Records

DIRTY PROJECTORS

BARONESS

DONNIE & JOE EMERSON

THE LOCUST

AESOP ROCK
Skelethon
Rhymesayers Driving for hours all over again and all that’s missing is the effect Adderall used to have in the early 2000s. Somewhere an older dude in a Bane hoodie is dusting off his backpack. No, fuck that. He’s buying a new backpack, because he’s readier than ever to give Darren Aronofsky a run for his money.

CHAD SCOTT

LIL UGLY MANE
Mista Thug Isolation
Ormolycka Lil Ugly Mane is a rapper and producer from Richmond, Va. who also happens to be what is known as “the truth.” As the most mysterious affiliate of Spaceghostpurrp’s Raider Klan collective, he’s that dude who designs all their Master P-meets-Morbid Angel lookin’ album covers. As a producer, he makes beats so thick and creamy it makes Clams Casino’s shit sound like Drake songs. Vibe-wise, the dude just gets everything right. Think Pimp C on a Gravediggaz track. If that doesn’t make your dick hard, then your dick is retarded.

BIG TRIZERD

JUICEBOXXX
I don’t Want To Go Into The Darkness
Infinity Cat/
Thunder Zone

Juiceboxxx is like that chubby kid who sat next to you in fifth grade and would doodle made-up superhero names in bubble letters on his folders. He wore dirty sweatpants and smelled like cheese sandwiches, but come 3:25 p.m. every day, he was a fucking RAP MASTER.

HEY SALLY

POPULAR CULTURE
Episode
Sparrow Songs If I was ever in a high-speed car chase, fleeing from the scene of a drug deal gone bad, en route to Angelina Jolie’s house to pick her up for a slow bone at that one spot we always hide out at so no one will discover our secret love, this is what I’d put on. It’s like the soundtrack to one of those perfect dreams where everything is cool and right and feels real, and then you wake up and are like “crap.”.

FUCKLES

FOALS
Tapes
!K7 Oh, I see, this is how this works now? You can just make a mix tape, slap your name and a kitten on the cover, and then that’s that? I OBJECT! I was completely into this until I educated myself and discovered that it’s a heap of random songs by other bands. This album should be called “The Radio,” or “Me Sitting At Home Listening to My Own Record Collection And Not Yours.” This has to get a good review because it’s fun as hell, but it doesn’t have much to do with Foals.

HOT GYNO

PURITY RING
Shrines
4AD This shit is musical MDMA. On a scale from that one time I was accidentally given PCP and was SURE I was going to die that night, to that one time I had casual sex with five of my closest friends, I give this album two dilated pupils and a hot make out sesh with a subway pole.

GIRL REPORTER

GRASSCUT
Unearth
Just Isn’t Music This album of electric babble and dialogue samples somehow all comes together to nonstop make a person think of Peter Gabriel, but that’s not fair to say really because Peter Gabriel rules and this sounds like a cartoon robot attempting to cry itself real. Like it’s sitting there, flat on a page, eyes squeezed tight pushing bubble tears down its silver cheeks, and then all of a sudden one of the bubbles turns to actual salt water and it leaps up, looks around, and yelps out, “I DID IT! I’m REAL!” But, by that time, everyone has grown too old for cartoons, and is like, “Robots are for mongoloid babies.”

INDIAN BUMMER

TWIN SHADOW
Confess
4AD

It’s OK Georgie, lots of artists experience a sophomore slump. You sound a little out-of-touch with your roots, why don’t you let me wind my waist on your face and remind you what the Caribbean tastes like?

SOPHIE SAINT THOMAS

BARONESS
Yellow & Green
Relapse Records It’s unfair to expect a band to make the same album over and over again. But damn, the Red Album and the Blue Record were so fucking good, they could’ve rode that wave for a few more releases. A better title for Yellow & Green might be Piss & Puke, because that’s what it sounds like.

WILBERT L. COOPER

DEBO BAND
S/T
Sub Pop World music is like fair trade flax seeds. Don’t just eat a handful of them because you know you should because it’s healthy. Sprinkle that shit in your arugula and dribble a ‘lil of that oil on your chicken breasts to savor the flavor. Flax seeds make you live forever and Debo Band will have you dancing the entire time.

