More albums, all of them wrapped in rather bad artwork, aren’t you bands bothered about the art that wraps around your art any more? The art on the cover was always the gateway back there. The album mountain grows, by the time one has been digested another five have landed and another pile of tabs opened and what is wordsworth?
M(h)aol – Something Soft (Merge/Tulle) – Something Soft, a second full-length album almost sneaked out with very little fanfare while no one was looking by those glorious Irish post-punk confronters M(h)aol. It is a case of more of what we kind of expect and indeed what we very much want from them without them ever just rehashing the thrill of their first excellent album and from the first sound of things to come we know we’re off again and off again doing a hell of a lot more than just chasing the chipper or checking our fingers or toes.
Oh yes, from the start we know we’re off with those gloriously barbed bits of antagonistic bite that come with their idea of softness, with all their dry humour. We’re listening to this thing in E8 of course, none of your N16 over here and well they are as unapologetic as ever, not that that they have anything to apologise for with their nail hit firmly on the head approach to. As the three of them put it, songs and about “intersectional feminism, animal welfare, consumerism, and the struggle to find a place in a world lacking in empathy”. What is it M(h)aol offer? Who knows? It isn’t quite catharsis, it might be defiance, if might just be a bunch of people not prepared to take any of the shit doled out on a daily basis and not taking it in a rather creatively colourful and musically rewarding spiky post punk new wave kind of way (and yes we do want to smell like that don’t we?).
M(h)aol have a sound, they’re never predictable, their edge is always jagged; “Why not play something soft like piano or violin?” Constance was asked at the age of nine. There’s nothing soft here, musically and lyrically everything has an edge, a spike, a barb, a bite, a truth, if they’re involved in arguments then they’re constantly on the right side and oh cut to the chase, they’re brilliant and this is more of what they were doing with that fine debut album from a couple of years back only more so. Bandcamp / Linktree
And then there’s songs for trees and everything on our doorsteps and where are you going?
Kate Daisy Grant & Nick Pynn – Songs for the Trees – An album of original songs and instrumentals inspired by, and for, the trees of the Ogham (Druidic poetic language from ancient Ireland and Scotland). We’ve covered Nick Pynn’s music before, he said in the e.mail telling us about this new album that we “get it”, well maybe, but this one, if we have “got” it, takes a little time to “get”. Songs For The Trees is an album you need to be in the right frame of mind for, it can maybe feel a little too nice and polite on some days and then on other days it can sound like gloriously mellow relaxed spitirual folk warmth. Actually it might be the variation in the songs rather than your frame of mind, some of it is polite soft folk flavoured middle of the road not-quite-rock and some of it is closer to a dare we say a purer idea of folk? It is the folk side that delights these ears and a case of some songs do it and some maybe not so much. You can of course go explore for yourself and make your own mind up, we are merely throwing up sign posts and pointing the way to things worth pointing at here… Bandcamp
Previously
Indifferent Engine – Speculative Fiction (Church Road Records) – This is the kind of thing Suzie The Swimmer might have got excited about back in the Organ Radio compilation days, that abrasive mix of Hardcore and post something or other, ideas of going beyond. The hardcore kids would have looked down their noses because it wasn’t pure enough, because it didn’t obey all the musical rules the scene police in their 25 Ta Life t-shirts dealing with the knuckle dust and the cynical smiles would have tried to impose on it back there. The singer sounds like he’s ripping his throat out, the guitars have an edge, there’s an attempt to experiment with machines and bites and bits of spoken words and cables cuts and not caring too much for beauty and this is probably the last record I want to hear on a sunny Monday morning in May but that’s the way the cookie crumbles and the way the e.mail mountain deals them out faster than I can keep up with them, this one was next in the thankless line of never ending e.mails from bands, labels, PR people demanding attention and the price of fish and maybe chips as well. Shall I read the press release now? This is certainly an album to persevere with, it would have been easy to hit the reject button after three or four tracks, they, whoever they are, are certainly trying to go to new places with their abrasive post hardcore and their interludes and little adventures down side streets.
