Music: Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk

Seasons in the Sol. One of the great mysteries of the 1990s was Gastr del Sol. Formed as a trio by former Squirrel Bait guitarist David Grubbs, two of the members decamped for Tortoise after the first album. They were replaced by musical polymath Jim O’Rourke, and so began the grand experiment. Their long meandering tracks, often with electronic beds or field recordings and punctuated by acoustic guitar, recalled the more experimental (and often overlooked) sound works by the great John Fahey; the duo recorded Fahey’s “Dry Bones in the Valley” with composer and sound artist Tony Conrad on violin for their 1996 album Upgrade & Afterlife. The year before that, they released maybe their most ambitious record. The Harp Factory on Lake Street (named for an actual harp factory in their homebase of Chicago) was a single and stunning-yet-understated 17-minute track recorded with a nine-piece band including brass, reeds, strings, synthesizer and percussion. That track is included on the new collection We Have Dozens of Titles (double CD, triple LP and download out from Drag City last month), along with other limited release tracks and nearly an hour of unreleased live recordings. The collection is a great introduction to their droning passages, wobbly song structures and maudlin melodies, but it also has plenty to entice the already initiated. Most significant, though, is it’s heft. At just over 100 minutes, it’s the deepest single-serving submersion into their unusual sound world so far. The download allows for a sustained drift through the Sol until you forget what you’re listening to and realize you’re feeling strangely nostalgic for things you can’t name and places you can’t place. Individual mileage may vary, of course, but as some other musical journeyman once suggested, unplug your mind, relax and float downstream.

From the land where punk began. Scotsman Allan McNaughton’s voice and sensibility pretty well dominate the sound of Neutrals. While he and his Yank bandmates (the solidly shuffling of drummer Phil Lantz and deep bounce of bassist Lauren Matsui) are based in San Francisco, McNaughton’s accent, not to mention his songwriting, puts the band firmly in league with such snotty old school pop punk heroes as Buzzcocks and the Undertones, and their sophomore full-length New Town Dream (CD, LP, download jointly released last month by Slumberland Records and Static Shock Records) furthers the illusion. It opens with a dubby remix of the title track, which actually appeared on 2022’s Bus Stop Nights EP. There’s also a short bit of disco-leaning existentialism (“How Did I Get Here?”). Such punk moves. There’s a sequel song in “Wish You Were Here,” catching us up on the sad story of the miserable liar introduced on Bus Stop’s in the hilarious “Gary Borthwick Says”—total Jilted John move (and check the claymation vids for both songs).  The illusion is real, though, in any ways that matter. They’re not playing dress-up or throwback. New Town Dream is a heartfelt album. There’s even field recordings of protest chants on “Stop the Bypass.” But mostly there’s the catchy-as-heck tunes documenting the aggravations of daily life, laid out with a healthy, cynical humor. Or is that humour?

Meanwhile, besides being a chic bit of hairstyling, Marcel Wave is a smart, London quintet

whose debut Something Looming comes out June 14 (LP, CD and download from Upset The Rhythm). The band came together when writer Maike Hale Jones called together members of Sauna Youth and Cold Pumas—I don’t know either of those bands, I just wanted to say their names—for a project. She’d published essays and short fiction in the past, explaining the literary leanings of her often spoken lyrics, which put Marcel Wave in line with talkcore bands like Dry Cleaning, Dawn of Midi, Yard Act, Fontaines D.C., Benefits or even such punks of yore as the Fall and Romeo Void. But Jones is more resignation than rebellion, and her band is more upbeat than all those other Chatty Cathies. The title Something Looming might suggest things are gonna explode, but for the moment they’re busily propelled by peppy tunes and blipping electric organ. “Stop/Continue” is the killer here, documenting centuries of drudgery and daily grinds over a quick and cold synth sequence.

Track 1, Side 1. On “Yung Hearts Bleed Free, the lead single from the new of Montreal album, Kevin Barnes sings “Now I’m an old hag / sitting by the same river with my prayer beads and my anal beads, hope i don’t mix them up.” He nails it there, maybe more than he meant to. As of Montreal, Barnes released a handful of quirky albums between 1997 and 2002 followed by the remarkable run of Satanic Panic in the Attic, The Sunlandic Twins and Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer from 2004 to 2007. Since then, he’s continued to roll out records of dark, depressive disco with moments of true inspiration. That’s not a criticism, that’s just the way it usually goes: the initial search for a sound that leads to the lightning storm of greatness followed by a long spell of variations on a theme. Once you pass that turn in the road (if not before), it’s time to frontload your new releases. Lady on the Cusp, which came out on Polyvinyl (CD, LP, download) last month is another perfectly enjoyable album that kicks off with the hilarious anthem “Music Hurts the Head,” with hints of arena rock and psychedelic subversion. Both “Hearts” and “Hurt” highlight Barnes’ irresistible irritability, but the latter is a more convincing case.

Frontloading isn’t a strategy reserved for old fogies in glitter eyeshadow, of course. Dreammachine, the third album from Brooklyn’s Habibi (CD, LP, download from Kill Rock Stars last month) disappeared into a pleasant pop haze of slithering surf riffs and low-impact grooves, nicely augmented by the midpoint instrumental “Interlude” after the album’s initial statement of purpose, “On the Road.” Like Lady on the Cusp, it’s a perfectly fine album, but those two opening tracks are making it to my summer mixtape—which I 100% intend to make this year unless I just leave the Gastr del Sol set on repeat until September.

Kurt Gottschalk

Kurt Gottschalk is a writer, journalist and broadcaster based in New York City.