Quick-fire Roundup - August 2025
Short reviews for some of our favorite releases of the past month.
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.
Vörnir - Av hädanfärd krönt
38:29 // August 22nd, 2025 // Mystískaos / Amor Fati Productions
Right at the tail end of summer, we were blessed with the copybook aestival jam for anyone who prefers basking in the blue glow of their fridge light at 3 a.m. to staking out the nearest poolside sun lounger with a garish towel.
Alex Poole is a man of many talents, and over the course of the past 20 years it’s become evident that his sole mission is to make us dread music. Guðveiki, Skáphe, Osgraef, and many, if not most, of the 20-odd other projects he’s been involved in can only be described as the auditory equivalent of severe psychosis. Av hädanfärd krönt, the debut by Vörnir, is no different in this regard, wrapping the listener in a tapestry of pertinacious blast beats, misshapen chords, and baleful ambient inflections. Memorable riffs are traded for forbidding bodies of distortion complected with reverb-heavy, cabbalistic screams and growls, and a comically pronounced hail of toms.
Refraining from using platitudinous A-djectives is a tough ask here, but rest assured the songwriting and general vibe could have given Euclid an aneurysm. This is a piece of unbridled temerity that will overwhelm, paralyze, and potentially traumatize unsuspecting listeners—the perfect cure for your curiosity. (8.0/10)
- Nex
CMAT - EURO-COUNTRY
49:26 // August 29th, 2025 // CMATBaby / AWAL
Given the title and tacky cover art displayed before your eyes, EURO-COUNTRY at first appears determined to reiterate Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson’s relatively novel claim to pop stardom: carving a career out of 1) performing country music, 2) not being (North) American, and 3) not pretending to be. These traits don’t inaccurately describe her pathway to prominence, but oversimplifying the Irish singer’s approach on commercial terms belies the prickly honesty of her songwriting. On her 2022 debut If My Wife New, I’d Be Dead [sic] as well as hasty follow-up Crazymad, For Me the following year, CMAT already proved she was more than just another pretty face with an unexpected origin story in tow.
On this third effort, the singer reasserts the quality of her craft over accusations of gimmickry easier than ever, wielding a tracklist whose musicality devoutly revolves around pop sensibilities while organically using country hallmarks like lap and pedal steel, pump organ, and fiddles in service of her sentimental yearning. Her several soul-inflected bridges and resplendent, harmony-brimming climaxes rival the likes of Adele or Florence Welch, singers whose silky timbres and impressive range are justification enough to tune in to their work. Factor in Thompson’s lyrical wit—Charli-adjacent girlboss attitude runs deep—and there’s plenty to dig into here beyond the surface attributes of either her vocal command or her co-producers’ refined arrangements.
Much like the phenomenal People Watching by 2025 tourmate Sam Fender, CMAT’s purported snapshots of locale-specific stagnation mirror her own insecurities and baggage, expanding matters of the heart onto a societal scale. “Euro-Country,” “The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station,” and “Take a Sexy Picture of Me” lean into these cheekier critiques well, but the album often flourishes closer to home in moments of personal introspection; “Running/Planning,” “Janis Joplining,” and the several times shelved “Coronation St.” convey a universal sense of 20s-pushing-30 alienation that further enhances the already splendid and welcome feminist framing throughout. All of this is to be expected if you’ve previously browsed CMAT’s catalogue. If you haven’t, EURO-COUNTRY is another rewarding place to begin your overdue dive. (7.5/10)
- Zack Lorenzen
Ada Lea - When I Paint My Masterpiece
48:40 // August 8th, 2025 // Saddle Creek
When I Paint My Masterpiece seems comfortable draping itself in the mantle of the most iconic artist in the whole folk genre,, its album title sharing the name of a Bob Dylan song and one of the included tracks name-dropping the bard of Duluth. A bold move, and one that seems almost guaranteed to be self-defeating, but ultimately Ada Lea’s third LP holds up pretty well to scrutiny. It helps that the more relevant influences here are much less temporally distant - the recent wave of folk singers along the lines of Adrianne Lenker, Florist, and Anna Tivel come to mind. The dominant sound here is wispy, gentle tunes powered by wistful sentimentality. The biggest critique here is that a good chunk of the runtime feels like scraps of songs rather than fully-formed tracks, but the whole album remains inviting, and the highlights are quite notable - “Baby Blue Frigidaire Mini Fridge” is both catchy and touching, “Down Under the Van Horne Overpass” features a repetitious jangling pattern which’ll be stuck in your head for a long time, and “I Want It All” is a delicate piano-led portrayal of modern life. It’s no Blood on the Tracks, but it’ll do - When I Paint My Masterpiece should be broadly satisfying to indie folk aficionados. (8.0/10)
- Sunnyvale
Phonebox – The Other Side
47:31 // August 28th, 2025 // Sacred Vessel via Limiting Factor Records Ltd.
