SEVEN is a vehicle of chaos and I am an itinerant weasel; I have nothing to offer you but the prose, the whole prose and nothing but the prose (along with a generous, sevenly handful of tunes).

But what, dear reader, is the whole prose? And what is the copious amateurish faff that undermines any authority you’re trying to pose as a Reputable Music Writer? Well, wouldn’t you like to know. (Please leave this page immediately if this topic is not of interest, I would earnestly rather you did.) There are countless icks, ticks and generally naff moves immortalised out there in good ol’ ungainly words, but these are a few of my biggest peeves and I hope, uh, I hope you agree!

I should clarify that these red flags are for raw prose and not for politics, for the sole reason that I am working like a flea on a jellyfish’s toenail this week and have neither time nor means to Go Properly Into Politics. I’m a writer not a politician. No one elected me. So, hike it! Release my arts funding! Subsidise me and my fellow citizens, etc.. Don’t talk to me about due diligence — are you a misogynist journalist? Can you prove you’ve never been retweeted by Palantir? Fuck you and the other Bad Ones!

This, needless to say, is a huge gatekeep, and I’m sure it’s unfair to many well-intentioned pieces from writers who are perfectly earnest listeners but just happen to be incapable of throwing a sentence together with as much as an ounce of conviction behind it. Keep at it, y’all! I’ve done probably all of these at some time or another too! Just, uh, keep on keeping on without these fallbacks.

Each entry contains a tune because this is a music site.

And without further ado, SEVEN words/phrases to avoid (or at least be extremely cautious about) using in any earnest music prose ever :):)

aesthetic

The aesthetics of chaos deserve handsome dividends for elevating Angine de Poitrine to the discourse.

love deftones even when theyre terrible they are just tooooo aesthetic

Uh, real high stakes with this one.

Is it a noun? Proceed with caution. Those aesthetics deserve their analysis, but don’t you get slippery with them.

Is it an attributive adjective (aesthetic blasts of massive bass)? Delete your draft.

Is it a predicative adjective (this song is very aesthetic)? Torch your entire blog and probably your career plans.

I really hope this one doesn’t require any further unpacking. Here’s (probably) my favourite Aes Dana tune, stop thinking about stupid words and enjoy it. (I neither know the meaning of the word carmine nor care to.)

balance / two

There are two core themes on The Life of a Showgirl: humour and sincerity. Taylor Swift’s gargantuan personality helps her find the perfect balance between them.

File this one under when it works, it works, but if you’re the kind of writer whose analytic template includes instructions for pinpointing the nearest conceivable dichotomy just so you have something to structure a piece around, you can take a bloody hike! Here are some things I have been asked to believe in recent months:

• There are two halves of Record X: the good half and the bad half.

• When you think about it, Record Y ultimately breaks down into smooth jams vs. gritty jams.

• Band Z has two vocalists. The balance between A’s mouthwash and B’s gangrene is critical to their success.

Not only are statements of this kind often too facile to be convincing (especially if they’re about a record I’ve already heard), they are insufferably boring to read and I resent that the writer considers it worth my time to mull over them in lieu of, y’know, a comprehensive mapping of the myriad complexities that swirl around most music worth hearing.

As Kerry in her wisdom puts it, balance is a fundamentally uninteresting relationship for two things to have. Too right! Why do so many unimaginative writers hold the conceit that strong art should be balanced? This isn’t politics, this isn’t middle-school bipartisan horse bollocks, and it’s not a bloody maths equation — now treat thought-provoking, lopsided, challenging artistic statements like the freakshows they are, and give me the critical judgements. With zest, please!

doesn’t reinvent the wheel

The latest Counterparts may not reinvent the wheel, but it certainly speaks at a higher volume than my ex and therapist combined.

This one annoys me as much for how uselessly it reads in some pieces as for how inescapable a disclaimer it is in others.

Sometimes a band does need to be shielded from any intrusive expectations of novelty opinion when they’re playing music that relies on anything; sometimes you’re inadvertently bringing those expectations into the conversation for no other reason than the way you, your readers and music discourse at large fetishise originality for a lack of any deeper foundation; sometimes you’re just protesting too much.

So which is it? Are you telling me that a drum and bass record sounds like a drum and bass record, or are you trying to handwave your way around Metallica’s artistic bankruptcy? If appropriation is really so far removed from innovation, you can shut your trap about Lou Reed and the Velvets and start spieling about the damn Who.

The parasitic relationship between critical acknowledgement and perceived innovation really does sharpen my blades on this, but, well, you try coming from a country that has spent the last decade living through Brexit and the Windmill Scene at the same fucking time! End of the day, if you do need to shout out how the work in question is made of the good ol’ tropes and demands to be approached as such, then you owe it to yourself and the record to flip the bird to any misplaced notion of reinventing the wheel the reader may have been harbouring.

sonic/aural/auditory [equivalent of a] ____

Milli Vanilli’s hooks explode like my first auditory orgasms since my aural divorce with my big bad sonic ex MJ.

Most of these entries have some amount of leeway, but this one is exclusively the realm of cowards who should get a bloody grip and stand by their own metaphors. You want to tell me that that feedback assault from whichever godawful Brooklyn act you’ve been hooked on lately produced an aural stab wound? That the bass on that trending remix is an auditory magma flow. That the thirst trap you’ve been real parasocial with lately offers sex in sonic form?

My response ten times out of ten is to hire a fucking editor. If your audience clicked knowingly on a piece of music commentary, they don’t need this kind of useless signposting; if they didn’t, that’s your fault for bad advertising.

In other news, here’s the Sonics playing a punk(?) tune so primitive that it hits like a literal bludgeon, hurr hurr.

subjective

Subjectively speaking, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is not what I would typically call a ‘deep’ artist, but there's no denying the depth of footprint that she has left upon media as a whole.

Uniquely among the items on this list, subjective is here because it adds oil to the wayside drums of Bad Readers. Every reader of every one of these other tropes is a presumed Good Reader and any blame for anything that happens is to be heaped upon the writer alone, but Jesus Christ I am past extending any patience whatsoever to the simpletons and/or partisan goons that lampoon any form of criticism whatsoever for failing to meet some imagined criteria of objectivity.

You are reading another human being’s selectively candid reaction to a piece of art, and even if they are (hopefully) savvy enough to draw reference from actual real-world points of context, these are still their associations with the work and nothing but your own idiocy should elevate this to some infantile realm of Objective Truth.

But yes, if you’re a writer vain, self-deluding or outright stupid enough to actively encourage the reception of your work as objective, then you can absolutely make your bed under the bus for enabling these morons.

BONUS LEVEL: In my opinion —> as opposed to what, the rest of this opinion piece?

(For what it’s worth, I abide the occasional X is, for me, a jolly good record! to keep things anchored, but the risk of this falls off a cliff into self-conscious tripe or conceited pontification is just too real. Be humble, but be readable too and don’t enable.)

[surname] / [forename]

Musgraves is at the top of her game. It’s unbelievable how much Kacey has grown in just three years. I can hardly conceive of her as a teenage upstart anymore.

I find it hilarious how this one blends a piss-thin conceit of professional distance with a cloying impression of overfamiliarity with whomsoever the unfortunate artist happens to be. It is the worst of all worlds. You look like a chump. The insistent alternation reminds of the stereotypical addicts, but, like, you have two fucking names to work with there: two names! Pick one — you’re a ‘critic’, so show some bloody conviction. He’s either your mate Trent or your gimp Reznor. She’s either mythical muse Adrianne or established cultural phenomenon Lenker. If you are unaware of the difference in nuance, you should not be writing anything at all — and don’t you even think about separating the Sioux from the Siouxsie.

X is a band that

This one is innocuous flab in some contexts, but it makes the list specifically for its use at the start of the first sentence in a review. Unfortunately, this is by far the most frequent place I’ve seen it used. All the other citations here are fictitious, but we’ll take the gloves off for this one and, uh:

• [X] is a band that really needs no introduction. With a rich history dating back over 40 years…

• [X] is a band that doesn’t need an endorsement from anyone. For over 30 years, they’ve…

• [X] is a band that personifies such concepts as ‘independent’, ‘alternative’ and ‘experimental’, but...

In terms of substance, I can survive the bloat, but the immediate editorial wince this one induces is unparalleled. You seriously couldn’t be bothered to think of a more interesting kick-off to your piece? You seriously expect me to commit to however many more paragraphs of procedural bilge you have in store here? If there’s any circumstance that makes me regret that a writer didn’t have it in them to harbour an inner monologue, this is the one. Read a fucking book.

Here’s a band that is X:

66:13 // April 17, 2026 // Season of Mist

While Crippled Black Phoenix has covered a lot of sonic ground in over two decades of existence, I primarily approached their latest (typically intimidating) project, Sceaduhelm, through the lens of comparison and contrast with the group’s previous standard LP, 2022’s Banefyre. This was partly because I’d spent a lot of time with the latter and know it inside and out, but also because these two albums are two peas in a pod - sprawling records full of gloom.

Of course, gloom isn’t really in short supply anywhere in the Crippled Black Phoenix discography - frontman Justin Greaves may’ve (mostly) left aside doom metal despite his previous Iron Monkey and Electric Wizard stints, leaving this project to tinker with varying admixtures of post-rock, Gothic, and folk elements, but their songs are almost always rather depressive and sinister stuff.

Its album art adorned with a notably unnerving Man in the Moon image, Sceaduhelm comes advertised as a more reflective record exploring such themes “fatigue” and “burnout”, describing its atmospheric intent as “focusing on consequence rather than reaction”. In most ways, I can understand this description - relative to Banefyre’s tendency towards post-rock bombast, this latest offering feels restrained, content to mostly brood rather than rage and rant. Notable highlights manage to tap into this feeling of nocturnal exhaustion, if in different ways - “Dropout”, for example, as a left-field detour into weird darkwave aesthetics, feels like dancing bleary-eyed simply to keep from falling asleep, while the eerie “Under the Eye” anchors the album’s late stages as a dreamlike, bleak monument.

Those listeners (probably most) who found Banefyre too massive for realistic consumption are probably wondering whether Sceaduhelm’s reduced scope, if still formidable (over an hour) has resulted in a far more digestible product. The answer is nuanced - this latest album remains imposing, its moods reliably dark, and still with a bit of fat to trim (I’d say “The Void” and “Tired to the Bone” could be removed without much issue) - but this album does feel much shorter than its predecessor, in a good way, and the large majority of the tracklist is remarkably engaging.

Therefore, fluctuation of quality level isn’t a problem here - I do feel, though, that the album suffers a bit from a mismatch in the tone throughout. The weariness, the sense of things burning out slowly, of agonizing decay, which propels much of the material here rests quite uneasily against some of these songs. The most obvious “fish out of water” is “Vampire Grave”, an undoubtedly fun song, quite campy in its delivery,, but the energetic driving anthem that is “Ravenettes”, and the glorious ‘80s rock cheese of “No Epitaph - The Precipice” (“I wanna be, a better man, for youuuuu”) feel similarly incongruous. You’ll note that I enjoy all three songs, indeed, each is a highlight in its own way, but their more carefree and cartoonish sense of darkness rests doesn’t quite connect with the malevolent grimness which pervades many of the other tracks.

I warned you I’d be referencing Banefyre a lot, so here’s my overarching assessment of that massive effort - it was bloated, hard to listen to as a whole, contained one major mistake of a track (the opener/intro), and also provided me with a whole bunch of the most fantastic tracks I’ve heard this decade. I mention all that to let you know my general feelings on Crippled Black Phoenix - to my ears, they’re a wild card of a band, capable of brilliance and of duds, and with not quite enough of a filter to sort between them. Interestingly, that sense of missing quality control is much less evident on Sceaduhelm, perhaps simply because this is a significantly shorter album this time around, but I still can’t wholeheartedly love this record, as the vibe provides a sense of whiplash throughout. I love me some jovial horror-themed hard rock, and I love me some doom-encrusted post-rock balladry, and all the other variations presented herein, but the gap between the extremes presented on the same album cause Sceaduhelm’s central vision to waver a bit. I’d recommend Sceaduhelm wholeheartedly as a collection of nifty songs portraying differing shades of darkness - as a coherent album, it’s still worth your time, but my praise is less effusive.

7.5/10

Welcome, or welcome back, to Permanent Waves, a weekly expedition into the power pop (and beyond!) of the year 1980.

We’re getting back on-schedule in style this week: TWO UPDATES IN ONE, and to put a little pep in my step, this edition of Permanent Waves comes with an extra-special BONUS revisitation of my favorite music of the first three months of 1980! It’s been a wild ride so far, and I almost can’t believe it’s a quarter of the way over. Let’s mindset!

THE ZAMN LIST: Q1 1980

Ray Barretto - Rican/Struction

There may be no album from this project I’ve returned to more frequently or eagerly than Rican/Struction. As a total novice to the world of salsa, Ray Barretto and his band (special MVP shoutouts to pianist Oscar Hernandez and bassist Sal Cuevas) have taken me tenderly by the hand and whisked me off through a playful, passionate tour across a whole rainbow of Afro-Carribean jazz and cha-cha rhythms. I’m not too proud to admit I often struggle mightily to emotionally connect with music sung in languages besides my own native tongue of English, but this is the kind of record to reaffirm that old canard that music (and dance by extension) is a truly universal language. I double-dog dare you to queue up “Algo Nuevo” and “Tumbao Africano” back-to-back and sit perfectly still for both songs’ full duration. It can’t be done!

Japan - Quiet Life

The glib answer for why I put this album head and shoulders above the dozen-odd other synthesizer-pop records I’ve heard so far this year is that Japan’s take on the genre draws heavily on the vocabulary of glam rock, in a way that makes it a much more gratifying listen to a rock fan such as myself than the avant-garde kosmische roots of, say, Tangerine Dream do. I really think it goes a biiiit deeper, though: Quiet Life feels uniquely like a new frontier in electronic music for the way it shifts those tones into a pop context while retaining a strict focus on the ghost in the machine, the ineffable humanness of the ways technology shapes our world (authentic interest in the tech itself is, for the time being, a given in this genre). Keyboardist Richard Barbieri is less a star player here and more the glue that binds the whole thing together, lending each song a glassy, digital veneer so’s the rest of the band seems almost trapped within some vast metaphysical screen. David Sylvian’s languid, detached singing, Mick Karn’s sinuous, busy basslines, are the quiet life, suspended in plastic, out of space and time. The future, folks: ain’t it a thing?

N’Draman Blintch - Cosmic Sounds

Cosmic Sounds stands tall as my favorite record of 1980 to this point; if it had come out in ‘79, only my beloved Remote Control would stand a chance of dethroning it as the best record of that year. It’s everything moving and enduring and inspiring about disco, about funk, about dance music in general. “Self-Destruction” in particular is a towering achievement of rhythm and minimalist lyricism. Fuck anyone who tries to tell you that music this purely pleasurable somehow makes for weaker polemic than whichever scratchy-throated Euro-American rock style is in vogue this week: N’Draman Blintch and his crack coterie of funkster all-stars (percussionist Gapar Lawal played with Funkadelic in the early 70s) bring satire, outrage, and enough raw excitement to topple an empire and then some. Power pop mindset ignores this one at its own peril.

Elvis Costello & the Attractions - Get Happy!!

I mentioned already that this album has grown on me a lot, but for the non-initiated, it’s probably worth explaining why it had to grow in the first place. On 1978’s This Year’s Model, Elvis Costello was punk rock’s resident smart-aleck, the kind of guy who could take musical cues from the Beatles and still rail eloquently against the evils of corporate radio. On 1979’s Armed Forces, he brought in more new-wave keyboards, bigger hooks, more layered production— it’s a great album, but it was also a step away from the punk aggression that made Costello such a compelling figure to begin with. Get Happy!!, for a long time, felt like another step away, like the moment Costello’s songwriting ambitions fully diverged from punk, leaving the genre a little less witty forevermore. Get Happy?? No, dammit, you’re supposed to be angry! But, with time, song after song revealed itself to be more tightly-plotted and hookful than it seemed at first blush, first the ‘nergetic stuff like “High Fidelity”, then the slower burns like “New Amsterdam” and “Riot Act”, the latter of which finally gives Costello an album closer that couldn’t be justifiably supplanted by a single for the American release.

Wreckless Eric - Big Smash!

The best thing I can say for Big Smash! is that it lives up to the title, exclamation point and all. Eric has such a wonderful knack for playing up his clumsy, gangly squawk of a voice, and his best songs (many of which show up here) play pissant-as-tragic-antihero. He’s no everyman, but rather an everyfreak, embodying the universal human condition from the perspective of every ratty-looking kid who’s ever looked at Mick Jagger and thought “Hell, if a guy that ugly can be a sex symbol…” For my money, the Stones themselves could learn a thing or two from “Break My Mind”, likely the best country tune to come out of the UK since “Rocky Raccoon”.

Robert Fripp - God Save the Queen / Under Heavy Manners

In the wake of PoseidonBrian Eno disappointing me with the somewhat grating Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics (more on that in a bit), this was a particularly welcome revisit. God Save The Queen is dark and uncertain in many of the ways that Fourth World strove for, without compromising in the slightest on ambient music’s unique ability to slip into the background and lull you into a reverie before you’ve even realized what’s happening. Under Heavy Manners is a wholly different beast but no less enthralling for it, taking the same loop-based compositional method and slapping it on top of a strident disco thump, allowing for a broader palette that balances the hypnotic atmospherics of God Save the Queen against the punishing fretboard workouts more familiar to King Crimson fans. Taken as a whole, it’s perhaps a more approachable gateway into furniture music than even Music for Airports, showing just how much possibility the genre holds.

Stiff Little Fingers - Nobody’s Heroes

Nobody’s Heroes can only be considered a disappointing follow-up to one of the most righteous punk-rock records of ‘79 if you expect Stiff Little Fingers to be more than the imperfect, pissed-off humans they’ve always been. “Fly The Flag” rips into the foul hypocrisies of nationalism, “At the Edge” voices youthful angst at its most restless and indignant, and the title track is a sobering wake-up call from the ever-seductive myth that punk bands will be the ones to lead us into a glorious revolution (don’t let heroes get your kicks for you / It’s up to you and no-one else). Sure, that relentless iconoclasm exists in perpetual tension with the band’s fist-pumping power pop sensibilities, and sure, the dub and ska on the B-side is, while certainly less embarrassing than many similar attempts by similar bands, ultimately much less flattering of Jake Burns’ ragged voice. But it’s all still unmistakably the band that created “Suspect Device”, and that’s enough for me, and if it’s not enough for you, well, take another look at the title, buddy.

Shakin’ Street - Shakin’ Street

A few weeks back I praised this album as “everything vital and important about rock and roll.” Can I back that up with cold, hard facts? No, because facts have fuck all to do with great rock and roll! As important and true as the message of a song like “Nobody’s Hero” is, Shakin’ Street makes the kind of music that does the crucial work of shakin’ young people out of complacency until their hearts cry out for a better world— All you kids, wake up! No time to loose! Here, Fabienne Shine and co. pull off a flawless balance of kickass, headbanging energy and simple songwriting that makes you itch to get out there and try your own hand at it. That, my friends, is power pop mindset at its finest.

Van Halen - Women & Children First

It’s not really that Eddie shreds that much harder than anyone else currently shredding (though he does), it’s more that Diamond Dave is shameless enough to make the whole thing more than camp, more than technical or genre exercises, more than macho posturing. Their warp-speed boogies go harder than ever (“Romeo Delight”, “Loss of Control”), their sense of humor is still sharper than about any other stadium act I can think of (“Fools”, “Could This Be Love?”), and their command of the blues is so complete that it makes it even more hysterical for their frontman to be the Al Jolson fanboy he is. You simply have got to hand it to them: heavy metal has never been this much fun before.

Ten great songs on non-ZAMN albums

Numbers - “Sideways Elevator”

The Buggles - “Clean, Clean”

Hilly Michaels - “Calling All Girls”

The Psychedelic Furs - “Imitation of Christ”

Squeeze - “Another Nail in My Heart”

The Brothers Johnson - “Stomp!”

Gyllene Tider - “Fån Telefon”

The Fools - “Sold Out”

Linda Ronstadt - “Can’t Let Go”

Sue Saad and the Next - “Your Lips-Hands-Kiss-Love”

…And without further ado, let’s catch-up!

WEEK 14

Genesis - Duke

The 70s sure took a toll on these cult artsy-pop heroes: most bands would be irreparably shattered by the departure of a frontman as singular and magnetic as Peter Gabriel, but Genesis managed to soldier on, with their first album helmed by singer/drummer Phil Collins, 1976’s A Trick of the Tail, trimming away the excesses of 1974’s double-disc rock opera The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway for their most accessible and focused album to date. But, lead guitarist Steve Hackett would also depart before long, and by the time the pallid …And Then There Were Three… came along in ‘78, Genesis was palpably lacking their usual heady, mystical je ne sais quoi. Duke is a more accomplished pop record than Three, but it also throws the dilemma of latter-day Genesis into sharper relief: Collins and co. can still write a catchy, musically-interesting tune, but the big ideas that used to bolster those tunes, used to make their albums feel like worlds more than tracklists, just aren’t there anymore. I like the backing vocal bit on “Misunderstanding”, and “Duchess” and “Turn it On Again” are both smartly-written radio singles, but the performances lack vigor and personality.

VERDICT: FINE

Scorpions - Animal Magnetism

Feeling pretty broadly neutral on this latest studio set from Germany’s finest purveyors of hairy-chested biker jams. Animal Magnetism feels like more of a play for mainstream radio acceptance, and frankly, the Scorpions just aren’t as interesting when they can’t call their album something as edgy as Virgin Killer. Luckily, they’re talented enough players to pass forty minutes pleasantly enough; this isn’t too samey (check out that “Lady Starlight” ballad! Not too shabby!) or too meatheaded (check out those stabs at social commentary on “Twentieth Century Man”!), it’s just a little bit too safe and predictable for anybody who’s heard more than a few hard rock albums (check out the plentiful songs about gettin’ it on with a chick!).

VERDICT: FINE

Saxon - Wheels of Steel

I have used up about all the goodwill I generally have for this style on the generous presumptions that that fucking album cover only bears a coincidental resemblance to famous Nazi iconography, and isn’t reflective of any deeper beliefs held by England’s sixth-or-seventh finest purveyors of hairy-chested biker jams, so I won’t mince words: This shit is just not cool at all to me. Any metal act that needs to literally open an album with a song called “Motorcycle Man” is just insisting upon itself wayyy too much, even if the song itself is solid mindless fun. Motörhead sounds raw and dirty enough for their grease monkey appeal to at least be understandable to me, but this is just bog-standard ‘eavy rock featuring some wailing operatic guy who thinks he’s Ronnie James Dio. It would be FINE if so many bands hadn’t already taken their exact sound in an actually interesting direction, but alas. Alas.

VERDICT: SKIP

Vasco Rossi - Colpa d’Alfredo

The third studio album from this Italian singer-songwriter is too scattershot to make it over the language barrier, but there’s still a bit of fun to be had along the way. Most of the songs on this album start with a likeable bit of guitar jangle, most have a cogent chorus, and for a stateside audience I’d go as far as to say most you’ve never heard anything quite like. You’ve probably heard loads of stuff that sounds a bit like all of it, though. Whenever it seems like it’s about to give me a reason to reach for it instead of literally any pop rock I can actually sing along to, Rossi’s strangely rough voice stops it just short. The biggest exception is the punkish album closer, “Asilo ‘Republic’”— those quotation marks around ‘Republic’ speak louder than any actual songwriting decision made here. Italians, have at it; the rest of you, this one’s safe to…

VERDICT: SKIP

Brian Eno & Jon Hassell - Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics

I’ve got all the patience in the world for Eno at his most avant-garde, but this collaboration with Memphis jazz saxophonist Jon Hassell tests me nonetheless, treading dangerously close to the kind of pretentious, aimless artistic tourism that’s mired an entire genre of “world music” records in racially-suspect pseudo-prestige. I mean, chrissakes, the number of times I’ve already seen people describe this record as sounding either “primitive” or “ethnic” is enough to make me want to slap a SKIP on it just to wash the taste of overpriced kombucha out of my mouth. I can’t bring myself to disrespect ambient daddy like that, though: Fourth World Vol. 1 is not at all soothing or tranquil like Music for Airports is, but the creepy atmospheres of drifting synth pads, congas, and ghatam, along with Hassell’s wailing, effects-mangled trumpet, make it one of the most unique musical experiences I’ve had in recent weeks, even if it isn’t exactly “enjoyable”.

