We’re already a month into the new year, and that means we ran down the best punk, rap, and indie (basement) of January. As for this week’s new reviews, it’s a lighter week, but I highlight four new releases below and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement, including Lee “Scratch” Perry, Kirin J Callinan, Plantoid, Maxwell Farrington & Le SuperHomard, and more.
On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include J. Robbins, KMFDM, Chief Keef, Ghetts, Coma Regalia, The Last Dinner Party, Holly Macve, Same Side (The Story So Far), James Jonathan Clancy (His Clancyness), The Paranoid Style, Meth., Meth Math, Den Der Hale, Vera Sola, Slope, Mean Mistreater, MORGXN, Ronnie Stone, Maria W Horn, Topographies, Lost Souls Of Saturn, Scrim ($uicideboy$), Icewear Vezzo, Tha God Fahim & Cookin Soul, Necrowetch, Ariel Kalma/Jeremiah Chiu/Marta Sofia Honer, Low Pressure System (Rosetta), the Smerz EP, the Grazia EP, the Ghoul EP, the Sunareht EP, the Meanstreak EP, the TiaCorine EP, the TV Star & Spiral XP EP, the Hit-Boy & Alchemist EP, the Windshelter EP, the Eichlers acoustic EP, the Runnner ambient album, and the Burial single (which is longer than some LPs).
Read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?
Anika Pyle – Four Corners
self-released
Anika Pyle has come a long way since the days of her beloved indie-pop punk band Chumped, and Four Corners is one of her most exciting new journeys yet. It’s just four songs, but it feels like a pivotal release, both sonically and thematically. Four Corners finds Anika veering towards the indie-country of recent Waxahatchee, Wednesday, Big Thief, Angel Olsen, Ratboys, etc records, and this direction suits her really well. Each song of the EP takes place in one of the Four Corners states–Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah–and each one tells an impactful story. “Arizona” reflects on “experiencing the slow dissolution of my first love, an 11-year relationship with my high school sweetheart” while on tour with Chumped; “Diné Utah Homecoming Queen” was inspired by the story of Mahala Sutherland, the first Indigenous person to win homecoming royalty at Southern Utah University; “New Mexico Blues” took inspiration from a “cold and eerie” night in March of 2020 when COVID cancelled Anika’s tour and she “stayed with an old cowboy in Silver City and we swapped stories by a fire under a crisp, billowing star scape”; and the last song “Colorado Sage” takes place in the Colorado farmhouse where Anika grew up. They paid $100 a month for rent, the house was infested with mice, and Anika’s single mother struggled to make ends meet, but she had a 100-acre backyard, and as she sings over a gentle acoustic guitar at the song’s end, “I felt rich, wild, and free running through the fields of Colorado sage.” Whether it’s a deeply personal song or a non-personal one, Anika’s storytelling creates a world that makes you feel like you’re right there, breathing in the Southwest air.
Vijay Iyer (with Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey) – Compassion
ECM
New York jazz pianist and composer Vijay Iyer is back with his first album since last year’s widely acclaimed Arooj Aftab / Shahzad Ismaily collaboration Love In Exile and first with the trio of Vijay, Linda May Han Oh, and Tyshawn Sorey since they debuted with 2021’s Uneasy. Like that album, Compassion is inseparable from the state of the world it’s being released into–“The unease I experience making art in times of suffering never goes away, nor should it; that tension shapes the creative process at every stage,” Vijay says in an essay accompanying the album. Having toured together since releasing Uneasy, the trio’s chemistry is even stronger on Compassion, and they continue to convey so much through these instrumentals. Vijay’s piano playing in particular is dripping with emotion.
Liquid Mike – Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot
self-released
Liquid Mike is the relatively new and already very prolific Marquette, Michigan band led by Mike Maple, who put out four albums between 2021 and 2023. The fourth, last year’s S/T, started picking up some buzz, and now Liquid Mike follow that buzz with album #5, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot. It seems poised to be their breakthrough because of the conditions, but it also sounds like their breakthrough, with louder, thicker production than the band’s earlier releases. They make big, catchy ’90s alt-rock and on Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, they sound bigger and catchier than ever. The alt-rock class of ’94 turns 30 this year, and if you’re celebrating Dookie, Blue Album, and Without A Sound, you’re pretty much hardwired to get a nostalgia rush from Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot.
J Mascis – What Do We Do Now
Sub Pop
To paraphrase part of my review of J Mascis’ last solo album, 2018’s Elastic Days, you kinda always know what you’re gonna get from the Dinosaur Jr leader but he makes it feel fresh every time, and we shouldn’t take for granted how prolific and consistently great he is. What Do We Do Now is no exception, an album that’s both comfortingly familiar and feels like hearing J Mascis for the first time all over again. Bill’s got a longer review of this one in Bill’s Indie Basement.
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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Lee “Scratch” Perry, Kirin J Callinan, Plantoid, Maxwell Farrington & Le SuperHomard, and more.
Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive or scroll down for previous weeks.
Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episode with In Defense of Ska‘s Aaron Carnes.
Pick up the BrooklynVegan x Alexisonfire special edition 80-page magazine, which tells the career-spanning story of Alexisonfire and comes on its own or paired with our new exclusive AOF box set and/or individual reissues, in the BV shop. Also pick up the new Glassjaw box set & book, created in part with BrooklynVegan.