LINDSEY “THE LOSER” LEONARD

FANG ISLAND
Major
Sargent House Dear Fang Island, I wanna thank you for jacking off my mid-life crisis. Your new album, Major, with it’s kinda cock rock, super Prozac-pumped melodies made me schedule a tat appointment just now, and I used words like “totes” and “gorg” to describe my future sleeve. Your songs bring forth fond memories of popping my cherry on a Huffy banana seat and make me wanna walk down to Bedford Ave., find a 20 year old, fuck him, and then suck the life force out of him. Also, Jason Bartell, your vocals totes sound like Lindsey Buckingham, and this old cunt loves some Fleetwood Mac.

JENNIFER DARLING

HOT PANDA
Go Outside
Mint Records It pains me to say anything nice about these Canadian art-punks, but they’ve really done it this time. And, all I can do is slow-clap and tell them, “That’s a lovely penis on the cover of your album.” I honestly didn’t like their first albums at all, but this one takes the wereallywishweweresonicyouth in a better, more independent direction. My advice? Don’t put the album on for a date. Some of the songs are almost soft and sweet, and you’ll get all in the mood and stuff, then they’ll freak out with some noisy distorted guitars and keys and you’ll spill that chocolate body butter all over your sheets. And, you just bought those sheets.

ALEX HOLMES

HOLOGRAMS
S/T
Captured Tracks From my punk homies rotting in the Rust Belt to fresh-faced honeys on the Upper East Side and the boyfriends of Bushwick biddies with brand name art degrees, absolutely everyone likes this record. It’s perfect pop punk rock ‘n’ roll: Pissed, tight, anthemic and a ‘lil New Wave.

LINDSEY “THE LOSER” LEONARD

DUSTED
Total Dust
Polyvinyl In the days before I had ideas about who I was, and way before I entered the world of “serious relationships” (and other pacts with myself to self-destruct) I was a spaced out, contemplative kid that did tons of active listening and read all the heady, sad, dead dude books. This record, along with being a total departure from Brian Borcherdt’s other projects, reminds me of what it felt like back in my loner days except it’s emo for grownups: All lo-fi melodic melancholy, fuzzy guitars, and sparse echo.

LINDSEY “THE LOSER” LEONARD

HUSKY
Forever So
Sub Pop HUSKY. Say it aloud like you’re describing some burly, thick dick. Now imagine the complete opposite of burly, thick dick. Droopy penis. Husky, the guitar finger-pickin’ psych folk 4-piece from Australia just never gets hard enough to fuck on Forever So. It’s a luke warm 2 (minute) pump chump of “Twinkling skies/Fresh falling snow” lyrics backed up by dainty keyboards, drum brushes, and blank blowing.

JENNIFER DARLING

IS/IS
III
Guilt Ridden Pop Do you ever see a lady sitting in her car on a hot summer day, smoking a cig with the windows rolled down and wonder, “How can people enjoy taking hot smoke into their body when it’s hot as holy hell outside?” But at the moment of dismissing the lady in question as common trash, her boyfriend comes out of the bodega she’s parked in front of with a dripping six-pack of beer, and when her eyes meet his, she smiles and flicks the cig onto the concrete. You stare at the ring of brick red lipstick around the butt as they pull away thinking, “I should be doing more with my life.”

HEY SALLY

OM
Advaitic Songs
Drag City I’ve surfed the same cosmic wave for years. Balance on top of a well-waxed Yin Yang; my feet grip effortlessly to its opposing, yet interdependent designs; my monk guide finally speaks, “I love riffs, man.” I cup and waft my hand through a cloud of shimmering steam, pulling it towards my expressionless face. It leaves a slick layer of condensation on my sunglasses. Without moving my splayed-out arms, I clear off my shades with my thumb and turn to my guide, “Meeeeee, too, dude.”

LLOYD PHILLIPS

PASSION PIT
Gossamer
Columbia Records During my last week of college, in the waspiest moment of my life, I attended a fraternity golf tournament and blew lines of cocaine in the club house bathroom. If Manners was the douchey, youthful high I felt speeding around in a golf cart, beer in hand, Gossamer is why I don’t attend homecoming. No one wants to see corpse colored aging men grasping at former glory.

