our long-suffering narrator can only arrive at this conclusion through a painful and arduous odyssey through Hell itself,” Stickles explained to Pitchfork. “This is a Titus Andronicus record, after all.” ‘(I’m) Screwed’ drops us into the deep end, the narrator trapped on all sides as his beliefs are tested. Check out the video by Ray Concepcion below:

The Will to Live will be released via Merge Records on 30th September and you can pre-order it now.

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Only the record was released in February 2020, and the band could have no idea as to the imminent disruption of their plans. With live venues closed and audiences otherwise distracted, the album joined the endless list of releases lost amid the early days of the pandemic. But rather than mourn their luck, the four-piece returned to the studio, putting their energy into new material.

A follow-up album will be released in due course, though for now the band are focusing on a series of singles. The first of which, ‘Megalodon’, showed off “a sound that’s a little brighter,” we wrote in a preview, “possessing a carefree bounce however wry and cutting the lyrics. As though the band have stumbled across a certain slacker rock acceptance amid the trauma of the moment.”

Eldridge Rodriguez have now returned with ‘Have I Gone Too Far’, the latest single from that recording period which continues their more laidback and reflective turn without sacrificing what made their previous work so striking. Powered by a compelling rhythm, the track is shaded by a sense of contemplation, capturing the strange blend of panic, depression and monotony which marked the period in which it was created. What emerges is a tone somewhere between fondness and weariness which builds its own urgent compassion.

B-side ‘All My Favourites Clowns Are Dead’ takes a more playful tack, channelling the classic rock richness of Talking Heads, David Bowie or The Flaming Lips. The tragicomic tone implied by the title is brought to life in it full vivid splendour. A widescreen tale of both loneliness and fun that is full of life.

‘Have I Gone Too Far’ is out now on Midriff Records and you can get it from the their website.

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There is energy to be found in the unlikeliest of places. In anger and fear and sadness and doubt. Slightest of Treason does not so much harness this energy as unleash it, letting the deluge follow whatever tributaries it finds, trusting in the intuitive connect that comes from such an authentic outpouring.

The record was meant to be supported by a tour, starting with a release party at Boston’s Great Scott, but the pandemic arrived and shuttered these plans along with so many others. Set back by the resulting stasis faced by the most sectors of the arts, and made to watch as the country’s inequalities were brought into sharper relief, Eldridge Rodriguez instead chose to return to the studio and begin work on a follow-up. Their pressing energy once more pushing through whatever stood in its way.

Released by Midriff Records, ‘Megalodon’ is the first single to emerge from that period, along with b-side ‘Alice Drills’. There’s a certain accessibility to the single perhaps not seen on the previous record, the Eldridge Rodriguez bite still present but applied to poppier ends. A sound that’s a little brighter, possessing a carefree bounce however wry and cutting the lyrics. As though the band have stumbled across a certain slacker rock acceptance amid the trauma of the moment. As the refrain at the end opines, “the best you can do is move on.”

Photo by Patrick Ruth. Cover painting by Cameron Keiber, design by Cameron Keiber, Clayton Keiber and David Grabowski

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This month saw the release of the latest Eldridge Rodriguez album, Slightest of Treason, via Midriff Records. Described as “looser and more accessible” than previous releases, the record retains the brooding post-punk style but balances it with a human spirit too, leading to a collection of songs caught up in the tension between disenchantment and longing.

Opener ‘Country and Western’ offers the perfect example of this vision. Though balancing a runaway, near-celebratory rock momentum with Keiber’s downbeat vocals, the track has no sense of contradiction. Rather, the triumphant energy feels like the product of leaning into the discomfort and desperation of the lyrics—catharsis not as some promise to change or become something else, but rather through an embrace of where, and who, you are.

Such a spirit is shot through the entire album, be it in the assertive Walkmen-esque indie rock numbers or the slow-burning post-punk creepers. The peppy ‘Dead Boyfriends’ brings to mind Todd Goldstein’s ARMS with its pressing impetus, Keiber’s frantic vocals surfing the insistent beat and cracking and breaking with breathless feeling. ‘Count Me Out’ might not pack the same tempo but there’s a notable earnestness in the delivery, while closer ‘There’s No Control’ is far more chaotic and a little playful too—burning through the post-punk murk to offer something more uplifting.

This energy is always matched by a lingering darkness, though it is a darkness of many shades. ‘MiamiDade’ is a smouldering slice of wistfulness, rising to certainty and falling again as the marching drum beat rolls on, while ‘Another Boy With a Broken Heart’ channels the wry despondency of The Smiths in a more self-deprecating manner. The grungy opening of ‘Psychic Darts’ has a mean edge, though the track shows a hopeful heart as it progresses, and ‘The Girl Who Made God’ combines classic post-punk gloom with an almost unhinged, theatrical feel, like a preacher from a Western demented by drink and desert sky.

The song captures the Eldridge Rodriguez aesthetic within its four minutes. Moody and stark and prone to escalation, be it in noise, in rhythm, in desperation or feeling. There is energy to be found in the unlikeliest of places. In anger and fear and sadness and doubt. Slightest of Treason does not so much harness this energy as unleash it, letting the deluge follow whatever tributaries it finds, trusting in the intuitive connect that comes from such an authentic outpouring.

Slightest of Treason is out via Midriff Records now and you can get it now including vinyl and CD editions.

Photos by Patrick Ruth

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