VERDICT: FINE

Tommy Tutone - Tommy Tutone

Finally, some actual fucking power pop! San Franciscan guitar-slinger Tommy Heath is clearly modeling himself off of pub-rockers like Graham Parker and John Hiatt, but he’s somehow even more of a schlub than either. I’m not proud to say that this is my favorite album of the week, but I do mean it earnestly and full-throatedly: Walking through downtown Spokane as the sun set on one of the first hot days of the year, listening to “Sounds of a Summer Night”, I got it. The predictable chicks-n-beer songwriting was pure comfort food, the everymannish singing perfectly could-be-you. Chicken soup for the soul, for power poppers instead of Christians. Mindset of the week: Latest hits, you know they’ll be playin’ / If you put your head to the wind and you listen, so hard /To the sounds of a summer night / Baby, you will hear them

VERDICT: NICE

WEEK 15

Bad Manners - Ska ‘n’ B

So lighthearted it’s nearly a novelty record, and high-spirited enough to be a damn great novelty record. This London 2-tone ska outfit clearly takes partying seriously, and a party is exactly what their debut album feels like. They cover “Wooly Bully” and “The Monster Mash”, frontman Buster Bloodvessel repeatedly calls himself a fatty, the band takes breaks from skankin’ for a wildly entertaining jump-blues jam called “Caledonia” and a sardonic nursery rhyme called “Scruffy the Huffy Chuffy Tug Boat”. The modest ambitions make it hard for me to feel too intensely for it as an artistic statement, but the jocular band chemistry leaves a firmly pleasant impression— it certainly begs to be experienced live onstage more convincingly than that last J. Geils Band record!

VERDICT: NICE

Phil Lynott - Solo in Soho

On his first solo set, Thin Lizzy frontman Philip Lynott is less focused without his band, but no less the charming vagabond. “Tattoo” is disco, the title track is reggae, “Girls” and “Yellow Pearl” are new wave, and “Talk in ‘79” is, uh, spoken word? I think? Lynott’s brand of hot swashbuckling romance and boozy gutter heartbreak is universal enough to slot comfortably enough into any number of pastiches, but the handful of tougher cuts throw all the seams into stark relief: at the end of the day, Lynott is a rocker, and a roller too, baby. Best tracks: The Mark Knopfler-assisted Elvis tribute “King’s Call”, and “Ode to a Black Man”, which hilariously disses Stevie Wonder for singing about plants instead of civil rights. Get his ass, Phil!

VERDICT: FINE

The Knack - …But the Little Girls Understand

The ostensible goal of Permanent Waves is to discern why 1980 is a year of peak power popTM, so here’s a theory for you: It’s because of Get The Knack. I’m reluctant to leave it there, because I am not a fan of The Knack, but the fact of the matter is that the biggest hit song of 1979 was by a group of cheeky mop-tops with guitars peddling a new wave-inflected update on the sound of the British Invasion. If power pop is about spreading the gospel of The SixtiesTM, “My Sharona” and The Knack by extension could fairly be called the genre’s greatest success story in a decade. The problem is that Doug Fieger thinks the lyric that unlocks the Beatles is “Well she was just seventeen / if you know what I mean”. In other words, he’s not that bright, and kind of a lecher. He claims this album was written before the band went multi-platinum, too, which means I can’t even write off …But the Little Girls Understand as a cynical cash-grab by an artist that should know better. This is a sophomore slump by one-trick ponies, and that ain’t Beatles.

VERDICT: SKIP

U.K. Subs - Brand New Age

Pretty undistinguished shouty Bri’ish street punk here— not as funny as Cockney Rejects, not as urgent as Stiff Little Fingers, and not as catchy as either. I do like their driving sense of rhythm, though, the way guitarist Nicky Garratt pushes Johnny Ramone’s buzzsaw style towards its slashin’ bashin’ logical endpoint. They’re at their best at their fastest: a few more cuts like “Emotional Blackmail” and I’d be a happy camper, indeed. As it stands, though, it’s really just gone in one ear and out the other.

VERDICT: SKIP

X - Los Angeles

Rip-roaring, all-AmeriKKKan punk R’n’R, like Rockabilly by way of Frank Miller (except, er, not as tedious as that sounds). Produced by famed Doorsman Ray Manzarek, Los Angeles douses the famed, twenty-year rock tradition of X’s hometown with gasoline and burns it in effigy. Their subject matter begins and ends with seedy urban underbellies and the greasy nihilists who fuck, smoke, and murder their way through them, and on a few tracks (“Sugarlight”, the title track, and “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene”) the hook just isn’t quite good enough to swallow the sourness of it all; ya write a song about drugging and raping a woman, I’d better be able to recall the verses! But sheesh, just take a listen to addictive, memorably-titled stuff like “Your Phone’s Off the Hook, But You’re Not”, “The World’s A Mess, It’s In My Kiss”, or “Sex and Dying in High Society”. Manzarek’s contributions on keys are a massive highlight at every point— hell, “The Unheard Music” would be downright useless without him.

VERDICT: NICE

James Brown - People

James Brown has already recorded far, far too many albums for his second stab at disco to be essential listening for anybody but the most insatiable super-fan, and besides that it’s awfully hard not to miss the palpable sweat and grime of his prime years, and besides that the whole thing was written by producer Brad Shapiro, so the “not a real James Brown album” epithets practically write themselves. For what it’s worth, I didn’t hate this— Brown is a titanic figure in the world of funk and dance music, and his immaculate sense of rhythm and his commanding voice are still intact, if a bit puffier and more satisfied. This guy’s third-rate autopilot is handily on par with anyone else still unfortunate enough to still be selling disco in the 80s, all he’s really got to do is let the funk flow. Best track: “Let the Funk Flow”, natch.

VERDICT: FINE

Quick-fire Roundup is our chance to highlight a few of the albums we’ve been digging from the past month that we may not have had the time or energy to pump out full essays for. These releases nevertheless deserve a gold star and a spot on the podium.

Neurosis - An Undying Love For A Burning World
63:30 // March 20th, 2026 // Neurot Recordings

Neurosis were about the last band in the world I expected to drop what for many – both in and out of metal – has been the event album of the month. Back in 2022, the remaining members of the legendary sludge act were widely praised for punctiliously expelling an abusive member as soon as his behaviour came to light (and levelling with their audience as soon as they were able), but I doubt I was alone in assuming that said member had been so central to the band that their future career was essentially shuttered from that point. So much for assumptions! This time last year, we would doubtless have thrown accusations of dated, fantastical stare-clutching at the thought of revitalised Neurosis buoyed by new member Aaron Turner (of ISIS celebrity and Sumac notoriety), but there we are: some fantasies are clearly worth a little conviction.

However, the new lineup alone does not account for the Event, even if Turner does prove an impeccable complement to Steve Von Til as one of the band’s trademark dual vocalist/guitarist figureheads (with the long-absent bellow of bassist Dave Edwardson I hear giving them both occasional pause for breath). Neurosis have a unique claim on the epithet force of nature, in part for force alone, and in part for the bristling, straining, groaning, churning vitality that they bring to atmospheres that could just have easily been stoney and unyielding. Their unmistakable mix of humanity and sheer power is all over this thing, and with more vim than anyone could have asked for! Than anyone had arguably heard from the classic line-up in years!

The bulk of An Undying Love For A Burning World packs a no-nonsense display of muscle that instantly does away with any suggestion of aging gracefully (or at all) and quickly brings to mind the thunder that still echoes from 1999’s iconic Times of Grace (the likes of “Mirror Deep” or album highlight “Seething and Scattered” take me right back to “The Doorway” (1999) or the rollicking title track). It may not be Neurosis’ melodically engaging or emotionally laden record, but it streamlines their momentous peak/valley navigations into perhaps their most effortless traversals to date, as has clearly been noted by the new generation of fans that have already gravitated to it. You could raise all manner of concerns about whether this recent acclaim has overstated the record’s position within Neurosis’ iconic discography, but this seems churlish to me: the dust has yet to settle, and this album has already given us more than most to be grateful for. (8.0/10)

- Hugh Puddle

Sacrificial Ecstasy - Relic of Lamentation
11:26 // March 30th, 2026 // self-released

If you’re going into this readily awaiting more Haunter, which Sacrificial Ecstasy are a continuation of in terms of personnel and broader genre classification, it’d prove wise to do so with tempered, nay, recalibrated expectations. While they had already started their departure from Sacramental Death Qualia’s prominent prog leanings on Discarnate Ails, ‘progressive’ has atrophied to an afterthought on this demo. This retrogression towards a more primal attitude could be compared to a backwards Timeghoul evolution, wherein the material trims some of its fat rather than picking up new tricks, and just as with the now-revered former underdogs’ development (or, by extension, Blood Incantation’s), you’ll either crave their earlier ideals or applaud their pluck. I fall firmly into the latter camp in two out of those three instances.

Fret not, though, as you’ll still be treated to rather sprawling, heavily blackened dissoscapes in the vein of Mitochondrion, now enriched with a tad more traditionalist flair drawing from both the DM and BM spheres at points. The two tracks never quite reach the declamatory pageantry of an album like The Destroyers of All, but it’s evident the band was aiming for something more visceral here, keeping clear of the higher levels of abstraction. Unnecessary comparisons aside, this brief little gem is a great appetizer for these lads’ future endeavors and an easy recommendation for fans of all things disso. (7.0/10)

- Nex

Skee Mask - F
56:21 // March 20th, 2026 // self-released

Is there a letter this man won’t touch? My verbal reasoning skills extend just far enough to count F as the sixth ‘album’ of unmastered outtakes released thus far by Bryan Müller/SCNTST/IDM club god/“Skee Mask”, and for my money it’s one of the better entries in this series — certainly a notch up on A and C, and perhaps on a level with B and D. As with its predecessors, the sequencing is a loose scaffold; any continuity is a by-product of his well-documented ability to straddle whatever configuration of sub-genres he so pleases, chiefly techno, breaks, house, IDM, 2-step, dub and ambient is in question. These tracks could probably be slapped together in any order, and we’d nod along wistful as though to affirm that this was definitely made by that one guy.

(Gawd, I hate writing about Skee Mask — all it takes is listing the good electronic genres and then slapping a perfunctory sounds like Skee Mask on the end.)

As usual, there are instant highlights among the clubbier cuts (”Untitled 58”’s 2-step groove will power every electric car in your neighbourhood, while “Pirate Space Odyssey”’s drum and bass workout handily warrants that the title); as usual, Skee Mask is borderline unrivalled in his knack for liminal downtempo (”Apt 199B” is one for the Pool fans); as usual, the pure ambient cuts fall at either end of the record’s quality extremes: nay to “29Hz” and opener “Vittore”, yay to “4’22”“, absolutely yay all the way to closer “Cirklon2”. Get these! Or don’t — get all of them! Is F‘s chief appeal that it doesn’t have to be a grab bag? Don’t call me. (7.0/10)

- Hugh Puddle

Nemesism - Premonitions of a Memory
12:49 // March 20th, 2026 // self-released

Months since the last impressive BDM record dropped: 0. If you, like me, grew up with Unique Leader’s unearthly 2000s catalog and have been yearning for a return to the techy tinge which dominated that era, you’ll have a blast with Premonitions of a Memory. Nemesism’s members have come a long way since their Guttural Secrete days and already exhibited their inclination to inject genre-extrinsic methodology on their previous, self-titled EP. On these latest three songs – let’s disregard the excellent Oppressor cover for the sake of this argument – they’ve taken that disposition one step further.

There are still some practically inevitable, though highly evolved and thus barely traceable nods to progenitors like Disgorge or Devourment, but the core experience is defined by more uncommon phrasing evoking, among others, Metaportal-era Wormed. By the time you’ve finished the title track, you’ll have heard effortlessly baked-in acoustic motifs that wouldn’t feel out of place on a prog-death release, brisk side-trips to frenetic fretboard maneuver land, pinches, meter shifts – the full package. The whole thing is pretty free-spirited and doesn’t conform to conventions, yet doesn’t cajole you into calling it jazzy. If I had to sum up its qualities in a single word, I’d go with soulful. Because that’s what sticks out even after the tenth listen: compared to most of the (still? still!) increasingly extreme-pursuing brutal death that comes out these days, enjoyable as that may be, this has an audibly bigger focus on meaningful composition, on progressions and transitions you can sink your teeth into rather than just be entertained or energized by them before moving on to the next thrill. I’m aware how oafish that sounds when talking about a genre that’s blunt and amusement-first by design, and I’m not going to label this ‘thinking man’s BDM’. What I will say, though, is that this feels infinitely more considered than the weekly trap-fueled slam nightmare. (7.5/10)

- Nex

Barbaric Oath - Sword, Sorcery, Vengeance
20:12 // March 27th, 2026 // Caligari

You might recognize L. and S., core members of Barbaric Oath and victims of unimaginative parental naming whims, from their work in Nekus and Putridarium, but even if you do, knowledge of their artistic heritage would only stymie your genre guessing game. This project sees them at their most fell and primitive, delivering rather traditional (a recurring theme this month…) war metal somewhat setting itself apart by way of an emphasis on the DM side. With the gifted Necrohelm of Jade fame, who in all likelihood will have been credited for the artwork of many an album by the end of the year, helming the session kit, you can expect an inclement rumble of double bass and blast beats to delight your neighbors and drown out any unwanted contemplation.

Compositionally speaking, there isn’t much to highlight here. It’s standard fare by and large, and mixing up the consuetudinary textbook-misanthropic blackdeath riffs and rapid-fire snare volleys with a mid-paced DM stomp or, on rare occasions, a doom-death divertissement doesn’t break any freshly scorched earth. This isn’t a genre that’s welcoming, much less rewarding experimentation, and what’s presented is very competent and highly enjoyable if you’re into the style. These gents do score some bonus points for going with the unhoary sword-and-sorcery theme, which I personally find more tasteful than the WW[x] and, even more tiring, ‘anti-abrahamic’ shticks.

Admittedly, I’m an easy target for this sound, because unlike with other genres, I tend to not over-analyze it and simply enjoy the blasts pelting down on me. Sword, Sorcery, Vengeance also benefits from its short runtime, which has enticed me into returning to its toxic embrace repeatedly. A soft (7.0/10)

- Nex

Pitou - P2
38:46 // March 20th, 2026 // self-released

Pitou’s aptly titled sophomore album P2 opens with a sugar high impossible to top—“Too Good to Go” is an expansive, maximalist chamber pop song. It’s chock full of chirping woodwinds and humming strings, blowing itself up to an immense size before crashing back down. The rest of the record settles into more familiar dreamy singer-songwriter territory, in the Haley Heynderickx vein, which always lives or dies on the lead performance’s personality. Luckily, Pitou delivers in spades. She trusts her warm, natural soundscapes to ground her angelic, yet puckish, crooning back to this earth. The great joy of the record lies in her willingness to commit to the bit; whether it’s the shockingly dancey “To Do What” or the sultry horns of “Restlessness,” it’s just another challenge to conquer. With P2, Pitou is 2/2. (7.5/10)

- A.R.O.

No/Más - No Peace
21:53 // March 13th, 2026 // Redefining Darkness

On paper, No/Más occupy an interesting niche. Their ambition to fuse grind, death metal, and metallic hardcore should theoretically give them a lot of leeway at the writing stage, ideally resulting in a smooth blend of mosh and finger-wagging sections. While they manage to pull off all three styles convincingly, with death metal getting the short end of the stick in favor of more deathgrind-affine climes, I found there to be a lack of emulsification leading to a choppy assemblage of genre-specific set pieces at some points and overly dialed-in tunnel vision (read: stylistic monolithism) at others. I was often reminded of Dying Fetus if they were to go full-on hardcore (a side-by-side comparison of “Leech” and DF’s “One Shot, One Kill” would make for a good starting point here), as well as of a thirty percent more trad-grind-coded Misery Index. What they’re doing is still good, mind you – and fun enough that I gave this numerous spins before eventually coming to the conclusion that I prefer jamming the two aforementioned bands when I’m longing for either HxC-tinted DM or deathgrind with a pinch of melody. This isn’t average by any means, nor was the landing spot missed per se, but No Peace is neither fish nor fowl and left me wanting something more resolute while jamming it. Try it at the gym and feel your calories burning to the beat. (6.5/10)

- Nex

PISSCORPSE - PRECIPICE OF DEATH
17:59 // March 27th, 2026 // self-released

PISS.

CORPSE.

Let that acme of highfalutin philological accomplishment sink in for a minute. And to think that the music is of an equally magniloquent quality! If this conflation of downtuned, deathy grindcore with powerviolent tendencies and a philistine-repellent war metal coating doesn’t accord with your hermeneutic criteria, I’m at a loss as to what further articulation would meaningfully advance the discussion.

To transition, if only briefly, into a more earnest register, PRECIPICE OF DEATH is so thoroughly divested of self-seriousness that any attempt on your part to supply such gravitas on its behalf would be misplaced. Instead, it’d serve you well to simply submit to the auditory torrent and permit yourself a moment of attentive engagement with its unfolding. There shall be exclamations of ire and anguish, thundering percussion, and ravishing scrapings of the pick, each element proving eminently amenable to your sensibilities. The corpse hath been well and truly pissed upon. (7.0/10)

- Nex

Courtney Barnett - Creature of Habit
38:47 // March 27th, 2026 // Mom+Pop

On Creature of Habit, Courtney Barnett takes a step back to the lackadaisical, kaleidoscopic sound from her early EPs, the best tracks (“Mantis”, “One Thing At a Time”) maintaining a more driving, groove-based edge on her mellowed out psych-pop sound, a course-correction from the indie-pop-rock malaise she’s found herself in the past couple of records. To be fair, “Wonder” is as great a pop ditty as she’s ever written, channeling her newfound melodic sheen to real effect over a grounded chorus—“And I wonder/ What you say when I’m not around...” Few do that stream-of-conscious brand of rambling quite so well, but she perfectly replicates the anxiety of an unquiet mind with ease. It does bleed out a bit into less exciting stuff as the record goes on, but it’s a cozy, foot-tapping good time all the way through. (7.5/10)

- A.R.O.

Egregore - It Echoes in the Wild
48:25 // March 20th, 2026 // 20 Buck Spin

It’s a good thing these catch-up articles run a couple of weeks into the following month, as some works are so eclectic they require a serious amount of time to decipher and fully appreciate. Exhibit A: Egregore’s latest. Their debut didn’t leave much of a lasting impression despite the involved musicians’ prestigious line-up of former projects and its deft agglutination of a wide range of heirloom styles, which I’d mainly attribute to a deficiency of personality; a well-made mosaic of antique metal ultimately too inviscid to stick to the listener’s memory. While this follow-up, as alluded to, isn’t exactly accessible on first listen due to its constant metamorphosis and the growth of additional hydra heads as it progresses through its ten movements, characterlessness is the last thing I’d ascribe to it.

The polar opposite of the lack of cohesion I remonstrated against No Peace above, Echoes in the Wild is a masterclass in perplexing yet structurally sound songwriting with a sublime integrative logic. Throughout this journey, you’ll hear reverberations of extreme metal’s incipiencies and high points, calling to mind everything from the Mantas tapes to Pestilence circa 1991 to later-era Death, sometimes luminous, sometimes broken by a prism cut from tarry tourmaline. Traces of speed and heavy metal, evident in the riffcraft as well as in sporadic vocal delivery shifts, add further nuance. Although my anecdotal knowledge gets scantier the further the material moves away from the thrashing blackdeath bonding agents holding this pastiche together, my plebeian notion is that all of these genres have proven to go well with each other regardless of the specific configuration. Be that as it may, you hardly ever hear literally all of them united under the same umbrella, and the fact that the band has managed to do so in this convincing a fashion, the songs growing natural fascicles in such a way that it feels as if they had been written on the fly with youthful esprit bordering on naivety rather than being the product of meticulous refinement derived from many years of heuristic experience collection, evinces the musicians’ genuine affection for the foundational releases of yore.

Even with the recent renaissance of speed-thrash, black-speed, and adjacent genre salads birthing a good number of academically similar offerings, you’re not going to find many albums like this one – at least not this side of the millennial moat. It Echoes in the Wild would never pass as ‘avant-garde’, but I can’t help but feel that, unlike those of most other outfits seeking to take you back to simpler times when riffs loomed large, the fusing techniques employed here are so forward-thinking they’d befit a prog-tech band like Atheist. Whatever afflatus is to thank for this inexplicable jump in writing chops, one can only hope Shawn, Sebastian, and Philip locked it away to keep drawing from it. Chances are I’m still underrating this. (7.5/10)

- Nex

Dusqk - Lost Sanctuary
54:50 // March 12th, 2026 // Heaven, 11

After several albums, Dusqk has released another album. It comes hot on the heels of Sanctuary OS, which was a chill departure from his dense d&b synthetics. Does Lost Sanctuary depart? Yeah but like no: it continues the ambience-driven vibes of its predecessor, while blending in a little more intensity here and there. “Sky Data Corridor” grooves hard, “Eden Bios” is disgustingly heavenly, and “Flow of Sanctuary”, well, flows gorgeously. Lost Sanctuary is, above all, simply a lovely new chapter in the story of our favourite operating system. (7.0/10)

- Hugh Puddle & jesper

Cryptworm - Infectious Pathological Waste
35:17 // March 27th, 2026 // Me Saco un Ojo

Gatekeep!’s own V.S. has already put in the work and published an in-depth review on their personal blog, so this is mostly included to raise awareness of its existence. Just a few quick notes:

• There can never be too many Demilichian riffs.

• This is Cryptworm’s best release to date.

• Fun!

I’ll leave you to it. (7.0/10)

- Nex

Miserere Luminis - Sidera
51:29 // March 6th, 2026 // Debemur Morti

Remember when people used to care about how close black metal releases hewed to its progenitors, as if The Scene was a desirable social group whose exploits should be recreated ad infinitum? Thank God (jkjk) that’s not the case anymore, and thank the atheistic vacuum that Miserere Luminis are genrewise enough to crossover whatever they’ve crossed over here, regardless of how ill-advised it might sound on paper, which is something like: less-cracked Oranssi Pazuzu atmospheres (aw) alongside some Deafheavenesque emotional resonance (no suburban ennui, I promise — it’s existentially triumphant!) that tickles itself into various frenzies using the aid of (I swear this doesn’t suck) symphonic touches. If you’re sane enough to realise how fucking stupid that sounds, I hope you can still recognise the earnestness of my appeal here. Musicians good, album good, life good, please don’t burn down any houses of worship and take care of yourself. (7.5/10)

- Milo Ruggles

Protrusion - The Last Suppuration
51:43 // March 13th, 2026 // Sevared / Iron Fortress / Unholy Domain

As much as old-school death metal’s iterative gestalt can stimulate the hypothalamus in all the wrong places, prompting maxilla and mandible to part ways to the point where anything beyond an austere ‘good’ becomes a seemingly impenetrable barrier, it’s albums like The Last Suppuration that recall why artists keep bothering with the quest for early nineties enshrinement.

Maintaining the equilibrium between infatuation with the genre’s opera magna and a distinct voice, ahem, protruding from the sediment of echoes has always been the tricky part, and I feel like many bands who have set out to pay homage to the Morrisound and Scandi greats fall just shy of that sweet spot with dispiriting regularity. Which isn’t to say they don’t have their appeal, because they do, but to hammer home how tough a task it is to write traditional death metal with any aspiration to reach the vicinity of menhirs such as Altars of Madness, Onward to Golgotha, or Dawn of Possession without coming off as uncreative.

Protrusion’s love for Gorguts’ Considered Dead couldn’t be more obvious, and yet they manage to go beyond redundant regurgitation by spicing things up with lessons absorbed across adjacent strata: mid-paced, leads-driven passages à la Demigod, an alternation of doomy craft and thrashier bars in the vein of e.g. early Cenotaph, and even slam-approximating beatdowns taking a page from the Suffo playbook, all topped off with very evocative, perfectly executed low-register gurgles you’d expect from BDM acts both primeval and modern. Not a single part of this fusion of influences feels like legerdemain, quite the contrary. Every track is a genuine old-old banger, and if the band had told me these were recordings from ‘93 that they just now unearthed, I would have believed it. I can’t stress enough how lived-in this record sounds.