LILY PULITZER

THE LOCUST
Molecular Genetics From the Gold Standard
ANTI

Did you guys see The Cabin in the Woods? It was awesome. There are these meta-vibes, where you’re like, “Is this a horror movie about horror movies? Intentionally subverting the genre in order to set a new standard?” And you leave the theatre, looking around at everyone all, “That guy gets it; that lady gets it. We three folks get it.” And then the Locust released some kind of “rarities” record, and you’re like, “Is this a Locust record about a Locust record?” But no one gets it, and everyone is just half pissed off, half jealous of Justin Pearson’s weird life, and the rumors start up that he’s a millionaire off bug-faced grindcore. But he isn’t, dude. I know his friends.

LINT VON TRAPP

CLARE AND THE REASONS
KR-51
Frog Stand A product inspired by touring from Brooklyn to Berlin, KR-51 (named after their moped transportation in Germany) feels gently crafted with well placed piano pillars for song stability, decorated with an array of twangy and smooth strings, fenced in by forward, clear percussion. It’s basically a whimsical tree house that you hide in when people won’t stop emailing and texting you about stupid nonsense and you just wanna sit in the dirt and even out for a bit.

ROBIN BACIOR

THE ANTLERS
Undersea
ANTI Records Undersea might as well be the druggier B-Side to Burst Apart. It sounds slightly more under the influence and in a little worse shape than a year ago. “Not unlike myself,” she thought. Put this on when you need to sit down in the shower and cry, then let that lil’ shit keep on spinning when you drag yourself out, seeping wet, and have the best goddamn make up sex of your life. Christmas. Your lover’s come. Red wine. A family dog. Antlers. All good for the soul, man.

SOPHIE SAINT THOMAS

DIRTY PROJECTORS
Swing Lo Magellan
Domino Did you ever take an unusually huge poo in the toilet, turn around, and look at it before you flush, and be like, “Damn, where did all that shit come from?” I wonder if Dave Longstreth ever says that about his music.

WILBERT L. COOPER

PAUL BANKS
Julian Plenti Lives
Matador I dated a girl not too long ago who told me a story about how one time she was dating this Christian guy who wouldn’t fuck her, but would go down on her and stuff sometimes. One day they were in his car, and he ate her out, and then took his cock out and she got in his lap and just sort of moved her pussy over his shaft, without it actually going inside, so therefore it didn’t count as sex in the eyes of Christ our lord. He shot hot goo all over her pubes, and she wiped it off with her panties. We would (she and I) re-create this using dildos and various seated positions and call it “the Christian boyfriend.”

KAYLE MAQLUE

SHINTARO SAKAMOTO
How To Live With A Phantom
Other Music You can take weird medical chemicals that you only buy on the internet to this music. You can almost fuck to this music, too, but then you end up not fucking because you’re worried that if a part of you goes inside of someone else then that part of you might never come back. So, instead you just kind of sit there and look at each other wondering if the other person is real. In other words, this sounds like Steely Dan crossed with Tropicalia, sung in Japanese, and it rules.

JOEY PARADISE

DONNIE & JOE EMERSON
Dreamin’ Wild
Light in the Attic If my Dad found out that I was obsessed with Todd Rundgren, the Brian-less Beach Boys and CSNY he probably would have taken off his belt, given me half a dozen hot licks, and banished me to my room for a couple of days. But not old man Emerson, he went out, chopped down some fucking trees, cleared a field, and built a studio for his boys to create their spacey, gayish MOR, fudgscicle-funk beast far from the spirit crushing judgment of A&R guys and the public alike. Nice move, Father Of The Year 1979!

SID SNACKS

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Strange Passion
Finders Keepers

I started listening to this random compilation of Irish post-punk rarities from the early 80s while gooling images of Kirk Cameron. At some point, it clicked in that the songs I had been passively letting dribble into my ear, vaginas are amazing, and I briefly thought about telling my friends and co-workers that they had to listen to them. But then, this feral bug crawled up my ass and I got all “No way. These are mine. MINE!!!!!!” I took the promo home, buried it in my backyard with “the others,” and peed on the freshly covered hole while darting my eyes around wildly.

RYAN GOSLING