Islands, mountains and valley girls. LA’s Death Valley Girls have released a couple of singles since 2020’s Under the Spell of Joy, and those songs have found a happy home on Islands in the Sky, the band’s fifth full-length. “When I’m Free” was the flip of Le Butcherettes cover of their “The Universe,” and it was a perfect pairing of songs and bands. Death Valley’s Bonnie Bloomgarden and and Butcherette Teri Gender Bender have similar endearingly thin voices and machine-gun vibrato, Bloomgarden’s mixed with a bit of Grace Slick on helium (in the best possible way). The other single, “It’s All Really Kind of Amazing” is a great piece of wide-eyed psychedelia that closes the album. Those two, along with the opening “California Mountain Shake” are the high points of Islands (out Feb. 24 on CD, LP and download from Suicide Squeeze). It’s great to have them sitting in context with some new ravers (“Magic Powers”) and retro wave existentialism (“What Are the Odds”). There’s definitely a throwback vibe to the album, enhanced by an AM-radio mix, but they’ve got enough oomph to make it current.
Big|Brave gets smaller, braver. When Big|Brave’s A Gaze Among Them came out in 2019, it felt like a bit of a concession to industry standards. The Montreal band’s previous two albums had been monolithic slabs of long, slowly throbbing, one-chord dirges. Gaze had an unthinkable six (six!) tracks, and then 2021’s Vital had nothing over 10 minutes long. Like Marvin Gaye’s best albums, they could be heard as one long song, but even still they felt smaller and maybe a little less brave. I listened to Gaze again before putting on their new nature morte (their first on Thrill Jockey, out Feb. 24, CD, LP, download) and forgave them their trespasses. It stands as a solid set of songs, and the craft is refined on the new one. Singer guitarist Robin Wattie may have honed her songwriting skills when the band paired with the Body for 2021’s Leaving None But Small Birds, but that album lacked B|B’s gravitas. nature morte, as the title suggests, finds life in deathly stillness and amplifies it. The half dozen tracks still stay under the 10-minute mark, but are more individually distinct than on past records. The sound is huge and Wattle’s voice is clearer than ever—the album exudes confidence. It’s easy to mistake infatuation for love and prematurely declare an album “best yet,” but the last couple didn’t lead me to such enthusiastic folly. I’m happy to make the mistake now.
A good day for a revolution. A week after the dawn of the new lunar year, Fucked Up released their new One Day (Merge Records, CD, LP, download), which gives me a chance to talk about two of their records. Before we get to the new once, let’s jet back to 2015 and their Year of the Hare. The Toronto oddball hardcore band’s ongoing Chinese zodiac series represents not just their longest but their most experimental recordings. Year of the Hare is a 22-minute collage of acoustic song, punk stomp and studio noise, and is still available via Bandcamp. It’s worth listening to all year long and gives perspective on the more straight-ahead but equally ambitious new album. Getting away from their more cerebral side, the band members each had 24 hours to learn the songs on One Day and add their tracks before passing it along. The songs hit hard but don’t lack for melody, not at all unlike Hüsker Dü at their best, and the immediacy is invigorating.
But if its immediacy you’re after, London’s Historically Fucked (and it gives me no small pleasure to compare those bands) turn it out in record time. The Mule Peasants’ Revolt of 12,067 (LP, download, out Feb. 3 from Upset the Rhythm) is a set of eight spontaneously erupted, punk abstractions that fly by in 25 minutes. While everything is improvised, the quartet has a way of boiling down to a unified madness. The layered voices, rambling riffs and fractured rhythms can seem rambling, but purposefully so. It’s wonderfully ludicrous.
Madcaps laugh last. There’s a line to be drawn between Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum and Pink Floyd’s original creative force Syd Barret. Not the one about their mental instabilities, even if their difficulties were part and parcel to their artistic output, and not the one about how much people like to talk about those instabilities. It’s in the music, the insistent acoustic guitar strumming and the strained warble as they slide around melodies. But there’s also the careers cut sadly short, Mangum not as abruptly or conclusively as Barrett’s, who spent three years with Pink Floyd and released a couple of solo albums before withdrawing from public life for the next three decades. Magnum has continued to make occasional appearances, but the bulk of his recorded output remains the two albums and scattered songs with his band at the end of the ‘90s. Those recordings have been brought together in The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel (Merge Records, vinyl box set out Feb. 24). It includes, of course, the masterwork, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and an expanded double-LP version of its predecessor On Avery Island, which sits better among the complete works than just being “the other album.” There’s also three 7” discs of Avery demos and a 10” of more stray songs, including the scathing “Home,” which feels like a precursor to the powerful songs Ren has been putting out (find him on YouTube if you haven’t already). The Everything Is EP, now remastered, shows Magnum’s love for punk and metal without committing to the forms. The last piece of the fetish box is the solo set Live at Jittery Joe’s recorded in 1997 and first released in 2001. It’s a raw recording, both acoustically and emotionally. He introduces the fan-favorite, non-LP “Engine” as a children’s song about being heartbroken and depressed but happy for about five minutes, and it’s actually quite touching. Mangum’s had to carry a heavy burden over the years, but maybe the new collection will give him five more minutes of pleasure.