Since this is very much based on proprietary building blocks (though it bears repeating that this is a custom Rebrickable build, not a stock model), and intentionally so, I can’t bring myself to slap the elusive, rarely employed 9/10 on it. That said, it’s fifty-plus minutes of nostalgic bliss, a rare standout release in a genre that – unwavering popularity among artists and listeners notwithstanding – has struggled to break away from the monotrophic diet it’s been feeding its fans. And while I can’t get over how paradoxical it is that an album so intractably clinging to DM’s roots sounds fresher than ninety percent of what’s passed the ‘OS’ turnstile in the past few years, my right elbow hurts from all the hat tips I consistently find myself performing whenever I put this on. (8.5/10)

- Nex

Joshua Burnside - It’s Not Going to be Okay
38:07 // March 20, 2026 // Nettwerk

I’m as enamored with the drearily-titled It’s Not Going to be Okay as I was with Joshua Burnside’s last album, 2025’s Teeth of Time, if not moreso, but it feels like quite a different beast. The jaunty Celtic-ness of the latter record has been drawn back, allowing for a focus in subdued, moody character portraits. The results might push the Northern Irish singer-songwriter into potentially more generic indie folk territory, but not to worry, these ten songs not only manage to all feel distinct from one another, but also rise far above the typical fare in this oversaturated market. The main key to Burnside’s success here, I think, is the specificity of his lyricism - whether he’s suddenly reminiscing about watching the X-files or musing poetically about the hue of the streetlights, everything feels deeply personal and real. A whole bunch of these songs are among my favorites from this year so far, but the title track might be the finest introduction to those curious, and a satisfying anthem for our ever more dystopian headlines. (8.0/10)

- Sunnyvale

Cruel Force - Haneda
42:36 // March 27th, 2026 // Shadow Kingdom

And now for something completely different. And by completely, I do of course mean somewhat. There are still, y’know, distorted guits, drums wot go fast and all, just of the variety I rarely find myself gravitating to. I mentioned the recent resurgence of speedy thrash (speedy anymetal and thrash-plus-X, really) earlier, and Cruel Force are among that biome’s apex predators right now, at least as far as their visibility and popularity are concerned. Are we tired of Phrygian-scale riffs yet? Naw? How about hearing all of them on a single album? Fuck yeah? Then this one is for you.

Let’s get the rototoms in the room out of the way: your enjoyment of this album will live and die by your tolerance for or, if you’re a hardened Die Flippers apologist, enthusiastic embrace of the all-pervasive tom fills inserting themselves every four bars on average. Having them sit so high in the mix you can’t escape their shrill pummeling was certainly a choice, especially given their tonal uniformity, but I quickly surrendered and have since taken a masochistic liking to them. Roll me harder, daddy GG! The remainder of the arrangement, to this ignoramus’s ears, resembles a cross between TTM in the vein of Kreator’s Terrible Certainty (sans fire-and-brimstone attitude) and more tropey speed akin to something like Blind Guardian’s Battalions of Fear (sans power metal antics), to use another German band as an example. Add a markedly 80s idea of ‘oriental’ to the mix and you’re as good as there.

In light of their rise to prominence, there’s little shock involved in discovering the band has further streamlined their approach here. Not long after their re-emergence from a ten-year hiatus in 2022, the black metal edge of their first two albums, originally warranting comparisons to Desaster and Sodom, was sanded down to a flimsy veneer; four years later, that dusky stain is all but nonexistent. What the Teutonic revivalists gain thereby is an elevated level of approachability, which will no doubt garner them new fans. If you prefer your metallic retro fetishism enameled with a measure of grit, Haneda can still be diverting in a popcorn-flick way, but might feel hollow on repeat spins. As a linear continuation of Dawn of the Axe, however, it’s grand. (7.0/10)

- Nex

Want more? Check out our full-length reviews for these additional March releases:

28:34 // April 9, 2026 // Falling Light

In the internet age, basically all music since recording devices were invented is at our fingertips. For the more obsessive among us (guilty as charged), this poses a bit of a problem - trying to drink from the fire hose of new releases, let alone our personal backlogs of un-listened-to classics going back decades, is not only overwhelming, but is also sure to include a huge swathe of generic, and often bad, material. All that’s to say that it’s deeply satisfying when you stumble upon an obscure new release which really worms itself into your ears and/or soul.

That last string of words might be more disturbing than I intended, but in this case, the lovely parasite in question is Paper Sleep’s Off World. As best I can tell, this little album marks the debut of a band from Detroit, but information is limited, and this is the only review I’ve seen for it. Nonetheless, Off World has proved to be, by some margin, my most-listened-to album of the last week, and I’m proud to count myself as one of the 17 (as checked at time of publication) listeners this month to the band on Spotify.

I wouldn’t say Off World is very original - the Cocteau Twins influence is obvious, there’s a pinch of Echo & the Bunnymen-style post-punk, and the musicians have likely been listening to plenty of darkwave-y stuff, but this brief release has truly captured the fundamentals of both a lovely sound and a bewitching sense of atmosphere. These eight songs are captivatingly dreamy, sublimely gloomy, and consistently lull me into a magical time-slowing state. Even the faster-paced tracks, like “Pristine Waste” and “It’s Up to You”, manage to retain this predominant feeling of suspended animation. Indeed, while there’s very little which I can tell you about one track versus another (except that “Nighttime” is the sung-from-underwater sounding lullaby I didn’t know I needed), that’s part of the appeal - this is an immersive record full of charm.

With albums like this one which resonate so strongly for me personally, I’m never quite sure if the little facets which I find so appealing will connect with others as potently, but I do feel confident stating that Paper Sleep’s strong debut merits more than a few dozen listeners. Readers of gatekeep!, I believe in you - let’s do our part and get Off World on the radar.

8.0/10

This Week’s New Music

Arkells

Between Us (Universal/Virgin)

CANADA | Indie Rock // Alt-Rock

Bruno Mars

The Collaborations (Atlantic)

USA | Pop // R&B // Soul

Crippled Black Phoenix

Sceaduhelm (Season of Mist)

UK | Post-Rock // Art Rock // Gothic

Frog

Frog for Sale (Audio Antihero)

USA | Indie Rock // Lo-Fi // Americana

Jessie Ware

Superbloom (EMI)

UK | Dance-Pop // R&B

Knotfall

Shoreline (Candlepin)

USA | Emo // Shoegaze // Slowcore

Look Outside Your Window

Look Outside Your Window (LOYW)

USA | Nu-Metal // Alternative Metal

Magdalena Bay

Nice Day: A Collection of Singles (Mom + Pop)

USA | Synthpop // Dance-Pop // Neo-Psychedelia

M.I.A.

M.I.7 (OhmniMusic)

UK | Hip-Hop // Pop

Muerto

Eclipsed Realms(Transcending Obscurity)

MEXICO | Black Metal

Nekrogoblikon

The Boiling Sea (label unknown)

USA | Melodic Death Metal // Alternative Metal

Prince Daddy & the Hyena

Hotwire Trip Switch (Counter Intuitive)

USA | Pop-Punk // Emo // Indie Rock

Selena Gomez

Droplets (SMG)

USA | Pop // R&B // Synthpop

Skindred

You Got This (Earache)

UK | Reggae // Nu-Metal

Sonic Youth

Diamond Seas (Geffen)

USA | Noise Rock // Indie Rock

Souled American

Sanctions (Jealous Butcher)

USA | Alt-Country // Americana

Teen Suicide

Nude Descending Staircase Headless (Run For Cover)

USA | Indie Rock // Lo-Fi

They Might Be Giants

The World is to Dig (Idlewild)

USA | Indie Rock

Tiga

Hotlife (Turbo/Secret City)

CANADA | Electronic // Garage // House

Tomora

Come Closer (Fontana/Capitol)

UK // NORWAY | Experimental // Electronic

Wage War

It Calls Me By My Name (Fearless)

USA | Metalcore // Hardcore // Nu-Metal

Yaya Bey

Fidelity (Drink Sum Wtr)

USA | R&B // Soul // Hip-Hop

Thanks for reading - see you once more next week!

41:52 // January 23, 2026 // It’s All For Fun

A marked left turn for a band known for high-energy dance-floor bangers, PVA’s sophomore outing No More Like This largely relegates their EBM and industrial influences to the shadows. More surprisingly, their absence is hardly felt, as a healthy dose of trip-hop retains their sensuality and knack for disrupting rhythm on a whim. By the time the sweeping, layered opener “Rain” has pattered out, it’s clear that while many bands have slowed down and mellowed out lately, PVA aren’t interested in retreading ground.

Returning with a more precise formula, Ella Harris’s vocals are unquestionably the glue holding the band’s idiosyncrasies together this time around—few singers have nailed her flattened style with so much acid in every syllable. Meshed with Josh Baxter’s haunted synths and Louis Satchell’s ever-shifting percussion, the trio’s dynamism shines through like a beam; even the wonkiest tangents (there are still plenty) sound like three people operating as one mind in the recording studio.

The best tracks here epitomize that sense of total sync: lead single “Enough” skitters through a barrage of beats, synths, and samples that realign on the fly, while the breathtaking “Okay” laces downtempo basslines under every hushed, deadpan syllable before the band opens up into a sublime jam that peters out all too soon around the seven-minute mark. Reining in their wilder sensibilities and tempos, PVA’s latest record does miss out on some of the infectious energy of their debut. Luckily, the music is as alluring and danceable as ever before—just a bit less loud.

8/10

Welcome back everyone, welcome back to the second installment of Discog Diaries, a now bi-monthly series where I dive into the discography of a particular band, in release order, and give my immediate impressions of each release, along with a rating for each! And yes, we are doing bi-monthly installments now, because a month was honestly too long for my impatient ass to wait. Today, we examine one of the titans of classic metalcore: Florida’s Poison the Well. Despite only having 6 full-length albums to their name over their 20-something years of existence, Poison the Well nevertheless established one hell of a dominion over the metalcore scene, helping to lay the groundwork for melodic metalcore, arguably the longest-lasting subgenre of metalcore. But with all of these years gone by, how do these albums hold up? And can their newest release stack up? Well, let’s not waste any time, let’s dive in and find out!

Poison the Well’s Discography:

• Distance Only Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (EP, 1998)

• The Opposite of December… A Season of Separation (1999)

• Tear from the Red (2002)

• You Come Before You (2003)

• Versions (2007)

• I/III / II/III / III/III (EP, 2009)

• The Tropic Rot (2009)

• Trembling Level (Single, 2025)

• Peace in Place (2026)

The formula remains the same: go through each release, give my thoughts, rate, favorite song, rank the releases, and get an average! Get it? Got it? Good.

Distance Only Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (EP, 1998)

I wouldn’t necessarily say that Poison the Well emerged fully formed. Maybe I would’ve if their first official release had been The Opposite of December, but we have this EP to contend with instead. It’s a bit of a strange early album, with longtime vocalist Jeffery Moreira completely absent. Instead, Aryeh Lehrer and Duane Hosein share duty on vocals, though they would only be official members of PTW for this EP. It’s a short EP, clocking in at just 16 minutes, making it the breeziest listen in this band’s discography. And it’s… certainly a first EP, I’ll say that much! Look, I’m going to naturally be a bit harsher on Poison the Well because of their insane track record, and their status as one of the godfathers of the metalcore scene. And this first EP is proof that even the greatest bands can start from humble beginnings. Distance is in no way a bad EP. It’s aggressive, pissed off, but melancholic at the same time, complemented by some furious drumming and killer riffs. But a lot of this EP just doesn’t stick around in my mind, save for “Material Christ”, the gargantuan closer. I think it’s important to keep in mind that, at the time this EP was released, metalcore was only truly beginning to become a thing at large, let alone melodic metalcore. Poison the Well are considered pioneers for a reason, and no genre exists without growing pains. I feel like all of that talk makes it seem like Distance Only Makes the Heart Grow Fonder is an EP I dislike. I don’t dislike it. I just don’t love it. But if this is the worst it gets, then that’s a compliment to the band all on its own.

7/10

Favorite Song: “Material Christ”

The Opposite of December… A Season of Separation (1999)

For those who remember my first Discog Diaries, diving through ERRA’s discography, I mentioned that the leap in quality between their debut EPs and their first full-length was a massive improvement in almost every way. Similar compliments can be extended to The Opposite of December, Poison the Well’s first full-length album. However, this album needs to be skirted around a little differently. Why, you might ask? Because this album’s impact on the metalcore scene is utterly fucking massive. As one of the earliest melodic metalcore albums, it laid the groundwork for a whole era of imitators that would follow. And all these years later, I have to say that I can kinda see why. Everything from the songwriting to the debut of vocalist Jeffery Moreira to the lyrics to the melancholy atmosphere all holds up well to this day. And at around 28 minutes, it’s a breezy listen that doesn’t overstay its welcome in the midst of its unending aggression. Unfortunately, being one of the first albums of its kind, December suffers from the “this genre has evolved by leaps and bounds since then” syndrome, and with metalcore as a whole having come so far, it’s kind of tough to look past the fact that a lot of this album is just chugs, furthermore complicated by the album sort of blending together as a result. At the same time though, they’re really well-written chugs, backed by some of the most on-point drumming the era has to offer, plus a really good understanding of aggressive-to-soft transitions and dynamics. As an ur-example of melodic metalcore, it still holds up, but it’s tough to see it as anything more than groundwork for what would come later.

8.5/10

Favorite Song: “My Mirror No Longer Reflects”

Tear from the Red (2002)

In the interest of not making a complete repeat of their debut album, Poison the Well opted to take things in a slightly more melodic direction on Tear from the Red. Clean vocals are far more present throughout the album, the chugs now share equal footing with some more traditional clean passages, and it all sets the stage for Poison the Well’s ever-continuing trend of experimentation and innovation within the genres of metalcore and post-hardcore. It should have been a wonderful follow-up to Opposite of December. So why doesn’t this album stick with me as much as their debut LP? It’s not the production, Jeremy Staska is still on board, and the heavy sections still have that same delicious crunch. Jeffrey Moreira’s vocals are still solid, and have even improved by leaps and bounds, especially as far as clean singing is concerned. I think, for me, the issue lies with this experimental transitionary period that this album represents, the only time that PTW’s penchant for switching gears sound-wise just sort of failed them. When it works, it works beautifully (“Horns and Tails” says hello), but where it doesn’t, it just feels slightly awkward. It feels like the band weren’t quite sure yet how to tackle a post-hardcore direction, which leaves some of the clean passages feeling jarring to transition into, and leaves the heavy parts feeling almost less inspired by that same virtue. This is not the case for all of this album, opening track “Botchla”, “Turn Down Elliot”, and “Sticks and Stones Never Made Sense” still prove that this Florida band can riff with the best of them. But it’s the rest of the album where things falter a little bit, especially the odd interlude “Karsey Street”. An album that is not without merit, but definitely a transitory album in an otherwise storied career.

7.5/10

Favorite Song: “Botchla”

You Come Before You (2003)

With the knowledge that You Come Before You released only a year after Tear from the Red, and with the experience of listening to all of these albums back to back in such quick succession, it becomes difficult for me to see You Come Before You as anything less than the evolved, perfected form of what Poison the Well attempted to do on Tear from the Red. As soon as the opening barrage of “Ghostchant” lands, you are immediately swept away in PTW’s insane blend of aggression and melody. The riff writing is more engaging, Jeffrey’s vocals have improved by leaps and bounds, and the dynamic switches between heavy and melodic feel less jarring and more natural. Even the interlude “The Opinionated Are so Opinionated” (which is the best song name ever by the way) feels like such a natural addition to the tracklist, as opposed to the awkward “Karsey Street”. Okay, I think that’s enough comparisons to Tear from the Red for now, especially when YCBY stands so strongly on its own. This is a clean, focused tracklist, despite being the longest PTW album so far by a country mile. It never drags, helped by the band breaking out some of their most varied songwriting and fiercest vocals to date. It’s no surprise that this album is held up as the gold standard of Poison the Well’s discography, not a single second of it is wasted.

9.5/10

Favorite Song: “Apathy Is a Cold Body”

Versions (2007)

Versions is a tough nut to crack. On the one hand, barn burners like the opener “Letter Thing” position themselves as direct successors to the mammoth sound that PTW debuted on You Come Before You. But then, on the flipside, you have songs like “Nagaina” that slow things down, focusing almost entirely on melody, with a groove that I honestly can almost describe as sexy. That western-style groove is present throughout a very good portion of this album, married with the ambient elements that helped make You Come Before You such a gem of an album. And when this works, it fucking works. “Slow Good Morning” is the perfect example of what this slowed down, melodic version of Poison the Well can deliver when they’re firing on all cylinders. It’s nowhere near as good as You Come Before You, the lyrics are slightly worse thanks to a shift in Jeffrey Moreira’s writing style, and the production doesn’t fit this album as well as it did YCBY. But dammit, something about this album just sticks with me. One of Poison the Well’s biggest strengths is their willingness to experiment and push the bounds of what a Poison the Well album can truly be, and I don’t think any of the albums so far embody that spirit as much as Versions does.

8/10

Favorite Song: “Slow Good Morning”

I/III / II/III / III/III (EP, 2009)

So, I’m technically cheating here. This isn’t one EP, but rather 3 sets of 2 singles that form a sort of overarching EP, all composed of songs written for Versions that didn’t quite make the cut. And oh dear god, does it ever get going off the bat. I opens with the barnstormer of a track “New Fast”, only to slow things down immediately after with “Purple Sabbath”. Having been recorded for Versions, it naturally follows that this EP collection follows a similar pattern of experimentation, which leaves me with little to say in the way of novelty, other than I think some of these songs could have, and probably should have been in the final tracklist for Versions. Oh well, they still exist in the world, thanks to this EP collection. Only gripe is that, at only 6 tracks, it really does feel a little short for a sound that PTW have officially proven can work.

8/10

Favorite Song: “Purple Sabbath”

The Tropic Rot (2009)

This album, for a while, was the grand finale for Poison the Well, the last studio album in a storied career that began at the dawn of a whole new genre. Okay, maybe that’s a little cheesy and overblown, but the point remains that The Tropic Rot had become a landmark album in the years since its release, as it looked more and more like this truly was the end for a foundational melodic metalcore band. Reunion shows be damned, no new music was shown to have been in the works. Of course, nowadays, we know that they would eventually hit the studio once more, but I still attempted to listen to Tropic Rot with that sort of “witnessing the end” reverence in mind. And I don’t know if it was that mindset that affected my listening experience, but I left kind of stunned by how damn good this album was. I’m also convinced that Poison the Well have mastered the art of the opening track, because holy fuck does “Exist Underground” kick your god damn teeth in. This might be the band’s most aggressive outing since You Come Before You. If anything, The Tropic Rot actually does work well as a finale record, merging the best of the band’s early aggression with the western-ish experimentation that was present on Versions, all polished to a mirror shine. There’s no standout exceptional moments like YCBY’s “Apathy”, but there is consistent quality all the way through, and a few moments that genuinely left my jaw on the floor, like the ending of album highlight “Antarctica Inside Me”. The softer melodic parts sound so much more natural here, to say nothing of the greatly improved production, courtesy of Steve Evetts. If this was the album that Poison the Well ended on, I think it would’ve been a wonderful high note to finish a legendary run. But, as we all know, this wasn’t the end of PTW’s story…

8.5/10

Favorite Song: “Antarctica Inside Me”

Trembling Level (Single, 2025)

This is gonna be a short one. At 2:37, this standalone single serves less as a statement of quality, and more of just a statement in general. Namely: Poison the Well is fucking back! This was one of the biggest “hell yeah” moments in metalcore, the old guard returning to remind people how this shit is done (coincidentally coming in a year where we had already been treated to several very talented “revival-core” bands looking to bring classic styles of metalcore back). This album is, for the most part, more of the same as what we got on The Tropic Rot and Versions, but I honestly can’t complain about that, when those albums were themselves solid in nature. 2-and-a-half minutes is not much time to establish a whole-ass new sound, but it is enough time to show people that, after 16 years, they still had plenty of that same old Poison the Well magic.

8/10

Peace in Place (2026)

Peace in Place frustrates me. Not because it’s a bad album, mind you, but it frustrates me precisely because of how god damn good it is. You are not allowed to go on hiatus for almost 2 fucking decades, then come back with an album that is so compositionally tight that it can easily stand alongside some of their best works pre-hiatus. You just aren’t allowed to do it! But here’s Poison the Well doing exactly that with Peace in Place, and I’m mad. This is not how the story is supposed to go! Peace in Place embodies the otherwise cliche band phrase, by genuinely taking a little something from every album beforehand and merging it into one beautiful behemoth. Specifically, I would probably best describe this album as the best parts of Tropic Rot mixed with the unbridled aggression seen in both YCBY and The Opposite of December. Flamethrower tracks like “Wax Mask” share runtime with gorgeous post-hardcore jams like “Drifting Without End”. And, in the middle of the road, Poison the Well show off the best combination of aggressive and melodic that they’ve ever managed to pull off. “A Wake of Vultures” is a top 10 Poison the Well song, easily, leaving me honest to god spellbound while I was listening. Unfortunately, the one thing holding this album back is its production. Will Putney’s signature style works well for balls-to-the-wall heavy bands like Fit For an Autopsy or END, but PTW have never been a truly balls-to-the-wall heavy band, even in their Opposite of December days, and some of their strength is lost here as a result of that, some missing x-factor that their previous albums perfectly captured. Oh well, can’t win them all, and it hardly detracts from the album when it’s so fucking solid overall. I could go on and on about this, but I think you can read plenty more, courtesy of both fellow Gatekeeper and fellow Ben, Benjamin Jack on this very Substack, and fellow Gatekeeper Tyler White over on Semper Metallum. The bottom line, PTW are so back, and I can’t wait to see where they go next.

8.5/10

Favorite Song: “A Wake of Vultures”

Final Thoughts:

Wow, that is a lot of 8s and 8.5s strewn across the discog, huh? That’s honestly what I walked away with when it came to Poison the Well, the sheer level of consistency that they delivered over and over again, with no albums that were truly mediocre. They were certainly just as consistent, if not more consistent, as ERRA, and that was already one of the most consistent modern metalcore bands you can find. While there were no true 10/10 albums, at least for me, I walked away from this discog run realizing that PTW never really lost me outside of 2 projects in total. I really, really hope that Peace in Place isn’t a one-off reunion for this band, because I’m left hungry for more after running through this relatively breezy discography. Here’s hoping that we see more from these Floridian legends. In the meantime, you can damn well be sure that I’ll be rebinging these guys over and over again.

Discography ranking (excluding standalone singles):

8: Distance Only Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

7: Tear From the Red

6: I/III / II/III / III/III

5: Versions

4: Peace in Place

3: The Tropic Rot

2: The Opposite of December… A Season of Separation

1: You Come Before You

Average discography rating (including singles): 8.2/10

Favorite Poison the Well song: “My Mirror No Longer Reflects”

And with Discog Diaries now becoming an official series, how about we see how each band’s discography compares in terms of overall rankings, shall we?

1. ERRA: 8.4/10

2. Poison the Well: 8.2/10

Man, these first two installments of Discog Diaries have been really sunshine positive, haven’t they? We’re gonna need some more divisiveness in this series soon, and I think I know what I can do to provide that. Until then, take care everyone!

There’s a specific kind of panic that sets in when asked to offer an opinion on a supposedly classic record, but being too woefully ill-versed to contribute anything. I mean, who has time to listen to albums from beginning to end these days, let alone form a coherent opinion on them? I can only last about 30 seconds into the first track before I start instinctively swiping the air like I’m trying to scroll to the next reality. Unfortunately, though, music is somehow still considered a legitimate art form, so until the blessed AI fully takes over and we don’t have to worry about artists/ actual songwriting anymore, we’re stuck bluffing our way through NPC dialogue sequences pretending we give a single procedurally generated shit how great The Velvet Underground once were, perhaps, maybe, idk.

It’s well known that we here at gk! offer the highest-quality music journalism currently on the internet, but even we know that glazed-eyes feeling that comes with reading elaborately thought-out, lengthy reviews when all you really want is an is gud or sucks. Still, we’re convinced our opinion matters, so until we decide to adapt to current-gen attention spans we shan’t be changing this time-tested, self-satisfied assessment method. We are, however, extending an olive branch in this instalment of SEVEN: the series that somehow manages to do everything and nothing. You no longer need to come clean and admit to never listening; displaying that untenable amount of cultural ignorance is now a thing of the past.

So, following on from my last public service prescribing seven plugs — sorry — medicinal albums to cure your stomach issues, I’m now teaching you how to BS your way through inane chatter about seven albums the world seems insistent you listen to. I’ll provide safe opinions for those not wanting to rock the boat, controversial ones for those who’ve grown tired of having knees in the middle of their legs, and conclusive one-liners that’ll kill the conversation stone dead. Additionally, should you need a slight redirect, I’ll be giving you some useless but easily-remembered trivia about each album you can use to volley the conversation toward something more familiar. You know, just in case you hate talking about music but don’t want to seem uninformed.

