More albums, not quite so much cherry picking this time, this is still a non-stop operation and there is still no time for an editorial at the top of the page, we have places to be, paint to throw, holes to dig, more music to listen to. Last time we mentioned that last Friday, an ordinary day around here, saw 176 pieces of music submitted by bands, labels and their PR people. We do listen to everything, we do cherry pick though and yes we do sometimes question things, we could actually do a lot more of that if there was time and yes I know this was all said last week but who reads the bit of the top? Go explore the music, here’s the new Florist album, if Rip Cruncher was still with us, he’d be more interested in the noise Doomsday are making at the foot of the page…

Florist – Jellywish (Double Double Whammy) – “With Jellywish, the quartet’s fourth full-length work, out April 4th, 2025 on Double Double Whammy, the band invites listeners to question everything – to imagine a world where magic, surrealism, and the supernatural are our companions in day-to-day life. Jellywish dares to present a realm of possibility and imagination in a time that feels evermore prescriptive, limiting, and awful…” And if we are really honest about it all, this maybe a little polite for us, almost twee, quietly sung, beautiful if you’re have a mind to spend time with a rather warm rather beguilingly quiet indie folk flavoured band from New York. All ten tracks are of the same quiet nature, all at the same all-the-time-in-the-world sunny pace, it all very very (very) pleasant, well spoken, delightful, it is all rather beautiful but you know, it is all maybe a little too nice for us. They say “Florist is a friendship project from the Catskill Mountains”, it is rather delightful, it is very friendly, if you are in the right mood and the sun is out and no one is pecking at you and yeah it is a rather friendly rather uplifting thing….    Bandcamp

Dauber – Falling Down (Dromedary/Recess/State Champion Records) – Dauber are (not is!) a rock and roll band so says the press release that goes on to say that “like any good rock and roll band, Dauber are rough around the edges, but bursting with vibrant, uninhibited energy. Formed in Hudson, NY by former Screaming Females bassist Mike Abbate alongside Quinn Murphy and Jenna Fairey”, and well yeah, they’ve probably got a Clash record or two in their collection and here’s their Bandcamp and they sound like a million other bands who think it all starts and ends with the pub rock of the Clash (or all those American bands who wanted to be the Clash) and well we listened to it all the way through and we have no intention of ever doing so again (and the album art is too boring to download and add to the page). The album isn’t up on their Bandcamp yet, here’s the single from it…

CocoRosie – Little Death Wishes (Joyful Noise) – “For just over twenty years, Bianca and Sierra Casady have transmuted the love, hardship, and ecstasy of sisterhood into some of the most daring, dangerous, and wildly original music our increasingly sanitised culture has known. CocoRosie has been a project consistently at the musical vanguard, influencing countless musicians while inspiring and creating refuge for the “criminal queers” of the world. Above all, CocoRosie has been a conduit for irrepressible artistic self realisation. They are set to release their new album Little Death Wishes on March 28th via Joyful Noise Recordings.

And I always want to like them so so much and never can quite grab hold of that thing the sisters do so so well. Their albums, their songs,  their words, all so full of colour, full of animated detail, full of real life, full of things beyond real life, ever the rocks thrown at the passing trains, but but but, i can never quite connect it all up. I can never connect with all the itchy witches and slutty kisses and counting the stars in the junkyard and the hope that is there even when she’s stuck on the same page in a bird cage. There is so much heart and soul here, so much colour, non of it garbage,  and they stitch it all together so so well, some of blissful, some of it dripping with melancholy (or maybe regret), some of it full of such colourful joy, all of it alive with rich colour and here I am, an actor in someone else’s dream not quite connecting with it all and there may not be a hand for me, but they are here to tell you how they’ve never been better and oh how they make such fine fine songs, unique songs, happy as a harlot songs with windy hair…  Bandcamp

And meanwhile over in Austin, Texas…

Mien – Miien (Fuzz Club) – Something of an Austin supergroup, Mien sees members of The Black Angels, Elephant Stone, The Earlies and Golden Dawn Arkestra join forces for what the press release tells us is an “entrancing album. Dark and atmospheric, energised with driving motorik beats and shifting textures, it’s a layered and absorbing listen”. The press release isn’t too far wrong, I’d add that the album is rather refreshing, very easy to get along with, silky smooth in a rather positive kin of way, a gentle album, an alive album, a positive hum, an electricity that is maybe on the boundaries of psychedelia without ever treading water of conforming the retro notions that might conjure.

“Since their inception, Mien have been a confluence of diverse musical influences and shared histories. The seeds of this collaboration were planted back in 2004 when Rishi Dhir, known for his work with Elephant Stone, crossed paths with Alex Maas of The Black Angels during a serendipitous encounter at SXSW. This meeting sparked a friendship and a series of collaborations. Around the same time, Rishi met John Mark Lapham of The Earlies, whose electronic and production expertise would become a cornerstone of Mien’s sound. Robb Kidd (Alex Maas, Golden Dawn Arkestra) joined the band on drums in 2018. These connections eventually led to the formation of Mien, a band that seamlessly blends their varied musical backgrounds into a unique sonic tapestry”. 

