Well, we're three days deep into March, which means this is no longer a new year. But still I feel like music, both locally and elsewhere, is still just hitting its stride in 2025.
Local Picks
May I interest you in a 12-minute instrumental? Featuring eight guitarists? In drop D, every heavy band’s favorite tuning? Sorry to sound like a Vince McMahon meme there, but if the idea of multiple players finding their space within a drone sounds appealing, then Adam Zahller’s expansively minimalist project will be very much your thing. (It is very much mine.)
Punchier than ever, with production decisions like fuzzed-out vocals and constrained feedback accents that somehow make them sound both scuzzier and slicker. Great video, too (linked above) in which the Boys go on a crime spree in zany disguises.
Lazerbeak, “Sorry’s Not My Safe Word”
The Doomtree producer’s new EP, A Bridge Under The Alley, is short but far from simple. On this track, a synth figure rises and falls, rises and falls, leaving space for a lush saxophone, a guitar with an almost Congolese tone, some full horn bursts, and a dreamy chorale, none of which feels out of place. There’s a release show at Berlin on Wednesday.
Chuck Nyberg, “needsome thing”
An unhesitant, full-throated rush of a song, with lyrics tumbling out as inexorably as the guitars (courtesy of Pyrrhic Victories’ J.P. Hoifeldt) march forward, with sweetened moments of harmony vocals taking just enough of the edge off.
Unstable Shapes, “You've Been Selected To Become Bones”
Delicate Machinery, the debut album these jagged postpunks talked up when we spoke to them for Picked to Click, is due out April 11 on Learning Curve Records. This is what it feels like when for once your depression isn’t all in your head.
Non-Local Songs
A love song of sorts belonging to the subcategory (and I quote), “You’re the worst thing I’ve ever loved.” And yet somehow, on the third of three terrific singles from Thee Black Boltz, due in April, the sanded-down burlap of the voice of TV on the Radio keeps his frustration—with himself, with his self-destructive lover—in soulful check.
The Bug Club, “‘Have U Ever Been 2 Wales”
If not, this boy-girl duo says, you should go because, quite simply, “It’s good.” I personally have not, though as a fan of Jon Langford, Raymond Williams, Siân Phillips, and leeks, I certainly do respect the culture. Also I do remember when the Cardiff tourism board rebranded the Welsh capital as “The Diff”—is that still happening? But back to the song: fuzzy guitars and fuzzier vocals, repetitive and occasionally noisy, good-natured and pro-daffodil. In short, it’s good.
Sabrina Carpenter, “15 Minutes”
An outtake, for sure—I wouldn’t sub this in for anything on Short n’ Sweet. And I wouldn’t be too excited for the follow-up if this were the lead single either. But Carpenter sure knows how to gussy up some floor scraps, even on a glitzy pop disco exercise, and she rhymes “When did all you bitches get so nice?” and “Hopin’ there’s no brain between my eyes” with the coy confidence that there’s more where this came from.
Hurray For The Riff Raff, “Pyramid Scheme”
In contrast this leftover, with a title that seems to apply to just about everything in the works these days, would have been right at home on HFTRR's best album yet, The Past Is Still Alive, released less than a year ago. Alynda Segarra's sharp eye, sharper pen, and warmly inclusive vocal style are all on display here, but let's give it up for drummer Yan Westerlund, who knows just how to make a dogged tempo sound uplifting.
Little Simz feat. Obongjayar, “Flood”
Over a determined flutter of a track, the British rapper lays out her rules for success with single-minded precision. Adding to the humid atmosphere are vocals from Nigerian-British singer Obongjayar and, in Xhosa, South Africa’s Moonchild Sanelly.
Worst New Song
Desi Trill, Cardi B, and DJ Khaled feat. Natania and Subhi, “Higher Love”
Nothing about this Smurfs tie-in is as it seems. Desi Trill is not a musician but a UMG label/brand out to market a blend of South Asian music with hip-hop. The melody is swiped not from Steve Winwood but from Belinda Carlisle’s roughly contemporaneous “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” Rihanna does not sing the hook, no matter what this trailer suggests, and who can blame her; guessing the voice belongs to Natania and/or Subhi. Smurf this shit.