You’ll find releases from a range of genres and eras, condensed to their bare bones with their oftentimes thoughtful, nuanced concepts reduced down to a handful of lines on your screen. Is this fundamentally disrespectful to many of these LPs? Yes, it is. But you know me — like Mr. Sparkle, I am disrespectful to dirt.

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon

When someone with an IPA in hand says: … it’s the kind of album where the construction does as much emotionally as the lyrics — a meditation on alienation, threading ideas of time, money and mortality through this really deliberate structure, you know? It’s amazing, isn’t it?

You say:

Safe take: It is. It’s one of those records that tackles heavy themes without ever feeling too cumbersome or weighty, which is impressive given it’s probably the most intense of their classic era. I love that it works as a full experience, but every track can still be enjoyed individually for different reasons. Really sells the cohesion.

What you’re communicating: I have good taste and am aware of the band’s legacy and importance. I have validated you, and now I await your validation in return.

To stir the pot: It straight-up doesn’t work. Its themes are presented so broadly that any implied depth is purely down to people projecting and feathering their own interpretations. It’s stodgy, pseudo-profound, and nowhere near as thoughtful as Wish You Were Here or Animals. Even The Wall develops its ideas with more energy, and that’s one of the most on-the-nose records Pink Floyd ever released.

What you’re communicating: Not only am I disagreeing, I’m also calling you pretentious and offering a back-handed compliment to a different Pink Floyd classic as a bonus.

Useless trivia injection: A more popular urban legend suggests that this album synchronises perfectly with the movie The Wizard of Oz when the two are played together. It doesn’t, but people have spent decades insisting otherwise.

Conversation killer: The clock jumpscare was a great idea, I was starting to nod off.

Nas - Illmatic

When your uncle pauses mid-roll-up and says: … I’m telling you, the rawness and immediacy of Illmatic are unrivalled. It’s so tightly curated and creates such a sense of time and place it’s hard not to get invested in the storytelling, even if you don’t like hip hop. What do you think of it? Nas’ best, right?

You say:

Safe take: Oh, it’s undoubtedly his best and he’s been chasing that quality ever since. The bars and flows feel so effortless, even lazy at first, but the more time you spend digging in the clearer it becomes how incredibly deliberate and vivid it is. Everything locks together so perfectly: the beats complement the flows and lyricism completely and paint such a rich picture of New York street life. That discipline is what gives it such an impressive, memorable weight.

What you’re communicating: I understand hip hop and the context of this record. I may have watched the This Is Illmatic documentary, I may not have… but please please please don’t ask me.

To stir the pot: Most overrated hip hop album in history and it’s not even close to his best. Yeah, it sounds raw, but that’s not a compliment — it just sounds unfinished rather than intentional. The gritty street themes would be more hard-hitting if I hadn’t heard them done better a thousand times since and although it might be influential in that regard, it hasn’t aged well and is far from the perfectly constructed, untouchable classic it’s touted as. Oh, his best?

Plausible answer: It Was Written / Stillmatic

If you want them to shout at you: Nastradamus

What you’re communicating: Its influence is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and beyond that I’m not convinced the album earns its reputation. I imagine whistling with blades of grass was very influential at one point too.

Useless trivia injection: Recorded when Nas was only 20 years old, which is impressive given the lyrical maturity.

Conversation killer: He’s a solid lyricist, I’ll give him that. Shame he can’t rap that well.

The Beatles - Abbey Road

When a friend of a friend wearing a clearly unwashed band tee says: …I mean, what’s left to say about Abbey Road? Simply one of the warmest, most entertaining rock albums of all time and the way it balances big, iconic moments with smaller, more playful ones is just perfect.

You say:

Safe take: Absolutely, it’s a hard record to fault besides the fact it’s not long enough. It’s got a genteel looseness to it even though it’s marvellously refined, with the polish highlighting the personality rather than suppressing it. It even sneaks in some of the Beatles’ heaviest cuts, which is a joy on what is ostensibly a pop album. Even the lighter moments demonstrate an intentionality that falls in with the scope of the LP — nothing feels disposable or throwaway. Just end-to-end classics, really.

What you’re communicating: Armchair critic mode: engaged. Everyone loves the Beatles, and I would like you to know I understand why.

To stir the pot: Nah mate, completely forgettable album with zero edge or urgency. It’s certainly polished… to the point where nothing has any feeling or verve; it’s an album of neatly presented hooks with nothing meaningful beyond their earworm value. And even those, when you really break them down, are incredibly simplistic and devoid of all but the most basic level of creativity. It baffles me that it’s so frequently cited as peak Beatles when realistically, it sits lower than Yellow Submarine in terms of quality.

What you’re communicating: I accept their importance, but I think your attachment to this is little more than hand-me-down nostalgia. Also, I’m going to be hyperbolic about how bad it is to annoy you.

Useless trivia injection: Did you know Paul McCartney is actually dead? And that the album art is full of symbolism hinting at this? No, seriously — My dad’s mate’s workfriend’s builder’s cousin’s gamekeeper’s second wife heard from the woman who got arrested for feeding the birds laxatives in the centre of town.

Conversation killer: [while badly stifling a snigger] …you like The Beatles??

Nirvana - Nevermind

When someone shouts into your ear over the bass in the club: …the finest grunge album and probably the best release of the ’90s, it was a true cultural flashpoint that redefined what ‘popular’ could be. It changed everything.

You say:

Safe take: Yeah, the thing Nevermind did so well was to contort viable rock formulas into something that felt like a recontextualisation rather than an outright reinvention. The precision, particularly in how it shifts from loud to quiet and its willingness to ride the very edge of what constitutes ‘listenable’ in the mainstream without ever falling off the deep end, makes it feel both accessible and still dangerous in the modern age.

What you’re communicating: I understand both the sonic texture and the historical context of Nevermind. My shirt is not just a fashion statement, I really can name five songs, you needn’t ask.

To stir the pot: We never seem to move on from the no one understands me mode of immature petulance, and we never will as long as there are teenagers and stunted middle-agers treating it like a meaningful display of emotionality. It isn’t, and the fact Nevermind is such an enduring, top-selling record is slightly ironic given how capitalism bad the band were. Underwritten, irritatingly produced album that was carried more by its good timing than anything else.

What you’re communicating: It’s an album for the emotionally stunted created by a trio who knew exactly how to play the industry they claimed to resent.

Useless trivia injection: Many years after the release of the album, the man who had been the baby on the album art attempted to sue the label for using his likeness (despite returning to recreate the iconic image for an anniversary shoot a few years prior). He lost, obviously.

Conversation killer: Bleach was better.

Radiohead - OK Computer

When someone with suspiciously spotless windows says: …it’s impossible to decide whether OK Computer is their best work, but the way it integrates themes of alienation so meticulously into its structure yet simultaneously sounds so beautiful, is one of the most controlled displays of songwriting of all time. What’s your favourite Radiohead?

You say:

Safe take: Yeah it is difficult to choose a favourite, but OK Computer is definitely up there. The way it feels so fragile that at any moment it may disintegrate yet retains such a strong emotional core throughout is really something, especially in how the sense of alienation somehow keeps the songs slightly impersonal without ever lapsing into outright sterility. In Rainbows maybe expanded on this grounding somewhat, but for nuance, OK Computer still feels unrivalled.

What you’re communicating: I’m displaying awareness of the band’s ethos and of their wider discography. I’m just as pretentious as you.

To stir the pot: It is difficult to choose a favourite for sure, just not for the same reason. It’s an issue with the group themselves, not just OK Computer — they’re a maudlin, one-note rock band that capitalised on their unexpected success and never developed beyond their angsty roots. At this point they’ve hoodwinked an entire generation into thinking generic songwriting, slight rawness and Thom Yorke’s nipple-chafing vocals somehow equal profundity.

What you’re communicating: You’ve been conned, and I’m here to save your soul.

Useless trivia injection: The beeps at the end of ‘‘Let Down’’ are morse code… which doesn’t translate to anything meaningful. Checks out.

Conversation killer: They recorded the album in a posh English countryside retreat. Omg sooooooo alienated.

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly

When someone corners you at a party and says: …To Pimp a Butterfly is such a thoughtful, impressive record it transcends its hip hop roots entirely and becomes one of the most important, enduringly topical releases of all time.

You say:

Safe take: Yeah it’s hard to overstate how necessary a statement the album makes, and that’s without even getting into the music itself. Its blend of messiness and fluidity shouldn’t cohere as well as it does, but with Kenny’s syrupy flows and its thematic focus acting as the razor wire that ties the whole thing together, it becomes one of the most complete musical experiences out there. And that’s before you even get to its integration of culturally important samples and styles. There’s a reason it routinely tops All Time lists.

What you’re communicating: The sonic quality of this record is second only to its messaging, which shows I understand not only how to assess the music, but also its cultural weight.

To stir the pot: It makes necessary statements for sure, but Kendrick’s popularity before it released means that it was hardly a brave or risky move. If anything, it felt calculated; he knew how it’d be received and he knew he’d be acclaimed for the concept… because that’s really the only thing the record has going for it. Strip that away and you’re left with an abrasive, bloated, sub-standard hip hop record that, despite being well-intentioned, is sorely lacking in actual production quality.

What you’re communicating: Resonant themes count for little if the surrounding landscape is an abject mess.

Useless trivia injection: Much of the album was constructed from long jam sessions with live musicians, which explains the album’s sense of controlled chaos throughout.

Conversation killer: Drake won the beef.

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours

When your mate who’s just bought a vinyl player says: …The emotional push and pull between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham really make this album. The arrangements are incredibly tight, yes, but the clarity and insight of the lyricism is what makes this such an essential listen.

You say:

Safe take: Couldn’t agree more. Nicks’ impressionistic slant vs Buckingham’s control is a dichotomy for the ages. The inspired concept of emotional tumult from multiple angles allows for a richness that seems to consistently flow without ever becoming repetitive. It has this impressive balance of sparkling polish and emotional sprawl that sells both the themes and musical clarity.

What you’re communicating: I am aware of the context and how it relates to the record’s ever-broadening appeal. I’m telling you I find the content relatable without segueing into an anecdote about one of the many times I got ghosted.

To stir the pot: I don’t buy it. For one of the most elaborate breakup albums of all time, I’m not convinced it should be as polished as it is. Breakups are messy, and by all accounts this one was especially so, yet that emotional tug is notably absent from the experience. The dovetail of rigid and drifting on display throughout creates this meandering tone that seems to pull the listener in different directions without offering much insight either way. The hooks are undeniable, yes, but so is how surface-level the experience is. Not a great deal to dig into there.

What you’re communicating: I respect the intention, but the diaristic tweeness of everything going on — even when presented from more than one angle — keeps the LP as basic a musical selection as possible.

Useless trivia injection: Relations were so strained during sessions that Nicks and Buckingham barely spoke, often recording their vocal parts separately. Those moments where they seem to talk past each other? They’re a monument to human stubbornness.

Conversation killer: The bassline on ‘‘The Chain’’ is poor and crowbarred in.

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38:26 // March 27, 2026 // Hopeless

It’s always good hearing from Tigers Jaw: they might have released one of the greatest pop punk albums of all time with the 2008 self-titled Pizza Album, but their greatest achievement is their sheer reliability. Even those of us who wouldn’t agree with that hyperbole can’t fail to recognise the act’s consistency and lack of cringe-inducing emo-isms: few bands have been as consistently comforting over the years, and the new Lost on You is no exception. Ever since Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins emerged as the leading voices of the band over a decade ago, every release has been a warm blanket of catchy indie rock: there’s little innovation, but that doesn’t really matter when the music is so delightful.

Unfortunately, Lost on You does feature the weakest opening stretch of any Tigers Jaw record: “It’s ok” is rather forgettable and fails to transition into the excellent “Primary Colors”, before “Head is Like a Sinking Stone” unsuccessfully tries to recapture some 2008 pop punk vibes by way of a repetitive hook. Thankfully, every subsequent track more than rectifies these relative missteps: in fact, the entire stretch from track four to eleven might just be the most cohesive and entrancing body of work the band have ever recorded. From the classic Brianna-led indie rock of “Anxious Blade” to “Light Leaks Through” turning an unoriginal sentiment into a wonderfully creative and insanely catchy chorus, Lost on You can, at times, be hard not to describe as the definitive Tigers Jaw record.

While much of the album features tried-and-true textures, there are some sections that add a layer or two to the band’s sound. The grandiose “Baptized on a Redwood Drive” features some of the most fleshed-out, dissonant melodies Ben has ever recorded, with the extended instrumental outro adding to the impact of the glorious balladry. Elsewhere, “Staring at Empty Faces” dives headfirst into delicious shoegaze-y patterns, before erupting back into classic Tigers Jaw-mode for another sticky chorus. Sure, all of these expeditions stay well within the confines of the broad genre of indie rock, but it’s hard not to appreciate all these moments, and of course the relative heaviness of “BREEZER”’s driving riff (and its subsequent adorably soft verses).

On top of this, it’s notable how reflective and yes, mature, the subject matter is here. The brief opener provides immediate notice in spite of itself - Ben Walsh murmuring “and the look on your face and the smell of the rain, it comes flooding right back in an ethereal way” - it’s not Bob Dylan, but there’s a depth and a thoughtfulness there which feels exceptional nonetheless. This feeling persists throughout at the album, even if these songs aren’t completely devoid of attempts at poetry of the kind likely to be found in a middle school goth’s journal (the aforementioned track, “it’s ok”, includes the first of several declarations of “I am blood in the gums of a sensitive mouth”). In essence, Lost on You is top tier adult emo by a band approaching middle age, and their excellence is nothing short of tradition at this point.

8.0/10

37:59 // March 27, 2026 // Atlantic Records

Taylor Swift once infamously declared that Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist, despite him boasting countless songs with billions of streams on Spotify to go along with his peculiar right eyebrow. There is no denying that Puth is a musical genius from a theoretical perspective; his viral social media clips showcase him using his perfect pitch and songwriting instincts to craft memorable beats and melodies out of kitchen utensils or the sound of a closing door. The man’s inarguable talent stands out as the main reason why this writer has found Puth’s catalog to be endlessly frustrating, as even his greatest effort up to this point, 2018’s Voicenotes, alternates between Puth writing and performing some of the greatest pop hits of the decade, to some of the sleepiest, most uninspired music of that particular year. Puth is especially vulnerable to clichés and vapidity when he slows down the tempo, which the past has shown that not even a James Taylor feature can save. While I am convinced that a musician with his level of talent will never release an album made up of exclusively subpar work, Charlie Puth’s fourth full-length Whatever’s Clever! does not prove to be an exception to the rule, and instead falls in line with each of his previous records, where the quality from song to song can be thought of as a mere roll of the dice.

The record begins innocuously enough, with the opening one-two punch of singles “Changes” and “Beat Yourself Up” providing a healthy injection of energy to keep listeners engaged. Both tracks signify that Puth has not made many strides in the way of lyricism, although their compositional swagger and instant earworm status make this more easily forgivable. “Beat Yourself Up” in particular has been getting stuck in my head multiple times per day, thanks to its syrupy hook and addictive bass groove. The fact that these tracks are followed up by the inferior “Cry” isn’t a terrible omen or anything, but it does introduce the audience to one of the most volatile ingredients of Whatever’s Clever!, the features. Kenny G’s grandiose entrance to the track after the second chorus concludes is genuinely laughable, and begins a worrying trend of each feature being thrown into a random quality generator before finding its place on the tracklist. For every noteworthy verse contributed by Ravyn Lenae (“New Jersey”) or Hikaru Utada (“Home”), there’s a trainwreck of saccharine throwback ‘80s junk from Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins (“Love in Exile”) or whatever the hell you want to call what Jeff Goldblum is doing here (“Until It Happens to You”).

The features stand out for either their musical or comedic value upon first listen, but subsequent listens will allow listeners to zoom out and observe how Puth’s offerings to the tracks are the real indicator of quality, and that the features often have no choice but to follow it. “Until It Happens to You” is undoubtedly the lowlight of the album, and the inexplicable Goldblum feature is undoubtedly the lowlight of the lowlight itself. That doesn’t change the fact that the rest of the track can be thought of as a cursed “Walking on Sunshine” that will play incessantly until you can find your way out of whatever warped ‘80s sitcom dimension you’ve found yourself in. Similarly, the highlight features mentioned above take already stellar compositions like “New Jersey” and “Home” and elevate them to new heights, likely because they were already in the process of reaching for them in the first place. Solo Puth performances on the record like “Hey Brother” or “Don’t Meet Your Heroes” also vary wildly in quality, with the former using breezy pads and yacht-rock progressions to great effect, while the latter flounders with its uncanny lounge feel and some of the more hilarious drum programming I’ve ever heard on a major label release.

On an album with such noticeable vicissitudes, it feels crucial to conclude on a high note and leave a positive impression on the listener. Instead, Puth opts to treat his fans to a little acoustic number he likes to call “I Used to Be Cringe”, a song title and lyric which immediately illustrate how the present is still resembling the past. A cute little guitar solo towards the song’s endpoint provides a momentary reprieve from its truly abhorrent lyrics and recycled progression, only for the track to end in a way that makes it sound unfinished, and somehow make its conclusion even more frustrating than the experience of actually listening to it.

I know I sound intensely critical about many aspects of Whatever’s Clever!, but the truth is that Charlie Puth’s newest LP can be thought of as the musical equivalent of a long run. When first starting out, your body disagrees with your brain’s decision to begin moving toward its objective. Your mind has yet to recruit the energy from your muscles that’s necessary to block out the pain. As such, various aspects of the journey become demonstrably uncomfortable. That being said, the discomfort you’ve put yourself through comes with a sense of gratitude once it’s come to an end, and the experiences you’ve had along the way leave you in a better place than you were when you started. That is, if you don’t have your femoral artery severed by the unbelievable shittiness of that Jeff Goldblum feature.

6/10.

Yo Yo, check out these highlight tracks:

-Beat Yourself Up

-New Jersey

-Home

This Week’s New Music

Aidan Baker

Songs of Waking & Weather (Frolic Press)

GERMANY | Ambient // Drone // Slowcore

Archspire

Too Fast to Die (self-released)

CANADA | Technical Death Metal

As Everything Unfolds

Did You Ask to Be Set Free? (Century)

UK | Alternative Metal // Metalcore // Post-Hardcore

Bellaire

Born Funky (AOC/Le Plan)

FRANCE | House // Disco // Dance

Bilmuri

Kinda Hard (Columbia)

USA | Alt-Rock // Post-Hardcore

Brown Horse

Total Dive (Loose)

UK | Alt-Country // East Anglicana

Cathedral Bells

Parallel Dreams (Artoffact)

USA | Dream Pop // Shoegaze // Post-Punk

Dir En Grey

Mortal Downer (Firewall Div)

JAPAN | Progressive Metal // Alternative Metal

Fauna

Taiga Trans (Glitterbeat)

SWEDEN | Krautrock // Psychedelic // Dance

Hannah Lew

Hannah Lew (Night School)

USA | Electropop // Synthpop

Iguana Death Cult

Guns Out (Greenway)

NETHERLANDS | Garage Punk

Immolation

Descent (Nuclear Blast)

USA | Death Metal

Inferi

Heaven Wept (The Artisan Era)

USA | Melodic Death Metal // Technical Death Metal

Joe Jackson

Hope and Fury (Earmusic)

GERMANY | New Wave // Art Pop

Julian Heresy

Julian Heresy (No Coast)

USA | Sludge Metal // Doom Metal

Juni Habel

Evergreen in Your Mind (Basin Rock)

NORWAY | Indie Folk // Psychedelic

Lime Garden

Maybe Not Tonight (So Young)

UK | Post-Punk // Indie Pop

Lone

Hyperphantasia (Greco-Roman)

UK | Breakbeat // House // IDM

Melechesh

Sentinels of Shamash (Reigning Phoenix)

NETHERLANDS | Melodic Black Metal // Folk Metal

Mire

Pale Reflection (Ardua)

USA | Metalcore // Progressive Metal // Groove Metal

My New Band Believe

My New Band Believe (Rough Trade)

UK | Art Rock // Indie Rock

Paper Sleep

Off World (Falling Light)

USA | Dream Pop // Post-Punk

Prism Shores

Softest Attack (Meritorio)

CANADA | Dream Pop // Jangle Pop

Snoop Dogg

10 ‘Til Midnight (Death Row/Gamma)

USA | Hip-Hop // G-Funk

Sparkler

Glidewinder (A La Carte)

USA | Shoegaze // Noise Pop

Spoils

Mile Wide Inch Deep (label unknown)

USA | Indie Rock

Squarepusher

Kammerkonzert (Warp)

UK | Drum & Bass // IDM // Jazz

Sugar Horse

Not a Sound in Heaven (Fat Dracula)

UK | Doomgaze // Post-Metal

Tigercub

Nets to Catch the Wind (Loosegroove)

UK | Alt-Rock // Stoner Rock // Noise Rock

Truckfighters

Masterflow (Fuzzorama)

SWEDEN | Stoner Rock

Uada

Interwoven (Eisenwald)

USA | Melodic Black Metal

Witch Ripper

Through the Hourglass (Magnetic Eye)

USA | Sludge Metal // Progressive Metal

WU LYF

A Wave That Will Never Break (L Y F)

UK | Indie Rock // Art Rock

Zachary Mezzo

Home Movies (Crane Operator)

USA | Experimental // Modern Classical // Field Recordings

Thanks for reading - see you once more next week!

This is the music of things lost, warped, and found once more in shapes no one would have imagined. No single artist embodies the sound of curiosity itself, but Kayo Dot come so close and take that appeal to such extremes, complete with all the dreads and misgivings familiar to the terminally curious, that I’ll be coming back to them for as long as I have ears.

“Kayo Dot was formed after the disbanding of Maudlin of the Well, a mildly acclaimed progressive metal band in late 2002.”

— Wikipedia, doing its best to rile up Kayo Dot fans before even mentioning their music.

Thus the stage is set for a passionate fanbase steeped in hyperbole to leap atop the nearest box and start sermonising the importance of a band that is likely already as well-known and respected as they’ll ever be. Do I need to tell you that Toby Driver is the source, the sauce, and the sorta guy that I associate with New York Art Schools despite the fact that he was educated in Boston and I’ve never been to the Big Apple? That his name is redolent of fully-realised artistic ambitions with influence comparable to Justin Broadrick or Aaron Turner or, or, somebody stop me, ex-label partner John fucking Zorn, I suppose? [Hugh’s note: yes, indeed, see entry #22!!] Need I also mention that longtime former member Mia Matsumiya is supremely fucking handy with a violin, or am I just tracing over webpages long since hosted where these names once held strange power?

It might not be necessary, but it’s worth the reminder because our resident Kayo Expert, Hugh Puddle, will henceforth be on first-name basis with the Whole Sick Crew, a liberty which is kindly extended to those who publish a full ranking and learned description of every song in Kayo Dot’s girthy canon not once, but twice, purely for the amusement of a modest number of individuals who tend to listen to music with their eyes closed and brows furrowed. If you’re here, you’re probably one of them — if you’re not, why are you here? Get out! These gates are supposed to be guarded!

— Milo Ruggles

Thank’ee Milo! This is Hugh and we’re going in on all 71 tracks in the Kayo Dot discography. Just a couple of elephants to round up before we get started, chief among which is: should you be excited or even reading this if you have no idea what a Kayo Dot is?

Probably yes because neither do I, still; definitely yes if you like literally any of Talk Talk, Jeff Buckley, ISIS, Bark Psychosis, Krallice, Scott Walker, King Crimson, John Zorn, Sisters of Mercy, Tiamat, Susumu Hirasawa, chamber music, psychedelia, black metal, gothic rock, post-punk, synthpop, ambient or drone (and no, not all at once).

For all the stylistic parsing implied there, I rarely get hung up with genre pluralism with Kayo Dot in the way that I once did with, say, their parent project maudlin of the Well. There are references to be made (and I’ll be making them as we go), but there’s no pastiche here and each album in their discography does its own singular thing on its own terms. They aren’t at all eclectic in the Mr. Bungle sense, and this is very much for the better.

Anyhow, a few disclaimers:

• I’ve been listening to Kayo Dot for almost half my life and, unlike most acts in that position, their appeal has not aged a day for me.

• This may be a labyrinthine discography of wildly diverse and frequently challenging music, but I’ve done my best to structure the piece so that it provides easy expo on each release for anyone partially or wholly unfamiliar with the Kayo Dot discography.

• This is not the first iteration of this ranking! I attempted a version of it in 2021, after the release of Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, but that list’s prose amounted to little more than low-effort in-jokes.