I don’t know if I’d agree about it being unique, this is an album with more than enough identity though, it feels very easy, it is massively enjoyable, joyously exploring the cages of your mind without needing to challenge anything that much and sometimes that can be enough, sometimes that can a really good thing. Miien is just a really really good really refreshing album. Bandcamp

Mien have some European dates coming up – 28.04 Kola – Portsmouth, 29.04 The Attic – Leeds, 30.04 YES Basement – Manchester, 02.05 Where Else? – Margate, 03.05 Hope & Ruin – Brighton, 04.05 Moth Club – London, 07.05 Supersonic – Paris, 10.05 Fuzz Club Festival – Eindhoven, 11.05 Import Export – Munich,13.05 Kantine am Berghain – Berlin. Find tickets and details here  

Bob Mould – Here We Go Crazy (Granary Music) – Is it really his 15th solo album? Surely not? I guess he’s seen a lot, he was there taking a big hand in the writing of the blueprint back there with the mighty Husker Du and where back there he was railing against Reagan and now, well, we’d probably all take Reagan and his crap right now. You’d maybe expect Bob Mould to be mellowing out, letting the relatively new kids on the block do the railing now but no, Bob still has a fire burning and on the surface this album that came out earlier this march, is a whole bunch of pretty cool alternative pop rock songs in the manner you’d expect, all that bite and Sugar and a surprising amount of energy, it is a sound and style built on simplicity, brevity, and clarity, it really is the details though, the placing of things in just the right places, the pure craft of it all, the songs that just know where to go but then as he told Rolling Stone “Under the hood, there’s a number of contrasting themes. Control and chaos, hypervigilance and helplessness, uncertainly and unconditional love”.

This really is a fine album, at times a beautiful album, a hooky album, a joy of an album but then underneath, he’s there grappling with his own life, his own past, present and future, that and the uncertainties and increasingly the fears that modern life is dishing up. We don’t need to say a lot about this one, I’m guessing if you want to know you already do know about Bob mould’s latest album, we did need to mention it in passing though before we dive back in to the piles of obscurity waiting for our attention. This is a very fine Bob Mould album

Bandcamp

Ayane Shino – River せせらぎ The Timbre Of Guitar #2 (MusicMine) – “A collection of ten hypnotic guitar renditions that dive deeply into the traditional compositional musicality that underpins Harakami’s hallucinatory beatscapes before reconsidering them under a fresh, innovative and engaging new light. River: The Timbre of Guitar #2 Rei Harakami signals a new level of awareness and understanding of both Rei Harakami’s significance and Ayane Shino’s undeniable talent” is what we’re told this is.

Kind of pleasant upbeat classical guitar interpretations of electronic music is what it actually is, all very ‘nice’ and ‘polite’ and yes, I guess the playing is very clever and lots of notes when maybe less would be far far more and well all very worthy and really not that hypnotic and can I just politely say it really isn’t doing anything whatsoever for me or anyone else in here, actually it got rather annoyingly self indulgent and a little one dimensional after a while (and the artwork seemed like a throwaway afterthought). Bandcamp 

Miss Lava – Under A Black Sun (Small Stone) – They’re from Lisbon, Portugal, Miss Lava could be from anywhere really, their new album, Under A Black Sun. is said to be “carrying a darker and heavier emotional weight than their previous outings” The band’s fifth album is set to be released through Small Stone Recordings on April 25th, it kind of sounds like standard issue heavy psychedelic stoner rock  – “It’s a pretty intense record,” says singer Johnny Lee. “Our life experiences over the past years have made us delve into a darker matter. We explored new territories and had a blast creating this album.” – right now they sound like they’re singing about a brew of drugs and witches to us, life experiences eh?!

“The release of Under A Black Sun will celebrate the band’s longevity, marking their 20th anniversary. It’s sonic flame with many cosmic swirls that urges to be unleashed live. “It has been a hell of a ride since we started rehearsing in a small studio in Lisbon back in 2005,” confirms guitarist K. Raffah. “Having this record come out twenty years later with a partner like Small Stone is the best thing we could wish for. Now we just need to get out there and play these songs live everywhere we can!”- five albums in twenty years, not exactly fast workers are they? Right now Chaos Strain has injected a bit of pace, or should we say speed? Different drug kicked in maybe? The Bends stands out, The Bends has a colourful Sabbath flavoured Kyuss vibe, Mostly this is occasionally stomping, sometimes serene psychedelic heavy stoner rock that now and again finds a different paranoid colour or two that might drag you to insanity or reality or whatever it is they’re singing about now, mortality?  They do their chosen thing well enough, they’re not quite blinding the eyes of imagination, it does sound like a million other heavy rock bands, they do it well though. The artwork fits the music… Bandcamp

Doomsday – Never Known Peace (Creator-Destructor Records) – And with a name like that we were really were expecting doom, what we actually have here is some wholesomely brutal fast crossover hardcore metal thrashing madness from Oakland, California. That’s right, no time to hang around getting all doomed out, this is for fans of Nuclear Assault, Enforced, Municipal Waste, and maybe even early-Metallica,this is proper Bay Area thrash for those who like to bang with us, Exodus and yes we have heard it all before,yes  it does almost sound nostalgic, it rips, it crunches, it sounds street-wise, it is their debut album, a record that apparently “sees the band further embracing their thrash metal and crossover influences” as they deliver a more than satisfying all-out shredding thrash attack. Ten ripping tracks that surge with the energy of the thrash metal bedrock that lines their Bay Area hometown, firing at all you like it’s 1986. They have the technical flair, they have the chops, they have the attitude and yeah, we’ll have some of that. Doomsday do it really well, what we need now is someone to rebuild the Hammersmith Clarendon, find the old carpets and get this over here to play and a nine band bill that has Onslaught headlining it all and Bill Steer flogging his fanzine at the bar. Oh and they’ve got an authentically just right circa ’86 dreadfully spot on awful album cover… Bandcamp