When life gets you down, dance like filth. Mixing lo-fi sampling and hi-fi synth twinkles with demonic abandon, The Other Side's grainy outsider house clashes sulky introversion with an outwardly-directed kinetic exorcism to deliciously woozy effect — this album catches exactly the feeling of shaking off a persistent torpor, from pissy energy-venting ("I wish I never met you") to ebullient romp ("Mixed signals") to the sublime feeling of release that comes with doing something halfway worthwhile with your body ("Haunted Love"). It's angry, feisty, irreverent, danceable, unapologetically cracked, and all the other things that Ellie Kit (aka Phonebox, Kinoteki) does so well at their best; following two squeaky-clean concept records under their Kinoteki alias, The Other Side sees Kit dust off the Phonebox moniker from hiatus, and purge a few demons for an excuse to play fast and loose with their usual production stylings and smash umpteen vocal samples into new, unlikely shapes. For all the mangling they undergo, said samples add a crucial, soulful element amidst the album's slew of stuttering breakbeats and thudding house rhythms — the upshot could just as easily be one person's nightmare fuel as another's shiteating grin, but Kit seems to take such relish in getting their hands dirty that it's hard to begrudge them any collateral headaches. (7.5/10)
- Hugh Puddle
ASC – Spectral Divergence
30:29 // August 29th, 2025 // Spatial.
Lest you need further cause for insecurity in your own work ethic, drum and bass veteran ASC is here to reassert his mastery of all things atmospheric breakbeat with his seventh major release of the year, Spectral Divergence — and like everything else I've sampled from his ongoing run, there isn't a single track below par here. Opener "The Moon on the Moors" puts the spotlight on ethereal high-end textures while sneaking rumbling bass under the radar, while "Time and Again" flexes the more melodic approach that carved out key highlights on his stellar recent record Next Time You Fall, but it's "Persuasion" that conjures up the most engaging beat-reverie. This track is pure exemplary goodness in the push and pull between its stop-start clatter and gauzy soundscape, the latter of which dreams deep enough that your dreams would have their dreams there InceptionBorges-style (and the closer "Severance" is almost in the same territory, for those who prefer such things with a harder percussive edge). Spectral Divergence might not leave as singular an impression as some of ASC's recent offerings, but the man is laying down an untouchable standard for consistency at this point. (7.0/10)
- Hugh Puddle
The Beths - Straight Line Was A Lie
43:47 // August 29th, 2025 // Carpark Records
Auckland's premier purveyors of sunny, retro-timeless guitar pop are BACK with an album about getting on meds, getting off meds, and learning to cope with life's neverending cycle of spoiled plans, unmet expectations, and sudden, irreversible setbacks. Frontwoman Liz Stokes’ musings hold center stage with aplomb: whether she's nurturing a rocky parent-child relationship back to health (“Mother, Pray for Me”), visiting a local creek whose flooding recently devastated the area (“Mosquitos”) or delivering general-purpose angst for our ever-angstful times (“Straight Line Was A Lie”, “No Joy”, “Best Laid Plans”), her wit is incisive yet affable, open-hearted but never purely sappy. Her melodic sensibility remains in a league all its own, too, even as the band's sound continues to mellow with age, from their roots in punchy, pub-friendly power chord fare into something altogether more varied and capacious. Just take a gander at “Take"- that garagey 4/4 thump is as meat-and-potatoes as rock comes, yet the winding, weightless vocal line overtop gives the song a breath of intricacy and vitality that makes the whole thing soar all the way through to an earsplitting, invigorating mess of a guitar solo.
It's not quite a clean sweep, though, especially in light of the band's immaculate back catalog. The Beths have staked out a distinct take on well-worn styles so conscientiously that, four LPs and an EP into their career, it's hard to shake the sense that they're running out of ways to expand on their artistic identity. The album hits a distinct lull in the home stretch, with “Roundabout” and “Ark of the Covenant” both weighing in as merely pleasant, a few shades too short of surprises. But hey, honey-sweet jingle-jangles like “Metal” have been capturing young hearts for six full decades now— if it ain't broke, don't fix it! In hands as capable as these, their brand of pop is still about the surest bet to keep the young Olivia Rodrigo fan in your life from the malign influence of the Swifties, or to show a crotchety Byrds devotee that their legacy is yet alive and well. (7.5/10)
- Kerry Renshaw
Winter - Adult Romantix
44:31 // August 22nd, 2025 // Winspear
Winter is coming, but Winter is already here. The dream pop outfit led by Samira Winter is back with a new album, and Adult Romantix is every bit as loveable as their previous material. It’s crunchy and concise hazified indie rock, with more ethereal hooks and reverb-drenched melodies than the average summer. We’re in the mid-2020s, but Winter embodies the essence of the mid-2010s vibe of dream pop: Adult Romantix belongs on the shelves next to the likes of Fazerdaze, Jay Som, Beach Fossils and Hazel English, and I love it for that. (8.0/10)
- jesper
withpaperwings - Six Thousand Days
11:48 // August 28th, 2025 // The Coming Strife
Facing a gluttony of new metalcore bands in the scene directly inspired by the more melodic takes on the genre that rose to prominence in the late 90s and into the 00s, it takes either an interesting enough gimmick or just really tight songwriting to stand out amongst the crowd. Florida crew withpaperwings show promising signs in both metrics, expanding upon the more well-trodden sound of their 2024 demo with the almost-seamless integration of menacing slam riffs and deep intestinal bellows, deviating from the formulaic takes on the genre of many recent -core revivalists. Despite this more unique direction however, the impression left is one of wanting more. Having proved that their take on this fusion is a worthwhile one, why not fully commit to the bit and work in some of the more mentally unstable sounds of the slam genre that make it as fun as it is - after all if that snare doesn’t ping, is it even worth hearing? (6.5/10)
- Tom Read
Good to see some love for The Beths, or as The Beths call themselves, The Biths