• Although some reference is made to the old list, almost this entire piece has been redrafted and expanded to include the new album Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason.

• The list therefore includes all tracks from all Kayo Dot LPs, with the additions of “Stained Glass” and “Don’t Touch Dead Animals” from their respective releases.

Say no more?! In we dig:

#71-#44

71. An Eye for a Lie (Blasphemy, 2019)

Well, we have to start somewhere! I can see some arguing that this is an unfair placement: Blasphemy is a dull album and very much needed more wayward experimentalism and fewer plodding guitar-led operatics. I hear you, but this onslaught of vocal effects over an indistinct muddle of an instrumental was very much not the answer for me. Kayo Dot have an extraordinarily broad palette across their discography, so it’s a shame that the Blasphemy track that sounds most unique even within that landscape is such a misfire.

70. All the Pain in All the Wide World (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)

It’s a little unfair to Kayo Dot that my bottom two placements are both taken by failed experiments rather than run-of-the-mill tracks, but perhaps that just comes with the territory. Anyhow, this track is primarily notable for a conceptually interesting improvised vocal section in which Toby goes the distance to push his barriers as a singer over a gratingly long bridge section. It’s not a fun or particularly engaging studio experience, but I could imagine it being more engaging live.

Unfortunately, it kills Plastic House on Base of Sky’s momentum the moment it’s seemingly kicked into gear (see much further up for the opener “Amalia’s Theme”) — this is Kayo Dot’s glittery synth-laden sci-fi record, but “All the Pain in All the Wide World” has always been more nauseous travel than jaw-dropping galaxy wonderment to me. Alas.

I am also just now noticing that the first “the” in the title is capitalised on Bandcamp where the second is not. If this is a deliberate middle finger to title case, I may have to consider adjusting the placement. (Up or down? Who knows.)

69. Ocean Cumulonimbus (Blasphemy, 2019)

This one immediately starts Blasphemy out on the wrong foot. Something about the opening guitar line never sat right with me either dynamically (that shit gets absolutely NO time to build itself in whatsoever, just wham - full band in a sluggish groove) or rhythmically (I’m sure this is by design, but those drums are playing a practically identical rhythm without carrying an ounce of groove), and its peak moments owe more to crushing levels of overdrive than anything else. A shaky attempt at a dramatic opening and perhaps the closest thing I can imagine to an ‘autopilot’ Kayo Dot track.

68. Mirror Water, Lightning Night (Gamma Knife, 2012)

For those unfamiliar, Gamma Knife is a bizarro hodgepodge record made up of two chamber pieces that bookend a middle run of, uh, three lo-fi live recordings of woodwind-infused black metal. The upshot is almost as exciting as that may sound on paper, and “Mirror Water, Lightning Night” has never done much to distinguish itself among the album’s black metal tracks for me, beyond packing the most strident woodwind arrangement. We’ll see more memorable showcases of this album’s weird, weird palette further down.

67. The Something Opal (Blasphemy, 2019)

A similar story to “Ocean Cumulonimbus”, but this one gains points for a relatively personable vocal performance from Toby. Still missing the mark re. dramatic intrigue. Something’s off with this album’s production too, the whole thing sounds washed out to me.

66. Midnight Mystic Rise and Fall (Blasphemy, 2019)

“Midnight Mystic Rise and Fall” at least boasts an engaging opening, but this quickly gives way to a pulseless lull and more forgettable theatrics. Classic Blasphemy. Post your favourite fantastical post-clerical concept prog record in the comments.

65. The Black Stone (Hubardo, 2013)

This track is rightly infamous within the fanbase as a terrible prologue for a superb album (Hubardo is Kayo Dot’s longest record to date, and it takes Toby’s metal, chamber and prog leanings to respective extremities in its conceptual sprawl). I get that founding member and occult lyricist Jason Byron growling unintelligible cryptics over dead space for six fucking minutes was probably an apt way to open this crazy crazy journey, but this is a “what have I got myself into” opener in the most bemusing sense. Bonus points for an exciting finale — in fact, that chromatic rampage in the finale really is badass as anything and I’m going to give this song as much of a lift as I can justify as such.

Milo sez to the above: fair fair, but there is A LOT of work put in by the guitar to set a harmonic tone for the album that goes mad underrated, and even briefly inspired one shoddy Kiwi guitarist who has never been able to put theory into practice into experimenting with all kinds of incongruous notes. This is fun and wholesome and zany experience and I recommend it to anybody with fingers.

…and honestly, valid and real.

64. Right Hand is the One I Want (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)

As you’ll see as we get further up the list, I’m a firm defender of Blue Lambency Downward’s unique blend of coy chamber jazz and clanky psych rock, and hold it to be the most underrated Kayo Dot record (likely as a result of how it alienated the predominantly metalhead audience of their first two records) — I love the way it veered into such a distinctive palette and singular atmosphere without sacrificing the arcane qualities or adventurous spirit of the first two Kayo Dot albums.

So that’s great. “Right Hand is the One I Want”, however, is anything but arcane. The lounge jazz of its opening half is too twee for my liking, and although it later returns to the murkier woodland atmosphere of the rest of the record, I can’t say it does so with much distinction or direction. This one’s a skip.

63. Longtime Disturbance On The Miracle Mile (Coffins on Io, 2014)

This song offers precisely one thing: a short timeout between two of Coffins on Io’s denser post-punk noir-rambles. It’s absolutely adequate for that purpose and otherwise largely forgettable — there are some nice vocal inflections here, but the melodies are a little flat by Toby’s standards. The eerie pentatonic synthline that creeps in at around 2:30 (and then again at 3:15) is the secret highlight here, but a secret highlight does not a four-minute padding tune elevate! Nor is And I will wear a mask of normal /To hide my mask of orgasmic shame a lyric I needed stuck in my head.

62. Vanishing Act in Blinding Gray (Blasphemy, 2019)

This track is Blasphemy’s dramatic centrepiece, and if the cheesy prog dynamics by which it goes about its business have grown off me a little (perhaps because I initially found it much more impressive than the rest of the album), then they still just about stick the landing. Toby’s vocal performance is maybe the best on the album and I enjoy the title a lot. If I were keener on the direction Blasphemy as a whole takes, this would probably be my favourite track on the record — and yet...

61. Brethren of the Cross (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)

This one has always been my least favourite from Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, but it is still a decent showcase for the return to fantastical death/doom that Toby made with this one (he had originally planned on a maudlin of the Well reunion, but then Covid happened and he made this fine record with Jason Byron and motW/early Kayo Dot guitarist Greg Massi instead).

That intro is a great case-in-point for the fantastical rotten glory the whole record is steeped in, but something about the song is off pacing-wise to me and the melodic progression eludes me (up until the bridge about six minutes in, which is admittedly the kind of putrid taker of breath we’re after here). This swamp has bloated me!

60. Magnetism (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)

No track sums up Plastic House...’s would-be-amazing-if-it-were-good factor quite like this one. Second to second, it’s full of bright ideas: I love those sparkly, sparkly retrofuture analogue synthtones and the eerie guitar stabs, but tracing a distinct rhythm or motif through it just gives me a headache. The song somehow unpicks itself to the point of joylessness (even though the dynamics are quite straightforward). It does have a climax, but it does not land so there’s that! If all you want from Kayo Dot is an Increasingly Loud showcase of freaked out space shit to trip your feckin brains out to, then this is a winner. It is not my favourite Susumu Hirasawa ripoff. What’s yours?

59. Lost Souls on Lonesome’s Way (Blasphemy, 2019)

Easily my favourite of Blasphemy’s Theatre Ov Goth Guitar tracks, mainly because Ron Varod lays down approximately all of the album’s most ear-catching phrasings, one after another. Hooray for guitars. Toby has a couple of superior vocal lines (especially early on), but returning to the song now, I’m reminded that while almost everything else in this discography has shown more and more depth to me over the decade+ I’ve been listening to it, Blasphemy remains a stubborn block of concrete at the mouth of the cave. We move.

58. Mental Shed (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)

Of every weirdo album in this weirdo band’s catalogue, their latest effort Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason might be the most contingent on being heard

a) as a whole, and

b) on many separate occasions before you piece together a Firm Opinion.

This disadvantages it hugely when it comes to horrible numerical lists like this one, and “Mental Shed” is most disadvantaged of all because there is frankly no way I am ever going to tune into Toby Driver rasping over eerie keyboards and (eh) textural cymbals for eleven straight minutes if it doesn’t have the rest of this singularly liminal record following hot on its heels. Sorry. It reminds me of “The Black Stone” without the evil climax, although Toby’s vocals are much less taxing here than Jason Byron’s were on that song, so hooray for that.

Anyway, as a standalone outing, this one is an immediate skip; as the opening chapter to a more holistic journey, well — it certainly sets a scene. The cadence in the final minute is almost worth the wait. Hmm. I would perhaps adore this if it were a Boris instrumental?

57. The Sow Submits (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)

Man, I used to hate this song (the last iteration of this list had it fourth from the bottom), but has taken over a decade of coming back to it to realise that, y’know what, that final minute and a half is exactly the kind of dusty-object-on-attic-shelf gold I adore Toby Driver for. The opening motif still makes me feel vaguely ill, but Blue Lambency Downward is such a woodland trip that it can accommodate a few evil mushrooms — and anyway, this song has the only glissandos I can describe with a straight face as ‘bristling’? Invaluable!

56. Rings of Earth (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)

More sparklysynth space antics from KD's most aesthetic heavy album is what I blurbed in the last list. Hmm! 'Most aesthetically reliant', maybe. ‘Sparkling, synthy', definitely.

This one's got a Bowie-ish quality that I can almost bop along to, but it's still a lot denser and more drawn out than feel it needs to be, not least because this era of KD was about as groove-apathetic as you could imagine. However, I am a fan of the doomy coda, which sees Toby voice possibly my favourite vocal moment from the album. This could have been a great track! On an album that could have beeen great! Why did Kayo Dayo have to delve into space-age synthpop, nail the palette, and then strip it of almost everything that made it catchy or infectious to begin with? My original ranking had this above "Abyss Hinge 2" and "Whisper Ineffable" — the fuck?

55. Blasphemy: A Prophecy (Blasphemy, 2019)

I find it hilarious that this track is at once the closest thing Kayo Dot has to a pop song and one of the single nerdiest things I’ve heard in my life! Blasphemy’s tabletop RPG itch is especially apparent here, right down to the medieval folk motifs that sustain it. Toby’s painfully clear enunciation of unfiltered fantasyspeak is what it is, but he kneels long and hard at the altar of fire-n-brimstone and the track does pack a certain dramatic flair as such. It would be so, so easy to ridicule it, but that medieval hook really is catchy.

54. Abyss Hinge 1: Sleeping Birds Sighing in Roscolux (Coyote, 2010)

Is this an interlude? Is this a song? I’m not sure exactly what it is, beyond probably the closest Toby has ever come to vindicating the pretentious blowhards who used to act smart by claiming Kayo Dot was free jazz, but it sounds fantastic even if it lacks the substance of the other four Coyote tracks. Those skronking, honking, shivering tones are a perfect introduction to the album’s harrowing palette, and it doubles as a timely shot in the arm after “Whisper Ineffable”’s murky expanse. I can’t justify a higher placement given how light it is on impact, but it still excels at what it does.

53. The First Matter (Saturn in the Guise of Sadness) (Hubardo, 2013)

I used to think that “The First Matter” and “The Second Operation” were perfectly balanced as two cheeks of Hubardo’s large-arsed lacuna (with the rampaging metal largely stacked before and the theatrical prog curiosities largely placed after), but then I realised last year that “The Second Operation” is astral nectar tapped directly from Harold Budd’s Pavilion of Dreams era, whereas this is a leaden post-punk clunker that undramatically and unremarkably anticipates the direction Kayot Doo would take with more zest on Coffins on Io. I’m exaggerating (slightly) because GAWD those synths sound amazing, but still...

52. Get Out of the Tower (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)

One of the heavier cuts (but not the heaviest!) from KD’s most decidedly heavy album in some time! The short story here is pretty encouraging: fierce moments of doomchurn emerge from uneasy downtime bass amblings, all building to an unexpectedly savage outro. Phwoar, what a beatdown! Angry Kayo is a rare mood, so enjoy it while it lasts.

The long story is that I used to think this song would grow on me, but it did NOT (although the setlists seem to indicate that Toby rates it pretty highly). I don’t love its main motifs and Moss... already has enough songs that trudge their way along to crushing payoffs that I don’t care much for how this one’s verses drag their feet.

More interestingly, the tremolo line from 2:45ish onwards has made me realise that Moss... actually has surprising common melodic ground with Every Rock...’s haunting synthscapes, even if the execution is very different. Music is not a straight line! This song is quite good.

51. Automatic Writing (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)

Urggggh, every track on this album is a nightmare to rank, but especially this one! 23 minutes of the most barren ghostscape Kayo and the Dots have ever visited, and Toby’s performance has tangible presence and direction through the entire thing? Who on earth is going to shiver to this outside of the album when it’s a hell of a gauntlet even in sequence?

And yet, there are so many shivers to be had here — this might be the most classic example on the list of an inaccessible and uncompromising track that goes about its business so well that I don’t want to sell it short. The way it gradually draws itself back together in the final quarter earns a considerable amount of goodwill, but this is one you have to learn to float with - and if you’re still struggling to get into it, I dunno, pretend it’s a snail’s-pace cover of “Lethe” in the style of Talk Talk, or whatever bollocks.

50. Void in Virgo (The Nature of Sacrifice) (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)

YES at last, a Kayo Dot song you could feasibly eyebrow-raise for being a little too cheesy! What more could you ask of a single for their most resolutely metal album in years? “Void in Virgo” has always been a little too short of friction or the thrill of the unknown to land in my favourites, but there’s no denying that that cosmic swoon of a chorus is along Toby’s most melodious and immediately satisfying to date. This track plays it squeaky clean from start to finish, and is arguably less at home amidst Moss...’ fetid doomscapes than it might have been on Blasphemy’s more sanitary high fantasies, but then again having something a little less ghoulish goes a long way on this tracklist. A pleasant tune in any case.

49. Ocellated God (Gamma Knife, 2012)

Unhinged shit on this one. I like how it teases a straightforward metal ripper for the opening minute or so, before giving way to a psychedelic maelstrom that sucks in and belches out every glimpse of hell your worst headaches have ever burdened you with. Those screams are particularly gnarly, and since most KD songs sound so meticulously realised, this one’s pure chaos is an exciting departure in a similar way as, say, the distortion and killswitch abuse of “Don’t Touch Dead Animals”’ climax. Perhaps it gains the most of the Gamma Knife metal tracks from being a live recording? It still hurts my head.

48. Brittle Urchin (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)

I’m sure that this song, a glum wrap-up that sits at the end of Plastic House… as by far its shortest and most simplistic outing, was not supposed to be the album’s second best track, but there you go. It’s the only track on the entire album with a rhythm you can bop your head to in public, and both its dour melodies and decidedly minimal palette remind me of the slow cuts on maudlin of the Well’s Part the Second (the mopey bridge in “Clover Garland Island”, anyone?) — and that record is sometimes my favourite Toby project of them all, so up we go with “Brittle Urchin”! As a song, it’s solid. As a closer to an album I don’t love that has very little in common with any of the other tracks, it’s a pyrrhic joy!

I am now wondering whether I should have included Part the Second, or indeed the whole Tobyverse in this list, and am going to motor on immediately for the sake of my own sanity.

47. Lethe (Gamma Knife, 2012)

As solemn as those bells and Gregorian chants are, “Lethe” has always felt lightweight to me, like it would have made the perfect overture to the Kayo Dot chamber LP that never was but somehow opened up as an unnecessarily graceful carpet pull on this grubby lo-fi metal album. Is this unfair? It’s still a lovely piece of music, but it’s too fleeting to offer as much as I’d like on its own terms; there are plenty of suggestive Kayo Dot tracks that provide glimpses in strange other worlds and then disappear the moment they’ve conveyed their impression (Blue Lambency Downward is especially good at this), but this song’s pocket of reality feels half-realised to me. It’s thoroughly pleasant by any estimations, at least.

46. Amalia’s Theme (Plastic House on Base of Sky, 2016)

“Amalia’s Theme” is the best track on PHOBOS by virtue of being the most melodically engaging and rhythmically consistent, and even then I spend half the runtime entirely uninvested in where it’s ebbing to and flowing from. 10/10 as a showcase of this awesome futuristic palette that doesn’t give me a headache, 7/10 as a song I feel compelled to come back to: it kinda lands as proof of the album’s concept, but even then I’m left a little nonplussed. Still, we do love that palette in this house!

45. Rite of Goetic Evocation (Gamma Knife, 2012)

My favourite of the Gamma Knife metal trilogy is probably the most dynamic cut there: “Rite of Goetic Evocation” doesn’t quite pack the same instant momentum of “Ocellated God”, but it makes up for it with the number of twists and turns in its runtime. The guitar work here is probably the best on the album, as is the woodwind interplay; there’s something feverish about the way it settles at various points into paralytic lulls only to rouse itself with a choice tremolo riff or woodwind flurry, and that, I hope, is what we all tuned in for to begin with.

44. Turbine, Hook, and Haul (Blasphemy, 2019)

The best track on Blasphemy is pretty great! More than anything else on the album, this one thrives in misty synthscapes and slow, creeping gloom, both of which have been critical strengths across most recent-ish incarnations of the Driververse, and you can feel exactly why here. One of the few respects in which Blasphemy distinguishes itself is pure immediacy, and “Turbine, Hook, and Haul” definitely takes this in its stride: there’s something intuitively pleasing about its synth tones and gentle progression, even when things take a turn for the mysterious later on. If this had been a fairer representation of the Kayo Dot-lite sound this album played with, then perhaps we’d be complaining that it didn’t catch more new followers — but alas.

Brief Intermission

We’re still under halfway through the list, but with two albums entirely covered and two yet to surface at all, the breakdown of remaining tracks runs as follows:

Blasphemy: 0 (of 8)

Blue Lambency Downward: 5 (of 7)

Choirs of the Eye: 5 (of 5)

Coffins on Io: 5 (of 6)

Coyote: 4 (of 5)

Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue: 5 (of 5)

Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason: 3 (of 5)

Gamma Knife: 1 (of 5)

Hubardo: 9 (of 11)

Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike: 4 (of 7)

Plastic House on Base of Sky: 0 (of 5)

Additional releases: 2 (of 2)

My album ranking is largely inferable from this data, but make no assumptions as we go on! We’ve been in thumbs-up territory since “Lethe” at the latest, but the ends get increasingly difficult to split from hereon out…

#43-#19

43. Floodgate (Hubardo, 2013)

This is a one-song fuck you to everyone who ever complained about Kayo Dot not playing enough metal post-Choirs of the Eye. It’s heavy, sludgy, paced in alternating increments of freight-train and diplodocus, and disgusting enough that I hardly ever revisit it —and so I have often underrated it, forgetting that this is likely the most legitimately nasty metal tune Toby will ever put his name to. Its chief competition in that regard is “Ocellated God”, but it gets the edge by virtue of a drum performance from the depths of hypermagic HELL. I shudder to think what this must have been like in front of KD’s infamously impassive live audiences. Big overkill. Great freak metal.

42. Abyss Hinge 2: The Shrinking Armature (Coyote, 2010)

Although this is Coyote’s longest and most structurally-contorted song (read: prone to meander), it was once one of the most accessible moments of the album to me at first. Strange — perhaps because it’s the least emotionally laden track on the album, and also one of the most harmonically generous (those horns at the start come close to vintage maudlin of the Well phrasings at the points, and it’s very easy to hear echoes of this style of arrangement in the more outgoing likes of “The Wait of the World” on Hubardo).

So that’s nice. I think getting into jazz was more helpful for opening this album up to me than any other Kayo Dot release — it may not be ‘free’, but the harmony is plain difficult at points. This track is relatively forgiving, and I don’t look forward to it now as much as I did when the darker parts of this darkest of records had yet to pierce my thick late-adolescent skull, but the eerie back-and-forth that the brass settles into at around 11:30 is still one of the most uniquely satisfying order-out-of-chaos moments in the Kayo canon.

41. Don’t Touch Dead Animals (Don’t Touch Dead Animals (split with Bloody Panda), 2006)

This is less a song (hardly anything songlike at all about that first half’s descent from moody rock to chamber chaos!) and much more a time capsule of when Kayo Dot were fresh-faced avant-squirts prepared to stare down the world with zany pretension and had yet to suffer any of the grim material consequences of alienating half their audience with increasingly oblique output or the streaming era sinking its claws over the ‘10s.

It seems like ancient history now that the core of this hand was Toby’s creative partnership with Mia Matsumiya, and while the records I most associate with that era (Dowsing, Blue Lambency Downward) have aged fantastically unto themselves, this scrappy freak of a song is about as immature and full of look-what-we-gone-done self-referentiality as anything they made. I find this pretty endearing — each half of the song being prefaced by a few lines of terrible poetry, the gratuitous levels of feedback in the explosive second half, the extents to which Mia shreds her throat for that climax, etc.: gold! — but it’s too much of a hodgepodge to land any further up.

The knockout it lands at the close is really something though — perhaps the one Hot Take I have here is that while it can’t compete with either song’s meticulous build-up, this one packs a much more satisfying volcanic noise finale than anything “Aura on an Asylum Wall” or “The Manifold Curiosity” could deliver.

So there you go, it’s better than two of the best Kayo Dot songs, but also not really.

40. Blue Lambency Downward (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)

This is a weird song.

It was the first Kayo Dot song I knowingly heard, as opposed to, you know, those other Kayo Dot songs that they play on the radio/ shut up.

It was the first Kayo Dot song I heard.

It sounded like a racoon taking refuge inside a washing machine on a DMT trip and facing the consequences, and it still sounds like that now. I have very strong associations with it without necessarily having strong feelings positively or negatively, but the opening minutes are a perfect introduction to this album’s uncanny pocket of psychedelia.

Now that I think about it, it picks up very nicely where “Amaranth the Peddler” left off at the end of Dowsing Anemone. The winding middle section tends to lose me, but there are worse places to end up lost. I wonder if the rest of the record would have such a charming sense of mystery to it if this track weren’t such an impenetrable opener.

It’s an approach.

Is this the exact middle of the list? It probably belongs there.

39. Spectrum of One Colour (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)

At the time of release, my thoughts on this relatively concise heavy slugger were overwhelmingly positive, and while there’s still a lot to love here, I don’t think its long-term impact is on quite the same level as the way its dramatic lurches hit at first. The crushing finale is excellent, but at this point I’m mainly coming back for the panic attack that kicks in on “gnawing sound” and Toby’s frankly demented delivery of the following verse.

I originally had it ranked over ten places above “Vision Adjustment to Another Wavelength”, but reassessing things now, that track is definitely the superior pick from KD’s shorter, midtempo bruisers. A solid song regardless, not much to say here other than that it’s not quite the album highlight I thought it might be but it will hand you your arse on a plate if you give it half a chance.

38. Closet Door in the Room Where She Died (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)

If you remember where “The Black Stone” and “Mental Shed” landed, you’d expect quarter of an hour of Jason Byron* snarling ectoplasm over a zero-percussion spookscape to get similar treatment. Not so! “Closet Door...” atones for both those earlier tracks and then some for me, and I love it as a horror-gauntlet centrepiece to Every Rock.... Pacing is key here: although Byron’s vocal is pure chills when it’s on, he’s wise to dip out of the frame after each line or two, ensuring that we feel the full weight of the negative space behind him. I can’t believe how engaging this track is, or how quickly it seems to pass, but there we are -- just do not go anywhere near it in the wrong headspace.

*is this Byron? The album credits say he’s on vox for this song, but it sounds more like Toby to me?

37. Offramp Cycle, Pattern 22 (Coffins on Io, 2014)

“Offramp Cycle, Pattern 22” is perhaps the most conventionally songlike track on Coffins on Io, using one solid groove as the basis for a simple verse/chorus tradeoff that sustains the song until it doesn’t. It’s almost catchy enough that we could call it Toby’s “Blue Monday” or “Love Like Blood” without laughing at ourselves, and that’s close enough.

Honestly, Kayo Dot’s approach to whatever the palette in question is tends to be so fiercely reinterpretive that it still takes me aback to hear the band comfortably vibing out to the spirit of dance-friendly ‘80s post-punk like this. It proves a good influence in other regards too: this album’s whole retro cyberpunk/cosmic horror vibe pairs particularly well with Toby’s lyrical, and I love how this song in particular imposes a sense of terse Cool that forces him to do more with less as far as imagery goes. Is there a single line in this discography as succinct or instantly memorable as Blood on my hands, and a thing in the backseat / That used to be human?

It’s a little tame to claw any higher up the list and its coda winds on too for my liking, but this is still a neat bit of time-travelling pastiche.

36. The Wait of the World (Hubardo, 2013)

Y’know what, this may be the closest Toby Driver’s exquisite composerly elegance has ever come to full-tilt Mars Volta-style prog cancer, but it’s a fun enough romp to get a pass. I still have no idea how to feel about it as a closer to Hubardo — does an album with this much girth and gravity really benefit from an intro that goofy? It puts a grin on my face regardless, and the chord modulations throughout that doozy of a four-minute finale are worth the wank rampage that leads up to them. Does it collapse under its own weight? Is this calibre of fart-brass the ultimate get out of jail free? Do I even have a steady opinion here? Keep on addling me with that prog jank!

35. Oracle by Severed Head (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)

I like how even the ‘event’ songs on Every Rock... are resistant to stable rhythms and seem completely content to drift away with themselves! “Oracle by Severed Head” is one of the most approachable things here by a mile, certainly in being the most conventionally dreamlike (this one is for the Alora Crucible fans!), and even then it just churns along for 8 minutes before kicking off in a swoonable string climax and giving way to the nightmare that is “Closet Door in the Room Where She Died”. It’s lovely! The timbre is lovely across the board – this album is as much a showcase of texture as of atmosphere, and to that end the violin is perfect. Toby’s croon has got a liturgical vibe going on, but he never gets overbearing with it. You can absolutely listen to this one outside of album context; great tune.

34. The Knight Errant (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)

This tune’s gothic fantasy cold opening is everything! DU-DU-DUH we are IN! And a good thing too, because that banger of a kickoff has to pack enough momentum to sustain a good four minutes of the song going nowhere fast; it carries itself so hard on pure phlegmy dungeon vibes that its righteous doom-finale practically comes at a premium. Rock on.

33. Library Subterranean (Coffins on Io, 2014)

Is there another song in this discography that shows off its respective album’s strengths and weaknesses in such equal measure as this one? (Scroll back for “Magnetism”, I guess.) Don’t get me wrong, “Library Subterranean” is great -- it packs Toby’s bounciest and most charismatic verses in the mirrorshades dry-ice goth frontman look he rocked for this era, and I’m a big fan of the way it derails into flashing sirens and runaway guitarmelt: a full-on cosmic horror car chase seemed just the shot in the arm that the first half of this album shied away from... but why do the band take their foot off the pedal the moment the chase kicks in? The backend of this track squanders a kickass idea to repetition, and by the time a menacing brass layer arrives to raise the stakes towards the end it’s all too late. Oh well. My feelings are still overall positive, but this one’s placement is strictly middle of the pack.

32. The Mortality of Doves (Coffins on Io, 2014)

I haven’t run the numbers, but “The Mortality of Doves” might have had the single biggest personal falloff of any track since I last ranked this band. What happened? Well, nothing to get flustered over — it’s still an excellent opener, it still does an excellent job of balancing slow yet deliberate progressions and against the slick, greasy cool that this album lives and dies by, and it still occupies a 10-minute+ runtime that feels dramatically shorter than it really is. I like it a lot, and love the way that the arrangement is always bringing different elements in and out of focus even when the song settles into a linear plod (”Offramp Cycle” and “Library Subterranean” could have taken notes here)...

...but that linearity has its limits (a common theme, as you’ll see carrying on up the list). Everything about this track is structurally coherent to a fault, and after however many years I’ve found it’s lost a certain chunk of its intrigue through telegraphing its every move and leaving little to the imagination. Not sure whether to accuse the song of being too well-behaved for cop responsibility for overlistening to it, but the murk on this one has long since been penetrated. Yikes.

31. Passing the River (Hubardo, 2013)

Perhaps more than other Kayo Dot records, the major twists on Hubardo tend to take place between individual tracks rather than within them, which tracks considering how enormous this record is. I think this goes some way to explaining why this is one of their most accessible and best received works in spite of its dimensions - most of these tracks are very approachable in and of themselves.

Not so “Passing the River”! This is comfortably the most explorative track on the record! The opening verses are shockingly chill and their toe-tapping rhythm forever has me convinced that Toby is about to break into an anthemic pop chorus and manifest his ultimate Savage Garden moment (and I am not confident enough in whatever I mean by that to hyperlink the artist name, thank you!) — but naturally, he does not! The track veers off into haunted avant backwaters, howling and clattering its way through various twists or turns before a few coda lines resolve it perhaps a little too daintily.

I’m struck by how un-reliant this song is on metal for raising avant clamour compared to the rest of the album, and distantly reminded of both Dowsing and Coyote, but in truth this is a pretty singular section within the Kayoverse. I am also reminded (in theory, not in palette) of “Marathon” in how it draws equal parts on maximalism and minimalism, in often surprising ways. This song used to be a fair bit higher, but now it is here. Unlike “The Mortality of Doves” just above it, I’m not sure why.

30. Vision Adjustment to Another Wavelength (Hubardo, 2013)

Whatever concept Gamma Knife was supposed to be proof of, this song takes it and runs its drunken, astral-poetic way to the bank with it: it’s heavy as balls, and the flutes in the bridge are an absolute murder (by which I mean that I wish them to saw directly through my neck and ankles and feed whatever flops off to the hogs)! I love how compact it is! It’s amazing that neither this nor “Zlida Caosgi” were singles from Hubardo. Fuck me, I remember hearing both for the first time having heard the three actual singles (”And He Built Him a Boat”, “Thief” and “Passing the River” (in that order)) and having no idea how the album as a whole would string together. The best of times!

My thoughts on this song from five years ago include the following:

This is another track that works an absolute treat in sequence but maybe feels a little not-quite-polydimensional to offer as much as a standalone?

Fuck outta here! This slaps as a standalone! I also observed that

It gets the edge over Brittle Urchin [no shit] because Toby yelling "DUST" is badass and the guitars do dissonant semiquaver run things literally every bar [of course] and the atmospheric woodwindy coda thing feels like a potential final form of the Gamma Knife dissoDot mission statement [shit fuck sorry, already covered that one], but I think all these are things Hubardo nailed bigger and better and zazzier elsewhere

Much of this is true, but this song is still a real force.

29. The Useless Ladder (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)

“The Useless Ladder” is the shortest track on this list and perhaps the most elliptical, so I can see a few heads being scratched over a placement this high; what is an oddball miniature doing on top of all that Serious Music? Does it even go anywhere?

Admittedly not, but it’s one of the best examples of the classic Kayo Dot rusty-key-to-unknown-drawer appeal that runs through Blue Lambency Downward like nothing else. I love how this album, perhaps this song most of all, brings such a playful edge to that dusty intrigue (the clarinet and vocal harmonies most of all) — does the song tease something ominous, or are its ominous qualities just affected to tease? Who knows. Great, underrated track anyhow. It plays like an even more bitesized version of the “Clelia Walking” experience, and, well, scroll down to see how we feel about that one.

28. Whisper Ineffable (Coyote, 2010)

RIGHT THEN

ALL SENSATIONS

CAME OUT OF MY

BO-

-DY

This has been perhaps the slowest grower in the entire Kayo Dot discog for me, and having never paid too much to the lyrics outside of the opening lines of “Calonyction Girl”, it took until redrafting this list in 2026 for the sheer morbid horror of its lyrics and voice to hit.

For anyone unfamiliar, the lyrics to Coyote were written by Toby’s collaborator Yuko Sueta about her experience dying of breast cancer (she sadly lost her battle before the album’s release). It’s all too easy to see Kayo Dot as a vehicle of obscurity, wrapped up in mysticism and fantasy — and in many ways, it is that, but for all its impenetrable gloom, Coyote is frighteningly emotionally present at points, and it strikes a very different chord to their other material as such.

It’s the complete opposite of, say, the no-filter A Crow Looked at Me approach to morbid subject matter: the harder you have to strain your ears through the layers of dramatic performance and obtuse melodies, the more startling it is to catch the voice-behind-Toby’s-voice, to tune into those half-candid half-abstract images or searing isolation and dissociating pain that would sound (as in my opinion much of Crow... very much does) brittle, awkward and impossible if they were presented at face value. And having just typed all that without thinking, of course: “Whisper Ineffable”! This track really couldn’t have been titled anything else. I used to admire it for its bass-heavy instrumental bookending, which is of course still excellent, but those later verses are just flooring. A horrible dark-night-of-the-soul masterstroke (though the earlier verses do take their time to warm up).

27. Epipsychidion (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)

While I still rate Moss... as a solid album and a welcome, freshly putrefied return to the fantastical Tiamat/My Dying Bride inspirations that suffused Toby’s maudlin of the Well days, it’s far from the most adventurous Kayo Dot album and has aged neither especially well nor badly for me as a result. However, recognising this has made me that extra bit more appreciative of how much of an explorative ZAMN factor “Epipsychidion” packs at the eleventh hour! From its glorious drone outro to its earlier flirtations with extreme metal, this is by far the Moss... track most prepared to play fast and loose with left turns and unpredictable stylisation, and, uh, the title also and correctly translates from (...) uh, Flemish for “Epic Closer” so there’s that. It walks that walk!

26. Wayfarer (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)

And now at last, with the top-half threshold firmly crossed, it is finally time for our first Choirs of the Eye track! (A reminder that we’ve still yet to see anything from Dowsing Anemone with Copper Tongue.) Why is “Wayfarer”, in all its gauzy Romantic glory my weakest track on the record by some margin? No mincing words: it’s the frilliest and least momentous. I’ve read some people — not many, but a pretty established minority — claim that this is their favourite track on the album, and while I respect them deeply and treasure their insight, this is a butt-boring take that throws out all the mercurial depths, all the structural subversion, all the bracing impact that makes Choirs such a timelessly mesmerising listen in favour of Toby’s storytime hour for guitar-prone insomniacs.

At that point, just listen to Jeff Buckley! “So Real” and “Dream Brother” hit every beat this thing does in half the time! Hell, so does “A Pitcher of Summer”. I can’t be too mean: “Wayfarer” is still in the top half of the list, it does work perfectly to have a melodic lacuna between Choirs’ two giant centrepiece tracks, and the shimmering coda where he croons that whole farewell, starry wayfarer section is deeply precious to me — but this is too tame for too long and it shall go no higher.

Milo sez that this placement is political, if well-reasoned; a jettisoning of feeling to attach a cold, objective, band-encompassing thesis to a rare and revealing instance of antithesis that gives any subsequent dissolution of form more weight. The gang can do it straight better than anybody! Rejoice! Now I’m not sayin’ it should be anybody or everybody’s number one pick or anything, but I swear to the Eldritch Unknowing that if I see a track from, say, Every Rock… higher than this one I’m gonna sneak into your attic, stuff myself into a gaudy steamer trunk, and await a particularly fetid form of decay.

25. Crown-In-The-Muck (Hubardo, 2013)

The real first track on on Hubardo, and the first of many excellent heavy cuts to come! Half this one’s charm is in the way the ominous horns and winding arpeggios of its introduction give way to the whispers of the first verse (one of the tightest transitions in this discog, for my money) and the other half is in the absolute rampage it finally unleashes at the end. Is the sludged-out horror of a chorus in between these sections also charming? I’ve never felt especially drawn to it, but the shifts of pace in this track are so slick that I can still get kicks out of seeing it schmooze like a well-oiled black heart over the pack ice of evil. A thoroughly engaging track, a perfect case study in what Hubardo brings to the table.

24. Spirit Photography (Coffins on Io, 2014)

I used to think this song was all vibes (and saxophone) and dismissed it as a lightweight offering, until I realised that the majority of this album is in fact a lightweight offering built on vibes — and now it’s a highlight! I like how content it is to drift along rather than tease momentum, in large part because the lyrics wallpaper it with precisely the right blend of pokey, poorly heated domestics and lurking cosmic horror that many a Kayo Dot winner has lived and slain by — and if it gets there as an eerie chillout, so much the better. Would David Sylvian condone it? I think he might well!

23. Blind Creature of Slime (Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason, 2025)

Look, this track may not be as individually satisfying as “Oracle by Severed Head” and it’s probably twice as long as it needs to be (I don’t care how many arcane verses Jason Byron wrote for it), but it comes in so hard with such a gratifying change of pace after “Automatic Writing” that it snags the album crown and as much indiscriminate simpage as I can justify. I love the title image, especially how it makes me think of the album artwork (which I adore - probably their best since Choirs), and I love how it’s heavy as hell purely through dissonant chord voicings and lurching rhythms (not a whiff of distortion here), and I LOVE how much power there is to Toby’s performance here — it’s unreal more more mileage he gets out of this theatrical style of cleans here than when he was belting in a similar style for dramatic effect on Blasphemy. That’s the power of a good album-long reverie. Also holy shit those synth(?)voices in the background at around 5:30 are terrifying. I don’t know or care if it’s a perfect song, but it’s absolutely the perfect closer for Every Rock....

Milo sez: well fucking shucks, I’ve got some farewells to dole out and a couple of planes to catch. I guess I’d better do you the favour of listening to this before I stink up your attic.

As a serial bed-and-headphones listener, I think I usually fall asleep (and start convulsing and frothing at the mouth) around when “Closet Door…" starts (and keeps) winding into its business. Nobody told me this album ends in sickening dissonant triumph? I have much to reconsider, and I imagine the average wayfaring Kayo Dot fan probably will too.

22. Stained Glass (Stained Glass, 2010)

“Stained Glass” on paper should be one of my absolutely favourite Kayo Dot tracks: a twenty-minute labyrinth of delicate vibraphone progressions interspersed with horror synths sounds like an easy home run given how much I love it when Toby gets eerie in a sparser palette, but it doesn’t fully gel for me structurally. The gorgeous intro gives way to a section that teases a darker direction, only to give way to nothing, and I find myself a little perturbed by how long the track takes to gather itself again.

From the slow haunt-out at around eight minutes through to the end is the absolute money though. I *love* how naturally those vibes drift away with themselves and how much of a fright it is when an exorcism of synths sets in at around the sixteen minute mark. That entire section is dynamite and I wouldn’t change a thing about it; it reminds me heavily of John Zorn’s Interzone (perhaps the most overt Zorn-ism I can think of in any of Toby’s work, which is saying something), and I am gripped. I always forget how this song ends. Is that to its detriment?

I once found a CD copy of this in the metal section of an Edinburgh HMV in (probably) 2012 — in hindsight, so surreal on so many levels. A different time.

21. ___ On Limpid Form (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)

It is TIME for our first Dowsing Anemone song, and there are no prizes for having guessed which one was going to land first. For the inexperienced, the 12-minute marathon of “___ On Limpid Form”’s clanging outro makes it perhaps the most controversial track in the whole Kayo Dot canon, and although there is something to latch onto in its painfully slow build of feedback and rackety percussion, I, uh, hear the argument. It’s a similar case to “Stained Glass” in that I love so much about this track but cannot justify a higher placement given how flagrantly its structural bloat takes the piss.

Those parts to love though? Well, the melodic proggish song-within-a-song is wonderful for those few early minutes (perhaps the single most immediate glimpse this album ever gives of its oh so specific space of misty limbo and innocuous shadowy forms weaving around eerily?), but what ultimately brings the track home for me is the role it plays within Dowsing’s wider take on negative space. Honestly, I don’t think I’d like this song nearly as much if “Amaranth the Peddler” didn’t pick up so well from its abrasive wash-out, as though “___ On Limpid Form” has pushed us entirely off the edge of the map only for us to land in some fairy-addled plane of nirvana: those punishing chords feel like somehow a necessary soul-scouring given where we end up. Do you know any other two-song combos that will do that to you? This is the right song in the right place.

20. The Second Operation (Lunar Water) (Hubardo, 2013)

I’ve been on a real kick with this track lately, to the point that I was tempted to declare it the peak of chamber Kayo and shunt it another 5 places up the list — and the sole reason I haven’t is that for a song this languorous, this intent on floating and drifting, it feels too saturated with ideas to command the kind of negative space that, say, the miracle tracks on Dowsing… make such magic out of (perhaps the backing vocals are particularly dense here?)

Other than that, this thing is pure kino! The Pavilion of Dreams goes to the moon, plants flowers and sings lullabies to them! I love how spaced out vs. harmonically rich this track is (it’s practically 13 minutes of how many 9ths can you shove into one piece) and it’s grown from a midway test of patience to a firm Hubardo highlight for me. Should it be higher? We shall see next time.

19. Cartogram Out of Phase (Coyote, 2010)

I first heard Coyote in perhaps 2012, and it’s taken me until now to see through the hubble-bubble and aesthetic jumble of Byron and Toby’s respective styles and realise that Yuko Sueta’s short collection of verses on this album are probably the best lyrics on a Kayo Dot release. As I touched on with “Whisper Ineffable”, Toby’s performance style is so lurid and interpretive that the full force of the words is often veiled (and far better that than that he tried to deliver them straight!), but just look at this:

On top
of the roof
I realized 
that there was no moon;

Searching for it
among the sprinkled stars
I gazed into the light that’s reaching in
from millions of years ago!

See--
see in the past
outside the present

Out-world within my room,
the castle of monologues;
the endless failures are trapped.

The moon has disappeared
because now the world is reversed
and my feet are on her land
I’m out of the room of my mind
with a perfect shape of love
filling this hole in my heart

I think these are my favourite lines on Coyote, and at any rate “Cartogram Out of Phase” is certainly the most songlike piece on the record. No more empty space, no more clanging bass or plaintive brass, just dour chords and one solemn Scott Walker-like verse after another. Whatever fear of the unknown, of invisible death, whatever nightmare of empty space the rest of the album has been orbiting, it comes to terms with itself here.

It’s not melodramatic (though Toby’s strained cadences do particular justice to these lines), it’s not a grand reckoning, it’s too oblique to be emotionally manipulative, but it does catch the weight and helplessness of a shell of a person making a fragile peace with their imminent passing in a way I find deeply affecting and unlike anything else at all.

So yes, a pretty good song.

Notes on the Coyote CD sleeve

Different lyric websites have different formattings and in some cases very different renderings of the lyrics to “Cartogram Out of Phase”, as is often the way with such things. E.g., The heir and his failures of trials vs. The endless failures are trapped.

I couldn’t find any lyrics on the Bandcamp page, but then I remembered my CD copy of Coyote! Along with the rest of my collection, I had boxed and stored it in my folks’ attic when I moved to Japan for the first time. In an episode alarmingly reflective of the appeal many probably imagine this band to hold, I fought off spiderwebs and fibreglass insulation, browsed my entire teenage taste in mostly the wrong order, and eventually found Coyote in the hardest to reach box at the very bottom of a tall stack, pictured below (minus the overheads, naturally):

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the sleeve notes contain (almost) no lyrics whatsoever, which leaves the verses quoted overhead as my best efforts working by ear. Purely so I have something to share for my blundering, here is what they do contain:

As credited almost illegibly in the final image, all drawings and artwork are by Toby (and not by Yuko Sueta herself). You can probably find high res versions of all these images online, and an alternative version of the topmost image is shown on the album’s live release:

#18-#1

18. The Assassination Of Adam (Coffins on Io, 2014)

“The Assassination of Adam” goes! I used to think of it as a kinetic outlier, but as the pulse of the other Coffins on Io track has (mostly) felt more and more sluggish to me over time, it’s become all too tempting to imagine Toby’s take on the same palette where this field of urgency and arcane jumpscares was the rule rather than the exception. Coffins on Io may be the most coasting-on-vibes Kayo Dot album, but this fucking track kicks down the wall into another dimension and offers a few terrifying, electric moments when direct communion seems possible between the band’s groovy goth cocktail and whichever eldritch horror. Hooray for half-intelligible vocals and occult verse! Hooray for the saxophone resolution! Handily the best song on the album.

17. Clelia Walking (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)

Clelia walks, alright! She tiptoes all over those rustling cymbals and bubbling synths, flits around nervous woodwinds and spooky violins, and slips promptly out of sight whenever the band burst into distorted clamour. I love how oblique this thing is as an end-to-end structure, but how intuitively it flows from section to section; getting lost in someone else’s faerie glade has never been easier, and although there’s a real threat of darkness behind this track, it never seems to blunder into the thick of things.

I actually think Blue Lambency Downward is every bit as dark as Choirs or Dowsing in its way, but it sets up an oddball shrine of harmony and suggests the shadows around its margins rather than plunging headlong into demonic reckonings like its predecessors. Perhaps that’s why it’s so misunderstood? Anyway, whatever hauntings are to be heard on this album, this track is probably their poster child — though I’m still dropping it a place or two for setting such a mysterious scene only to end on the line Come back and I’ll tell you more. Absolutely unforgivable.

16. And He Built Him a Boat (Hubardo, 2013)

Hooray for eerie tremolo motifs so majestic they hold the floor as a chorus stand-in, and hooray for the melodious theatrical magic Toby+backing vocalists work throughout this song’s verses. I love how much presence this song has — as a narrative-driven concept record, Hubardo is very striking on the level of individual images and broader atmospheres, but this (along with “The Black Stone”) is the only piece I can picture as a start-to-finish scene: hooray for such a vivid portrait of our Poet scurrying around his arcane errands! Hooray for how much contour the drums add to the song — if I haven’t said as much already, the pairing of Keith Abrams and Ron Varod on drums and guitar respectively was a real coup for Kayo Dot, and although it’s hard to imagine them at home in the current line-up, both brought a vast amount of personality to Hubardo in particular.

Anyhow, “And He Built Him a Boat” is a baller. Take that phantom out of the opera and stick him in a forest, or on a quayside! I love how much blockbuster immediacy Toby brought to this one, not that you’d mistake it for anyone else’s work. Almost the best Kayo Dot single (stay tuned for that one later).

15. Gemini Becoming the Tripod (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)

The majority of my blurbs for the 2021 version of this list were absolute dogshit and I feel sorry for anyone who read them, but on revisiting this charming entry for “Gemini Becoming the Tripod”...

Toby Driver's Artaud hour for occult vocal torture and supreme tentacle love strain is equal parts superparody of whatever your turtlenecked latte sipping AnCo coldplaying hipster imagines avant garde metal to be and also midkey bitchin fantastic. I don't know if KD have any other track that owns its ridiculousness quite so well as this one, and it helps that the section in question in sandwiched between a gorgeous instrumental opening that sums up early Dot perfectly in and of itself (Mia really was the biz huh) and a nice off kilter distortionmelt guitar outro that is yes, indeed, heavy and ended up being the project's farewell to metal for many years. This is a heavy song. it contorts and wretches and is too much but also exactly right and it is probably a good thing that Toby doesn't have any other pieces that tried to repeat it. ideal choke anthem.

...I find myself with nothing whatsoever to add.

14. Immortelle and Paper Caravelle (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)

I don’t think it’s controversial to call this one the most straightforwardly lovely piece of music on the list. “Immortelle and Paper Caravelle” is so gauzy and gentle that if you so much as tried to hug it, it would likely disappear into the aether, and yet who wouldn’t try! It taking almost ten minutes for one verse, a handful of diffuse chords and a couple of choice trumpet lines is perfect introduction to how Dowsing uses near-empty space to allow for the maximum resonance of a couple of core ideas Talk Talk-style, and as with that band, texture and resonance do perfect work holding the floor for most of the track because the core ideas are so wonderful.

The only thing separating it from Dowsing’s best is the lack of eerie misgivings or a hint that All Is Not As It Seems, but then again it does anchor those later tracks to have something so understated and blissed in reserve - after “Gemini Becoming the Tripod”’s initial demon conjuring, “Immortelle” gives the album a strong emotional bedrock and sets the scene for all sort of mischievous hauntings to come.

13. Thief (Hubardo, 2013)

Well, if “Clelia Walking” tiptoed cautiously through the woods, “Thief” sprints like a loon on a moonlit quayside, his arms and legs a mess of frenzied angles no one can bear to look at long, and his trajectory nigh unintelligible. But the speed! You will not catch him!

So, uh, yes — this song is a ridiculous blast and showcases a bunch of the proggiest bullshit Kayo Dot ever laid down at its most accelerated and entertaining. It is incredible that Toby drops his choicest “Moon River” croon (and rested by the river where / he could see the stone) in a song this berserk only to have it slap the bloody biscuit. Blam. Nothing lasts, nothing is reprised, but every blast-off is engaging and every melody is resonant. The song’s unstructured rush somehow works in its favour — not ‘somehow’; that’s pure momentum for you -- and it preserves enough visceral impact to land HIGH in my ranking of Hubardo to this day. Hooray.

On a side-note, I can vividly remember when this dropped as a single and I sent it along to my aspiring music student pal in the middle of his peak Periphery phase, only to have it declared pure awfulness. Is this the reason we haven’t spoken in years? Don’t let Kayo Dot steal your friendships. Or do! What do I care?

12. Gamma Knife (Gamma Knife, 2010)

It has been more places than I can be bothered to count since the last song on Gamma Knife; lest there be any doubt, the title-track is by far the strongest cut that record has to offer and the main thing elevating it from an endearing odds-and-ends deal. Ghostly chamber Toby has never sounded better! That piano/guitar interplay provides the most delicate of lattices for a vocal performance that waxes disembodied and inspires an irresponsible number of chills.

I’ve floated some version of this bit for several tracks already (and, uh, guess what my pick for #1 will be), but this song is a borderline tangible nexus of dusty forgotten objects and half-memories (*was it a dream?*) and a faint lingering shiver that says that *something* is out there, nanometres beyond the visible spectrum yet already further into our world than it should be. This is a perfect haunting. Hubardo ventured into similar territory on “The Second Operation” and Toby’s solo work certainly has a lot in the same vein, but this track remains a high watermark for his personal supremacy of spook and is one of many Kayo Dot moments where I look back to where my own taste has taken me in the last few years and realise how deeply formative it’s clearly been.

11. A Pitcher of Summer (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)

Maybe there’s a semblance of double standard in how I bitched about how tame “Wayfarer” is, only to put “A Pitcher of [fucking] Summer” 10+ places higher? Is the first half of this track not the most user-friendly daydream section on the whole of Choirs and arguably the ‘safest’ thing Kayo Dot ever did before Coffins on Io?

Why, yes — but have you *heard* how the second half zaps that afternoon teatime full of concentrated stardust and has the entire household levitating ten feet above the flowerbeds? I love how leftfield that midway twist is, and it’s glued to the first section by around ten seconds of bloody silence, an endearing and, for me, well-placed amateur beat amidst Choirs’ otherworldly ambitions — something about that transition gives the record as a whole a real DIY foot in the door and helps keep it in the human realm. (None of that on glossy, starry “Wayfarer”.)

That section is probably the peak of Toby’s Jeff Buckley-adjacent performances, but by the time he gets to the perfectly-timed final screams, he’s transcended into his own space. I used to have this song ranked even higher (it made the podium last time!), but I’ve come down to earth a little on how much I love the second half vs. the first and how much more certain other Kayo Dot tracks offer as a whole. Still, this one is precious.

10. Calonyction Girl (Coyote, 2010)

Most of Coyote jettisons clear structural boundaries as it comes apart in a pit of dread, yet “Calonyction Girl” starts the album out with by far its most streamlined progressions. It’s as uncomfortable as anything else on the record, especially as a cold open, but it’s by far the easiest track to ‘follow’ — and what I’m really driving at there is that the last three minutes or so strike an extraordinarily specific take on a funeral trudge (rendered in 5/4 lest we get too comfortable) to cement a top 10 placement with no further questions asked.

I love everything about how that end section is constructed, the elegant tone of the violin clinging to some sense of dignity while the once-a-bar plunge of the brass has all the uneasiness of an ailing line on a heart rate monitor, compounded by the wearying inhale/exhale effect of Toby’s belaboured monosyllables. Language breaks down (good luck piecing what on earth he sings over that final run without the lyrics), the passing of time is reduced to a sluggish war of attrition on the senses, and just for once – all too early, never to be taken for granted – the broadly harrowing experience of a Coyote listen lends itself to something more traditionally cathartic.

9. The Awkward Wind Wheel (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)

Let the fact that this is our second top ten placement transcend everything I’m about to say, but it never fails to send me how the rough ‘n’ tumble chamber rock cacophony seems to match every one of the allegations of musty graduate frittering that were levelled against this album on a superficial and hugely unhelpful basis. For a few outsized seconds, this song could just as easily be the product of a flop dramatic auteur straight out of college and destined for a lifetime of off-Broadway snatch-and-grabs, but phwoar boy does that assessment fail to reckon with the absurd melodic precision that holds this most roughshod of Kayo Dot tracks!

The way it flirts back and forth between dissonance and harmony is some of the deftest hijinks you’ll hear from just about anyone, and it’s amazing just how damn CATCHY those user-friendly phrases are. We’re obviously all here for Mia’s song-crowning violin line at The Point when it all comes together, but the song’s connective sections have so many guitar or woodwind licks that have been stuck in my head for years at this point. It’s fun track! It’s very all-go in a way that leaves very little to suggestion or negative space in the way of most great Kayo Dot tracks, but for that specific reason I love how it marks a moment of quirky punctuation in the otherwise sinuous scheme of Blue Lambency Downward — and I also love how much of a gorgeous skronky banger it is on anyone’s terms. No more adjectives. It satisfies me a lot that the drums under the violin line at the apex resemble the image of the song title very closely. Could it have been called anything else? Perhaps.

8. The Necklace (Moss Grew on the Swords and Plowshares Alike, 2021)

Although the Kayo Dot fix tends to be based on aesthetics, mysterious spaces, on eerie atmospheres, “The Necklace” is one of their rare moments that go above and beyond and dish out something emotionally consuming on terms that are all too easy to articulate: this song captures exactly what it’s like to see the light at the end of the tunnel disappearing out of sight and the feel darkness closing in.

It doesn’t demand to be approached as a lurid piece of fiction (which is fun enough on the other Moss... songs, but has its limits), but goes straight for the jugular: Toby’s performance might be my favourite he’s ever done with harsh vocals, and I love how he weaponises suspense throughout this track, and how the brighter melodic progression in the second half floats a sense of release that his strangled vocals brutally undermines. There’s also the context of how this was written about a fan who took their own life, which isn’t the basis for its greatness but does afford a certain weight that most Kayo Dot eschews in favour of suggestion (see the “Whisper Ineffable” blurb for more on this).

This is one of the most discomforting songs on the list, but it’s too powerful not to rank this high. See below for a real-time response to the track that I found pretty affecting in how it reckons with those themes — this song may be dark in context, but I can fully believe that it’s horrible outside of it:

7. The Manifold Curiosity (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)

Alright, I know many (most?) consider this one to be Choirs of the Eye’s climactic centrepiece and/or the official best Kayo Dot song, but hear me out here. I absolutely adore everything about the track’s first half: it may be the most harmonically incurious thing Toby ever released under Kayo Dot, it may place so much weight on major 7ths and dreamy acoustic strumming that it could pass as a Sweet Trip song (you tell me how much piss I’m taking here), but it hits every one of its generously telegraphed beats to perfection and still stands as one of *the* gorgeous linear builds of all time. That clarinet solo reigns supreme!

However! Hmm. The second half is almost as stunning in its way, but I find its slow descent into clamour more engaging than the eruption that ultimately terminates it and have never quite gotten behind how much hand-holding the song’s extremely streamlined bipartite structure offers relative to the murky depths it attempts to drag us to. There’s something a little... sanitary? Perfunctory? Overly adjacent to the Do Make Say Thinks, Oceansizes and [The] Slowest Runner [in All the World]s of the world (who I do like a lot!) and comfortably wrapped up in a post-rock sphere that I typically love early Kayo for subverting and transcending? I dunno, at this point “The Manifold Curiosity” is kind of old friend I earnestly love but cannot think of a single fresh topic of conversation to raise with.

And that’s fine. Those friends are great -- but there are plenty of Kayo Dot tracks that still cough up fresh depths for me, and this ain’t a contender for their best. Doesn’t mean your favourite act could do any better if they tried!

6. Amaranth the Peddler (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)

I mean, say what you like about negative space, but



“Amaranth the Peddler” is on another level and simply cannot hear you over its faerie-addled hangover pangs.

This is absolutely not the kind of song you (or at least I) hear for the first time, nod along to, and project noises at to the tune of instant classic, but on a few iterations and with a deeper sensitivity to Dowsing Anemone’s wider atmosphere, and this is the final frontier of the album’s relocation of Talk Talk’s distinct plane of spiritual ascension to the more tangible realm of drainpipes, peeling wallpaper, draughts, and unbanishable patches of shadow. Not only does it get royally stranded in the aether, but that zany clarinet accompaniment in the song’s sole verse seems to herald the tone Toby and Mia would plunge even further to on Blue Lambency Downward - did that album really switch tracks, or was Kayo Dot always headed to pastures zanier? Who can say. This song stands like one giant, endearing, provocative cryptic dig, fourteen minutes for one verse bookended by minute after minute of elusive melodies and background scratchings, all of which probably approximates what ghosts experience when they hear ECM jazz (the good, eerie stuff, not the uberconsonant Eurobeige). I would go on, but
at the end of the day, there really is no overstating how,
despite being so sparse and
so spangled,
every last note
counts.

5. Zlida Caosgi (To Water the Earth) (Hubardo, 2013)

If there’s one throughline for this whole list, it’s that Kayo Dot’s strongest work tends to be that which plays with negative space, that teases dimensions out of reach, that trusts in its atmosphere to consider structural progressions few would consider intuitive, and that uses maximalist blow-outs as the icing on the cake rather than the main event. This is the band of winding, cryptic intrigue and subtle atmospherics, and if you’re willing to extend a little patience and let them lead you off the beaten track, they’ll offer up one revelation after another. However, go in expecting those avant garde credentials to be borne out in thrilling, affirmative, cathartic Action, and you’ll end up more lost than any of us. This is not a project that Gives It To You Straight.

But not on “Zlida Caosgi”! This song is a fucking zinger, it is a thrill addict’s glut of rocket fuel; it sets all of Gandalf’s fireworks set off in one go. To this day, the section where the delicate piano runs give way to a surge of exploding synths, gives me the “Strawberry Fields Forever”/”Starless” effect where I’m left awestruck at the fact that another human would ever think to put rhythm, melody and timbre into those particular shapes. There are a few other explosions of gratification in the Kayoverse (”The Awkward Wind Wheel”, “The Manifold Curiosity”, “The Assassination of Adam”), but none of them touch this for pure adrenaline or dumb fun. What a beautiful rush. Shivers.

4. Aura on an Asylum Wall (Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue, 2006)

Well, if much of Dowsing Anemone feels labyrinthine because you end up lost in empty space, this one is all the more so because of the density of things happening! It reminds me a lot of The Pax Cecilia’s “The Tomb Song” in many senses (probably that band’s best track?) but there are too many sly twists at play here to get it confused with anything else: I adore how callously that mess of a noise coda shrugs off the elegance and painstakingly ratcheted increments of tension in the final build. It’s perhaps the most intricate arrangement in the early Kayo Dot canon by that point, but Toby couldn’t help but remind us that things had changed since Choirs and that he was far more into eroding the forms than cementing them.

Quite right, and there’s a fun compare/contrast to be drawn between “Aura” and “The Manifold Curiosity” to that end. For all “Aura” is absolutely Dowsing’s keynote track in terms of positive space, it could hardly be more disdainful of linear grandeur, and so the journey really is its own reward here.

No elaboration necessary for the rest of the track - just you try *not* to be drawn in by that string of intuitive rhythms and strong melodies! The switch the track makes from 6/8 to a more frantic 5/8 is music theory in practice 101 for ye olde insufferable precocious musos (and I should know! I was (and remain?) one of them). 10/10 title image too, and perhaps Mia’s finest hour of them all.

3. Symmetrical Arizona (Blue Lambency Downward, 2008)

Paha, I love how this song lands as a closer: one spellbinding, haze-churning, Moment of Revelation-portending guitar solo that summons the entire band to wade in for a single verse where everything is halfway consonant and mostly makes sense, except it doesn’t because Toby, Mia and the Kayo Dotos promptly embark on a long, winding outro that leads to the End and nowhere else? It’s like if Blue Lambency Downward had a protagonist and they had spent the entire album wandering through an increasingly surreal set of tableaus in fantasia forest, only to finally stumble upon a banquet of faeries that have somehow been at the root of their blundering reverie all this time. Insight, closure and nourishment are at hand! But before they can get too comfortable, someone leads them by the hand down a secret trail under increasingly tangled branches, and just before the all-important answer to who even knows what question can be whispered into their ear, everything ends in a puff of unresolved hocus-pocus. Of course it bloody does.

Musically, the guitar solo is of course lovely (*what* a great tone!) and the smokey texture of the vocals when it all kicks off is maybe the best Toby sounded on any of the earlier Kayo records, but the more time has passed, the more I relish how this album’s glimpses of some uncanny, unknowable intrigue invite you to get lost in it and stay there. “Symmetrical Arizona” is forever blessed for the way it teases a concrete shape to things only to pivot to the same elusive flair that we ultimately know and love Kayona Dadootsa for. Bless.

2. Marathon (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)

I’m really scraping the bottom of the barrel for hot takes after putting a majority share of Choirs of the Eye (aka the consensus pick for Kayo Dot’s best) in the top 10, but “Marathon” is the album’s dark horse and the most consistently overlooked track despite being, y’know, the first thing anyone hears when they hit play.

I want to say I get it: using the Heavy Bit to set up the Ambient Bit rather than as a central climax is the kind of whiplash the band’s early metal/post-rock audience must have struggled with, and there’s something to be said about the ins and outs of using a section that abyssal as an intro statement without doubling down on it stylistically.

...but I don’t get it at all. That ambient stretch is brilliant! I cannot get enough of how that chasmal doom intro – perhaps the most lurching, nonlinear and overall frightening heavy section on the record – lumbers off a cliff and leaves us trapped in some eerie liminal freefall, assisted by absolutely choice ambient chords and tones. Perhaps more than any other moment in Kayo Dot’s discography, this was a huge formative influence for me — even more than “The Second Operation”, it pre-empted my whole obsession with Harold Budd’s The Pavilion of Dreams (now one of my favourite albums period) and goodness knows how many other wonderful things. Even the poem is great — I normally think of this project’s poetic overtures as set dressing at best and endearing at worst (see “Don’t Touch Dead Animals” down below), but this one is perfectly placed and elevates the piece on its own terms. I love how the soft delivery brings it to a close, especially in those final lines:

Our eyelashes weaken with a weight that is sweet and fine
And this feels like frogs and spiders in the sweet outside
Tell me why world, unfathomable and good
The beauty of everything is infinite and cruel
An airplane, a puppet, an orange, a spoon
A window, and outside
Stars and the moon

By this point, the instrumental reverie is so out of space and time that Toby could probably say anything at all and have it land, but those words are still inseparable from the piece to me.

So that’s why I love this song. Uh, anyway, the transition from the heavy section into the ambient one has always reminded me a little of Rush’s “Jacob’s Ladder”, and I hate that association even more than you do even if it is potentially their best track. (Rush’s, that is. This is the second best Kayo Dot song, in case you forgot!) What was that about being short of hot takes?

1. The Antique (Choirs of the Eye, 2003)

Facing a colossal, predictable level of fatigue at rounding off far too many words about a band whose appeal is at times far too elusive for humble description, I’m praying that any of the blurbs you may have skimmed so far have conveyed enough of the intrigue, fear or respect for strange old things kept in dusty attics, of a very specific thrill of the unknown that comes from the eeriness of losing something and then finding it again but not as you expected (be the experience the retrieval of a banal trinket long since starved of daylight, or a full cosmic horror revelation) that it comes as no surprise whatsoever for “The Antique” to be my favourite Kayo Dot song.

Though linear, this one’s structure does not so much build as it lumbers along and collapses into itself, and the motions it goes through are terrifying. Should it be so strange to hear downtuned guitars command actual fear in 2026? How do the growls at around 6:20 sound so choral? I can’t begin to describe how colossal this track sounded when I caught Kayo Dot playing it as part of their full-album Choirs of the Eye tour in 2023. It still floors me to hear that one absurd minute when the entire track snaps midway and Toby vomits up the heaviest slugger of his career (probably, “Floodgate” is the only challenger), only to bring Sigur Ros (of all bands) to mind as the band move into an otherworldly, album-capping coda.

This is the music of things lost, warped, and found once more in shapes no one would have imagined. No single artist embodies the sound of curiosity itself, but Kayo Dot come so close and take that appeal to such extremes, complete with all the dreads and misgivings familiar to the terminally curious, that I’ll be coming back to them for as long as I have ears.

…and that’s the end of Kayo Dot — for now! If that’s not enough for you, refer yourself to another Toby Driver project (such as maudlin of the Well, Alora Crucible, his solo work or Tartar Lamb) and stay tuned for more coverage. Back soon!

Welcome, or welcome back, to Permanent Waves, a weekly expedition into the power pop (and beyond!) of the year 1980.

Apologies for the delay in this week’s update, but to make it up I’ve got some extra goodies coming down the pike— watch this space! We’re kicking April off with a bang: eight albums on the docket this week, with more starpower between ‘em than I’ve seen yet this year! Let’s mindset.

The Beach Boys - Keepin’ the Summer Alive

I dunno man, something about hearing 39-year-old Mike Love sing “hail, hail, rock & roll / deliver me from the days of old” is just so profoundly fucking depressing and artless. The kind of bad album that proves that a great band was actually never all that great to begin with. Without Brian Wilson’s songwriting and especially without his production, the Beach Boys are not worth a hot piss in a hurricane, and in the year of our lord 1980 Brian Wilson seems to be, let’s say, emotionally checked out of the Beach Boys as an artistic endeavor. It’s boring, sterile slop, and only Bruce Johnston’s pretty “endless harmony” is stopping me from coming up with some new worse verdict than SKIP for it. An insult to the genre.

VERDICT: SKIP

Triumph - Progressions of Power

Eh, not really for me. It’s not that this Canadian trio is strictly untalented— look, this is a good week to be a fan of metal that knows how to party. Triumph is better-humored than Def Leppard, too, but I’m still just not quite enough of a Van Halen fan to care about the store brand stuff. Headbanging guitar antics do abound on the kickier tunes, the opener and “Tear The Roof Off”, and “Woman In Love” is fun strip club fare, but they’re just too-too fond of tropeish bluesy stuff, and they don’t have a David Lee Roth to sell it.

VERDICT: FINE

Chaka Khan - Naughty

I’m only passingly familiar with Chaka Khan’s work with funk outfit Rufus, but I remember them sounding a bit grittier? Well, if so, Chaka certainly cleans up alright: Naughty is a soft-focus, steamy bedroom album, VERY fittingly titled, with a powerhouse belter fueling it to more energized heights than, say, Barry White- Hell, “Too Much Love” is almost new wave in its antsy jumpiness. Tracks 3 and 4 really lose me, lacking in the taut groove that so animates the rest of the album, but the rest is kind of a jam? I definitely like it a lot more than Sister Sledge, at any rate.

VERDICT: NICE

Frank Sinatra - Trilogy

If power pop is on perpetually shaky footing with funk and disco, it’s lost at sea with jazz, but in that sea Frank Sinatra is a towering lighthouse, a monolith of pure Americana, an artist who, in many ways, belongs to us all, whether we want him or not. I’m gonna be real: for the first two discs, this was bordering on ZAMNworthy. Three whole discs of sixty-four-years-Old Blue Eyes, though, jeez Louise… okay, so the premise is past, present and future: Billy Mays’ Past disc returns Sinatra to the world of jazz standards, Don Costa’s Present disc shifts focus to hits of the modern era, and Gordon Jenkins’ Future disc, uhh, falls apart completely into formless, rambling digressions about the solar system and cheese pizza? Sinatra is an undeniable part of pop’s past, and his handling of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and George Gershwin is appropriately assured, burnished, classic and classy. He’s a part of the present, too: “Just The Way You Are” and “New York, New York” are both revelations here. He is not, however, part of the future, except in the way the past always is. Sinatra will be remembered forever; “World War None!” has already been forgotten.

VERDICT: NICE

Van Halen - Women & Children First

It’s not really that Eddie shreds that much harder than anyone else currently shredding (though he does), it’s more that Diamond Dave is shameless enough to make the whole thing more than camp, more than technical or genre exercises, more than macho posturing. Their warp-speed boogies go harder than ever (“Romeo Delight”, “Loss of Control”), their sense of humor is still sharper than about any other stadium act I can think of (“Fools”, “Could This Be Love?”), and their command of the blues is so complete that it makes it even more hysterical for their frontman to be the Al Jolson fanboy he is. You simply have got to hand it to them: heavy metal has never been this much fun before. Mindset of the week: Could this be magic? Or could this be love? Could this turn tragic? You know that magic often does / And I see lonely ships upon the water / Better save the women and children first

VERDICT: ZAMN

The Motors - Tenement Steps

The Motors are not the kind of power pop band that’s really aiming for album statements that transcend the sums of their parts— it’s all about that one song that lucks its way into your heart and makes you a devotee for life. On their 1978 debut it was the jackhammering rocker “You Beat The Hell Outta Me” and the treacly Motown pastiche “Soul Redeemer”, and while nothing on Tenement Steps is as good as either of those songs, the paranoid title track and the waltz-time “That’s What John Said” make for a satisfying enough takeaway. One of the most likable albums of the week, even if I can’t really imagine it knocking anybody’s socks off.

VERDICT: NICE

10cc - Look Hear

Look Hear mostly sounds like a slightly weaker, more generic version of Bloody Tourists, which was already mostly a slightly weaker, more generic version of Deceptive Bends. And look, I love Deceptive Bends, but three is at least one too many. It’s official: things just aren’t the same without Kevin Godley and Lol Creme. 10cc has always been a product defined by the studio, but they’ve never quite sounded overproduced like they do here, the fussy reggaes and fussier prog-gays are all slick enough to blur together into mush, only saved by those witty, witty lyrics (The line about TV dinners is about all that’s stuck with me). Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman are still talented, observant guys who know a good melody, but they sound too comfortable here. Diehard fans will know this should either be funnier or prettier, and casuals won’t bother once word gets out there’s no “Dreadlock Holiday” or “The Things We Do For Love” (which is the real killer).

VERDICT: SKIP

Teenage Head - Frantic City

Not terribly impressed by the down-the-line garagey retro pop punk on offer here, but these Canadians have enough spirit to wiggle your butt to for 35 minutes, and if it isn’t anything more, well, who said it had to be? “Ain’t Got No Sense” off their 1979 debut is still their best for my money, but “Total Love” is a strong contender in its own right, and the Eddie Cochran cover is a lot of fun too. Personally, I just wish it was overall a little less rockabilly, or a little more catchier. The second track lifts the melody from “The Kids Are Alright” so blatantly that I’m almost a little suspicious they’re trying to filter the real power pop heads among their audience- a little more ambition could do ‘em good, is what I’m saying.

VERDICT: FINE

21:14 // March 25th, 2025 // Music From Memory

When SY3 first slipped into my release calendar, I was convinced I was in for a reissue of some apocryphal Sonic Youth spinoff, but no! No no! These folks – all three of them – are a Chinese-American project from LA, and their debut EP 梦游 Sleepwalker will moodlight your dreams and wallpaper any installation you expose to it. Its buoyant downtempo and gauzy stylings are exactly the premium you’d associate with Music From Memory, and running at five tracks at just over 20-minutes, its dimensions are exactly right for a calling card.

Now, as far as the whos/hows/whys are concerned, a little housekeeping is in order: the good people at Music From Memory rep a gold standard in curation and expo, but they may have oversold us here. Read through SY3’s press release and you’ll be expecting a widescreen revival of early ‘00s Cantopop à la Faye Wong and Zhou Xun (both of whose work from that time comes heartily recommended), but the upshot is another story. SY3’s cinematic aspirations coast more on dialled-in cool than melodrama, and vocalist Kelly Guan has far less in common with any Cantopop diva I’ve heard than with the New Age murmurations of MFM shoe-ins Courtney Bailey or Dream Dolphin.

There are commonalities – the group’s downtempo has the same airiness and warmth as anything you’d hear out of turn-of-the-century Hong Kong, and the coy tone Guan takes on “Tell Me” would be likewise at home there – but 梦游 Sleepwalker is far better approached as ‘mood music’ than as pop. (The closest it gets to pop is the lethargic R&B stylings Guan adopts for the dub cruiser “Grace”, which sounds exactly like the Dream Dolphin x Carbon Based Lifeforms collaboration that was never to be, and is by no coincidence my favourite song on the EP.)

If those are the fairest terms to take this release on, if the palette is by and large pristine (anyone partial to aqueous, mid-frequency bliss will have a field day here), then there’s still some accounting to be done for its featherweight impact. Save for “Grace” and the eerie siren-hook that anchors “Tell Me”, these tracks live and fade entirely on how much time you have for the aesthetics at play — and even as someone who identifies as aggressively partial to these, there’s no getting past how perfunctory “PLS” scans in its ‘90s-happy montage of peace signs and incense, or a nagging wish that something more had done with the diffuse narration of the title track.

The reason I’m a little put out by the association with Cantopop is not so much for referential reasons, but because the vast emotional thrust of the Faye Wongs and Zhou Xuns of the world is precisely what’s missing here. This music is hazy, playful, evasively sensuous, and a whole number of qualities that I typically adore in similar projects but amidst all those dreamlike textures and slick production flourishes, it ends up slightly, fatally short of whatever magnetism it takes to come together as a whole package. Put plainly, it sounds shy: shy in a way that makes me very sympathetic to this project’s potential, but not in a way that makes me any more likely to return to most of these tracks.

So them’s the breaks — and you pronounce the band name as sigh. Nice. Cross your paws they give us something a little more memorable to pin it to next time, and don’t set too much store in my reservations. I took a similar standpoint when I covered Courtney Bailey’s debut and that record (which scratches a similar itch to this EP) ended up eschewing my critiques of slightness by filling all my free hours with bliss disproportionate to my early estimations of its substance. Will SY3 do the same? Who knows, but I’ll certainly be watching their page.

6.5/10

Further listening:

Yoshinori Sunahara - Take Off and Landing
Dream Dolphin - Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996-2003)
Courtney Bailey - In Dream
Zhou Xun - Ou yu
Faye Wong - To Love

In 1995, Vanna Bonta’s sci-fi thriller Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel invented the concept of “World Party Day,” a global celebration of peace, unity, and goodwill to be held annually every April 3rd.

That’s what the internet is trying to tell me, anyway. I’ve never read that book, heard of this makeshift holiday before now, or verified if anyone actually celebrates it, and as far as I can tell, the pages upon pages of search results confirming its existence resemble little more than algorithmically-generated regurgitations of older webpages that took the flimsy idea, provided no further context about its significance to the novel, and ran with it.

Pay no mind that in 2026, an actual holiday (bold of us to boast of Good Friday on a year that has been very bad thus far) directly competes with it: World Party Day sounds about as easygoing, non-committal, and re-interpretive as a recurring holiday could conceivably get. No offense to the likes of Zipper Day (April 29), Onion Ring Day (June 22), Collect Rocks Day (September 16), or any of the seemingly endless inanities co-opted as grounds for festivities, but I’ve got a SEVEN to write right now, and this day ought to be seized.

Besides, parties and music walk hand in hand! Simply chucking together seven upbeat crowd-pleasers would be too easy, however. Instead, here are seven personalized selections about, inspired by, or suggestive of parties, each one representing a lens through which we can observe the minutiae of one of humanity’s loveliest phenomena.

PARTIES AS A PHILOSOPHY
ANDREW W.K. – “Party Hard”
from I Get Wet (2001)

I mean, come on. Andrew W.K.’s entire discography belongs here in spirit, but “Party Hard” is the meatheaded party anthem to end them all. Simple math plays a factor—the word “party” appears no fewer than 73 times in the track’s three minutes and change—but it’d also be my choice if I had to preserve one barnstormer from the fetid swath of 80s(-indebted), hedonistic, macho party rock I otherwise never jam. I have never been one for the semi-self-seriousness, dated production choices, or pervading smarm of hair metal, and by the time Andrew W.K. came of age to launch his own spin on it, that era’s tropes had congealed into unrepentant cornmeal.

Instead of trying to strong-arm the march of time back into submission, this dude willingly gave up his entire public persona to caricature, cartoonishly headbanging and hollering so hard that it redefined partying as an act transcendent of (albeit not entirely disparate from) hazing or wanton self-destruction. Late career W.K. releases bear legitimate wisdom—pivoting into motivational speaking tours will do that to a rock ‘n’ roll mascot—but the brickwalled, sugar-coated fancies of I Get Wet remain an obligatory, if shallow foundation for all things partydom. For every incomprehensible outburst (the whole first verse, for instance), “Party Hard” nonetheless harbors zingers of evergreen willpower—if “we do what we like and we like what we do” isn’t the preeminent motto of World Party Day, what the fuck would be?

PARTIES AS FANTASIES
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM – “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”
from LCD Soundsystem (2005)

It’s only natural that an act founded upon cosmopolitan sass, reverence for the greats, and paradoxically brave sheepishness would dedicate the lead-off track on their debut album to a dream about a monumentally more famous act performing in an average suburban house party. Daft Punk never actually played at James Murphy’s place, but you’d be forgiven for mistaking the song’s tongue-in-cheek setup for the braggadocio of a guy who could base it on a true story; for a while there, LCD Soundsystem unexpectedly became documentarians of music nerd nightlife.

Nostalgia for the band’s quick ascension and the ever-magnifying dread of aging may ingratiate listeners to Murphy’s more under-the-microscope tracks, but sarcastic ditties like “Daft Punk...” still hold an invaluable place not only in the band’s canon, but indie music history at large. Name me even one other instance of a band working up a plan to save money for “seven years and fifteen days” to afford contracting A-list techno wizards to come entertain the block. You can’t, and this one does so with highly imitable vocal inflections. And gnarly bass. And a cowbell solo. Until your retort has all those goods and more, Sarah’s girlfriend will keep turning you and the jocks away at the door.

PARTIES AS FARCES
U2 – “Discothèque”
from PopMart Live From Mexico City (1998)

There’s a difference between these two categories, I swear: fantasies imply a fortuitous event that, while perhaps materially possible, is overwhelmingly unlikely to happen. Farces are facades through and through. They reek of kitsch. They’re all but designed to age poorly. They find kinship in Pop, an album generally regarded as either U2’s last gasp of earnest creativity or the clearest microcosm of their mid-to-late-career identity crisis depending on who you ask. Like most competing opinions, the truth lies somewhere in between: the band’s willingness to smash together club music with “the U2 sound” holds some water, but procrastination pressed the sessions up against locked-in deadlines, and the songwriting on the record often felt underdeveloped.

It took a while for the band to find their footing on the subsequent PopMart Tour, but after a few legs and plenty of reps, the Irish icons married their glib intentions to the sheer overstimulating spectacle that was the PopMart stage. For the uninitiated, architectural choices included a towering, McDonalds-esque golden arch, the then-largest LED screen on Earth, and a lemon-shaped mirrorball that would birth the quartet to a sidestage if and only if it didn’t malfunction and trap them inside, which I’m delighted to report happened multiple times.

The pomp and circumstance of it all is best captured on their Live from Mexico City concert film, a whiplash-inducing smorgasbord of gratuitous Spanish, feigned homoerotic tension, typecast sociopolitical commentary, and incongruous fashion direction. It’s a farcical costume party – the hosts are no longer committed to playing specific roles (contrast with The Fly or MacPhisto from the ZOO TV era), and trying to suss out a conceptual throughline is as futile as it is fixating. Your mileage with Bono pelvic thrusting the cameras or squealing in heat will vary, but that excess comes with the territory of megalomaniacs intentionally shooting further than common sense, knowing full well it’s rarely better than the real thing. “Discothèque,” Pop’s opening track and the launchpad for the tour’s encores, exemplifies the theme through one of The Edge’s funkiest riffs and a lyric sheet that’s so tacky it circles back around into tragic comedy.

PARTIES AS MOOD-LIGHTENERS
BRADIO – “Flyers”
from Power of Life (2015)

From 2013 to 2016, some friends and I frequented services like plug.dj, dubtrack.fm, and a few other short-lived online platforms that allowed users to load up a queue of songs via YouTube or SoundCloud embeds and jam out to one another’s curated jukeboxes in a distinctly chill, ad-free virtual setting. From the second my eyeballs first witnessed the music video for BRADIO’s “Flyers,” I knew it had to become a staple of these get-togethers. By the time the friend group (and those websites’ servers) collapsed, I think I’d subjected my pals to this track approximately 100 times. It became my signature sign-off, my last call, the climax of every session I attended. Meatspace notwithstanding, it is, statistically speaking, the song I have put on more than any other in what could be considered a party atmosphere.

The novelty may have faded a bit, but a decade later, “Flyers” still slaps. The guitar solo fuckin’ rips. The vocalist’s got crazy rizz. The drummer and bassist are locked the fuck in. The auxiliary horn arrangement is pop perfection. Allow yourself to soak in that hype for a moment, because clicking play on the video will overshadow any and all reactions to the actual music. Remember when green screen technology wasn’t within the economic reach of every aspiring streamer? BRADIO might remember such a time, but they were still several years too late to coast on silly backgrounds alone. That’s where time, quantity, and a dancing stunt double come in:

“Hey, Director-san, how many special effects can you fit into this bad boy?”

“As many as you’d like.”

“Word. We’re getting our money’s worth.”

And then they did, with the perfect ratio of amateur VFX hackery to genuinely smooth editing. For all intents and purposes, this isn’t just a goldmine of party song, or a hilarious music video, or my most reliable, guaranteed pick-me-up—it might now be yours, too. You’re welcome.

PARTYING FROM NOSTALGIA
A GREAT BIG PILE OF LEAVES – “Alligator Bop”
from Have You Seen My Prefrontal Cortex? (2010)

The line between a carefree, fun party, and a reckless, dangerous one should be clear in theory. Much like the memories made during the latter, they often tread blurry, one step away from disaster. A Great Big Pile of Leaves have a knack for inferring seedier antics while embodying sonic serenity; their discography is chock full of the shimmeriest, summeriest indie rock this side of the Hudson, characterized by arrangements that soothe aching nerves and sentiments that whet the appetite for monkey business and junk food.

Situational specificity yields humorous rewards several times over, but their signature song, “Alligator Bop,” finds jubilee in retrospect—the past tense delivery implies Pete Weiland and company’s days of “driv[ing] around for hours with no direction and no goal except to act stupid and intertwine ourselves into situations to laugh about” spells out the essence of nostalgic mischief so potently that it haphazardly spills atop the verse’s musical phrasing, as if the singer can’t possibly cram all the details he wants in unless he motormouths through them. Contrast that with the sing-along chorus: a mere nine words and hollered “oh oh”s repeated to oblivion so as to not let the lingering light of those hijinks end. Can’t blame ‘em for trying. “Alligator Bop” is the perfect, romanticized distillation of up-to-no-good youth. They don’t even need to attend a party for that vibe to register—when you’re with the people you love and there’s no agenda or stakes, the party comes to you.

PARTIES AS A CONDUIT FOR LIBERATION
LA DISPUTE – “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit”
from Wildlife (2011)

Too cheerful so far? Here’s one for the introverted, neurodivergent, and anyone who could benefit from a little therapy. No anecdotes to provide beyond that dedication—I’m not particularly interested in airing my dirty laundry and you’re probably just as disinterested in hearing about it. Thankfully, the resonance of a song like “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” supersedes not just personal experience, but the sobering internal narrative of its parent album as well. Wildlife is not a fun listen! It speaks of unconscionable death and inconsolable loss, finding a way out of the tunnel mainly by affirming the precious fragility of life and stacking up comparably minor grievances to the burdens shouldered by the consistently neglected or stupendously unlucky.

If eventual closer “You and I in Unison” scrounges up the resolve to shirk the woe Olympics for good, “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” wraps up the A-side with a track that’s far less overwrought but just as cathartic. Here, the party in question quickly becomes little more than a pretext, cloistered off by the narrator as he and a stranger initiate a rendezvous. The song’s dynamics crash and recede in waves, paralleling the narrator’s thoughts as he gets in his own head, temporarily pauses the encounter, and eventually gives back in to pleasure, the band’s final explosion evoking full-body orgasm. Even then, the speaker knows the sensation is fleeting, but in that moment—one only possible through escaping his own self-imposed deadlock and showing up in the first place—it feels holy, real, and more than enough of a reason to keep on keeping on. If including it here seems a bit out of place, remember that parties aren’t solely sources of joy and belonging. Even environments tailored to lightened moods aren’t free from the baggage we bring to them. It’s almost like for all the pretense, parties are just...parties.

PARTIES AS WHAT THEY ARE
THE DISMEMBERMENT PLAN – “You Are Invited”
from Emergency & I (1999)

I get it, I really do—parties are ostensibly designed to level the playing field and give every attendee the opportunity to have a good time, but shitty brain chemistry and awkward histories can threaten to make some people feel like a fish out of water, or a square peg trying to enter a round hole, or a guy playing the drum machine in a band that already has a live drummer. The Dismemberment Plan had worked these jitters down to a science by 1999: their observations of misfits’ quests for belonging had infiltrated prior tracks “Do The Standing Still,” “Tonight We Mean It,” and “The Ice of Boston,” and as with Emergency & I foil “Gyroscope,” they often depicted parties as spaces dominated by timidity, self-loathing, and mixed messages.

“You Are Invited” touches on all those same points, but it’s more nuanced than that—the song uniquely accounts for the daily lethargy that makes letting loose an occasional necessity, the dopamine release of finding warmth when you need it, and the waning interest in sticking around once the heat begins to fade. The verses’ sparse, mechanical sputtering provides an exceptionally stark counterpoint to the narrator entering a space of inclusivity, getting swept up in the energy and bombast of a chorus so immediate and hooky and timeless that I sometimes forget the majority of the song’s runtime consists of melancholic moping. C’est la vie.

In spite of that, it’s also a touching ode to paying kindness forward; as the narrator passes along the invite to another downtrodden bystander, the song trails off with one of the most quintessentially emo arpeggios ever, suggesting an unbroken chain of “come one, come all” camaraderie extended across time and space. Parties and partygoers may not be monoliths, but the desire to feel welcome is all but universal. It’s a lesson 19-year-old me, the editor of the image below, clearly needed a few more years and a few more spins of “You Are Invited” to figure out. At least I got there eventually.

How about y’all? How are you gonna celebrate World Party Day? What would make your personal “party song” playlist or get you in a partying mood? Reach out and let me know. You’re invited, after all.

32:29 // April 3rd, 2026 // Island Records

I’m not a particularly religious person. However, 2026 seems to be the year that Lent is doing a lot of good for me: after being happily surprised by every Moldovan restaurant having a “Lent menu” that solely featured vegetarian dishes - and thus allowing me to have more than a salad and fries while eating out in eastern Europe - my childhood favourite band U2 have now released their second surprise EP of the year to mark the end of Lent. That’s nice!

In my review for the EP that apparently marked the start of Lent, Days of Ash, I argued that it was a perfectly fine project that mostly served its purpose as boilerplate love>hate politics for disillusioned boomers. Its music was mostly just “fine”, yet a lot better than what the average person would expect from a bunch of Irish 60-somethings. Now, six weeks and a whole lot of abstinence later, the fairly middling nature of that EP might just help the fresh Easter Lily sound even better than it already does. These six tracks are easily the best U2 have sounded in an extremely long time, for the simple reason that it feels like the band aren’t trying to do anything except be who and what they have always been.

If there’s one throughline in U2’s career, it’s their willingness to boldly and sometimes clumsily explore very human feelings and desires over some noodly riffs and juicy basslines. Sure, the political stuff has been rearing its head for decades too, but the thing that connects 1980’s Boy, 1997’s Pop and 2014’s Songs of Innocence isn’t the masterful commentary on the powers that shape the world; it’s the attempts at grasping the shapes that power individual lives. Easter Lily finds the band realising this and capitalising on it for quite possibly the first time ever: the shockingly self aware “Resurrection Song” juxtaposes a classic Bono-ism with a tongue-in-cheek admission to great effect (“If love is in the air, let’s take a breath / if I sound ridiculous, I’m not done yet”). For the most part, each song reflects on religion, friendship, or confusion: it feels, dare I say, authentic. Moreover, this focus on more personal topics allows for fewer lyrical fumbles, and ultimately makes the entire experience all the more enjoyable.

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Thankfully, we don’t just find Bono at the top of his 2026 game: the entire band appear locked in. By focusing less on recapturing former glory and more on establishing an atmosphere, the sparkly riff that opens “Song for Hal” brilliantly interacts with the understatedly military-style drumming that has been noticeably absent for so long. Sure, that particular song also reminds us of the fact that The Edge is a much better vocalist than Bono these days, but that’s soon forgotten once one realises that, guess what, bass is audible again! Jacknife Lee’s mix allows for some rather delightful grooves to shine through, with “Easter Parade” serving as a prime example of what a good line can do for a U2 song.

In essence, Easter Lily is pretty great, and that is so much more than what I was expecting from U2 in 2026. By simply being themselves, the band manage to sound so much more like their former (better) selves than on the explicit attempts of Days of Ash. This project is not going to change the minds of anyone who’s not already a certified U2-enjoyer, but those who wish to hear some of the best songs the band have put out in two decades, there’s a lot to enjoy here.

8.0/10

14:01 // March 23, 2026 // True Panther

How can something so dark and horrifying be so dancey? It’s a question that comes up quite often with Model/Actriz. The group’s unique blend of industrial-tinged dance-punk with hauntingly melodic vocals has been one of the most captivating musical evolutions of this decade, and Swan Songs continues that trend. Only less than a year after their astounding second full-length Pirouette, the 15-minute EP picks up right where they left off with the chaotic groove of opener “Glassman.” Its pulsating rhythm and clashes of electronic elements are perfectly contrasted by the affectionate lyrics of spending a weekend getaway with a lover, delivered in a manner that feels isolated from the abrasiveness of the surrounding soundscape. The eerie dissonance between the instrumentation and delivery creates an unnerving experience that embodies the identity of Model/Actriz with excellence.

But this is where Swan Songs pulls the punches too early. While moody and beautiful, “Thank You By Dido” feels more like hitting the breaks too hard than a natural break in the chaos. Certainly the atmosphere is full of reverb-laden, distant-sounding guitar passages and a phenomenal vocal performance from Cole Haden leading to a tense and stress-inducing bridge, yet it doesn’t hit quite as hard following the intensity of the opener. “Majesty” brings back the horror-tinted tone with a cacophony of numerous dissonant chord progressions and ringing, bell-like basslines balanced out by the quieter, spacious chorus, but not nearly as compelling as “Glassman.” This is not to say that either of these songs is bad by any means; they accomplish exactly what they each set out to do for their respective sounds. However, the EP peaks too early, leaving the final tracks pale in comparison to the explosive and captivating opener. Nonetheless, Model/Actriz continues to build and refine their infectious dance-punk/rock, showcasing the immense amount of potential and variety they have within their songwriting that can be further expanded upon in the future.

7.5/10

This Week’s New Music

Arlo Parks

Ambiguous Desire (Transgressive)

UK | Pop // Neo-Soul // Alternative R&B

The Bevis Frond

Horrorful Heights (Fire)

UK | Neo-Psychedelia // Indie Rock // Power Pop

Billy Fuller

Fragments (Invada)

UK | Post-Rock // Drone // Experimental

Bon Iver

Volumes: One (Selections from Music Concerts 2019-2023 Bon Iver 6 Piece Band)(Jagjaguwar)

USA | Indie Folk // Art Pop

Bruce Hornsby

Indigo Park (Zappo/Thirty Tigers)

USA | Heartland Rock // Pop Rock

Charley Crockett

Age of the Ram (Island)

USA | Country // Americana

Corrosion of Conformity

Good God / Baad Man (Nuclear Blast)

USA | Sludge Metal // Stoner Metal

deary

Birding (Bella Union)

UK | Shoegaze // Dream Pop

Emma Harner

Evening Star (Relentless)

USA | Indie Folk // Math Rock

Forlorn Citadel

An Oath Undone (Northern Silence)

SWEDEN | Atmospheric Black Metal // Dungeon Synth

Green Carnation

A Dark Poem, Part II: Sanguis (Season of Mist)

NORWAY | Progressive Metal // Gothic Metal

Jarboe

Sightings (Consouling Sounds)

USA | Experimental // Darkwave // Drone

Joe Pernice

Sunny, I Was Wrong (New West)

CANADA | Folk // Slowcore

Lantlos

Nowhere in Between Forever (Prophecy)

GERMANY | Atmospheric Black Metal // Doom Metal // Alt-Rock

Makthaverskan

Glass and Bones (Welfare)

SWEDEN | Post-Punk // Indie Rock // Dream Pop

A Place to Bury Strangers

Rare and Deadly (Dedstrange)

USA | Post-Punk // Shoegaze // Noise Rock

Sophia Yau-Weeks

Misty Mountain (Lavasocks)

USA | Indie Folk

Spaceport

Cut the Lake (Aura Vortex)

USA | Sunshine Pop // Indie Rock

Strange Fruit

Drips (Gentle Tuesday)

INDONESIA | Electronic // Acid House // Downtempo

Sunn O)))

Sunn O))) (Sub Pop)

USA | Drone Metal // Drone // Dark Ambient

Throwing Snow

Canines (label unknown)

IRELAND | Future Garage // Post-Dubstep // IDM

Thundercat

Distracted (Brainfeeder)

USA | Neo-Soul // Nu-Jazz // Funk

Void of Light

Asymmetries (Ripcord)

UK | Post-Metal

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

The Gregorian calendar was widely adopted in October of 1582 after the Pope declared a bull market. 322 years later, during the 1904 Olympic Marathon, the Russian delegation showed up two weeks late because they were still using the Julian calendar. For this reason, The Strokes are banned from today’s installment of SEVEN. Let’s talk about the days of the week!

Maroon 5 - “Sunday Morning”

As far as songs that could feasibly play whilst you try to escape from the Starbucks backrooms go, “Sunday Morning” is one of the most palatable and musically engaging. It’s always fun to watch younger music appreciators wade through the two decades of slop Maroon 5 (incorrect number, smh) have shunted out to discover that Songs About Jane actually contained a banger or two on it, and “Sunday Morning” is probably the most fun of the bunch. Despite its lyrical content, the track is anything but lazy, featuring an instantly head-noddable swing groove, triumphant gospel melodies, and a joyous mid-track drum break that hereby crowns Adam Levine as our Sunday SEVEN White Boy of the Week…for now.

The Velvet Underground - “Sunday Morning”

The sleepy opening number of 196SEVEN’s seminal The Velvet Underground & Nico opts for a more emotionally complex approach than the Maroon SEVEN minus TWO song we just unpacked. Despite its sluggish presentation, the bright pitched percussion and earworm of a vocal melody almost make this track sound cheery until you get to the lyrics, which describe one of the most cursed all-nighters and/or existential crises of all time. The paranoia of “Sunday Morning” is so expertly juxtaposed against its dreamy arrangement that Lou Reed has emerged from beyond the grave to snatch the Sunday SEVEN White Boy of the Week title, which he may very well be keeping due to the award being split along gender lines.

Ethel Cain - “Sunday Morning”

Congratulations to our Sunday SEVEN White Woman of the Week and her reverb plugins! If you’ve ever wandered into a Sunday morning church service and thought “this needs more Bach chorales about horrific spousal abuse”, then this is about to be, like, a major paradigm shift for your Southern Baptist ass.

Okay, the “Sunday Morning” bit is wearing a bit thin…let’s move on to more serious musical matters. High art, if you will.

Black Eyed Peas - “I Gotta Feeling”

Most of you sheep are still stuck in integer hell and haven’t figured it out yet, but “I Gotta Feeling” is actually the most landmark mathematical proof devised in the 21st century thus far. Observe the sacred texts that prove, once and for all, quantum entanglement device, that SEVEN, in fact, equals EIGHT:

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (DO IT)

Friday, Saturday, Saturday to Sunday (DO IT)

You can’t argue with math, and it is now written in the stars that tonight’s gonna be a good night…or something. Just don’t think too hard about the implications of this finding, and definitely don’t try to apply it where it doesn’t belong. You just might break the universe.

Sunny Day Real Estate - “Friday”

“Friday” is the opening track of Sunny Day Real Estate’s self-titled second album. It’s unique for being written in a kind of proto-American Hopelandic, as many of the songs on the record had incomplete and/or nonexistent lyrics during recording, and were sung by Jeremy Enigk in a kind of enigkmatic gibberish. Something about this feels…foreboding, in like, a cosmic sense. Maybe he came across some forbidden knowledge about the days of the week that the human mind simply cannot comprehend. Oh well, I’m probably getting ahead of myself.

The Beatles - “Eight Days A Week”

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Th£ Ç^U®3 - “F®ˆDÅY ˆ’M 1N LØ√£”

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T˙håt shøu¬d åbøüt ∂ø 1t ƒø® thîß w∑∑k’s 1ñstållméñt øƒ ¶S¶E¶V¶E¶N…høpeƒull¥ n∑xt w∑∑k’s cøñtrîbütør cån réstøré bålånç∑ tø thé ünîv∑rß∑.