“I would love you to hear the forthcoming album from wild post-hardcore and experimental rock quintet Indifferent Engine. The Cambridge, UK based band have signed with one of the UK’s most prominent independent labels, Church Road Records, home to many forward thinking acts including Graywave, Antethic, Giant Walker, Lowen, Outlander, Respire, Wallowing and many more. Indifferent Engine will be releasing their debut album Speculative Fiction on May 30th on Vinyl, CD and Digital formats. You can have an advance listen on the press release below. The album will be distributed by Deathwish Inc. in the US”.
I guess whoever sent this in thinks we’re in the USofA and not in some concrete bunker in the fallout of East London. I guess whoever sent this in hasn’t bothered to read Organ, it is generally the case and we are cynical old bastards around here, I guess they want us to be impressed with a US deal? We’re hard to impress these days, we’ve seen it all, we’ve won the lot… Indifferent Engine are a busy band in terms of the music they make, they’re an abrasive band, the vocals could do with a little more colour, he is either shouting and ripping his throat out or almost talking it, likewise the music they make, it isn’t that they’re not trying to be different, to challenge themselves, it isn’t that they’re not trying to add a different colour or two, it is that they just bludgeon it all in there, a constant sledgehammer to crack their nuts when you sense they could do a lot more. It is mostly, despite the clear ambition, rather like way too many post-hardcore things we’ve maybe heard far too many times and well right now we’re building to the climax of the album and that loud quite build up to the touch the sky thing they all do and I’m kind of thinking enough of his yelling and well they have their moments, it isn’t a bad album, Crashing Into A Hillside In The Dead of Night stands out, Suzie might have wanted that on an Organ Radio album back there and now he’s yelling about some lifetime achievement award and you know what, that’s enough with his yelling… (sw) Bandcamp
100%WET – 100%Wet (Crunchy Frog) – Well they live up to their name, next…. if you want to know then here’s some links. Nah, hang on, that isn’t really the way we do things, let’s go back again (a few days later) and give it yet another go. They’re from Copenhagen, Denmark, they’ve made a slightly dreamy record that, when you’re in the right mood is kind of nice in a lush poppy sometimes breezy shoegazing kind of way. It is a very mellow album, it is a little too sweet for these ears, a little to polished, a little bit wet. You’ve got the links up there, here’s a Bandcamp link, we’re done here.
Alien Sun – Seconds to Midnight – Alien Sun say they transmit sonic rituals from the edge of reality, I guess that all depends on where the edge of your reality happens to be. As they say themselves, the London band blend dark psychedelic rock, stoner vibes, and post-rock atmosphere, they talk of “Alien frequencies for earthly minds. Cinematic soundscapes. Echoes of something ancient” and that is pretty much whee they’re at with their middle Eastern colour, their hints of space rock, their dark psychedelic progressiveness and just a touch of moody mystery. Seconds to Midnight is a rich album, a lush album, an ever evolving piece of work, a proper album rather than just a random collection of music occupying the same space, an album you have to listen to properly, let the detail seep in, let that hint of blues flow, Alien Sun are doing their thing in a slightly different way, it is mostly a darkly psychedelic thing (and far better than the rather throwaway cover that looks like it was knocked up by AI, whatever happened to the art of the album cover? Is the art not considered important these days? A cover says so much about a band.
And on we go, off to…
Birth (Defects) Deceiver/Mirror (Reptilian Records) – They’re from Baltimore, Maryland, everything I know about Baltimore, Maryland come from the Wire or various alt.rock noise bands from the last gawd knows how many years, thirty-five maybe? They all have a backstory and a reason, they all could pretty much be from anywhere, they stood more of a chance over here if they were from there, if only Homage Freaks had been from DC or Baltimore and not the filthy backrooms of Camden. What’s Birth (Defects) story? Don ask me, I’m just blasting it in the bunker here in Hackney while the pigeons peck at the doors and the paint refuses to flow. Now before anything else, I really do like this, I like it rather a lot, but but but, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this album maybe a hundred times before?
The band explains that it’s “loosely about how anyone can be a liar no matter how good of a person they are and about the impact lying has on not just the people you lie to but those connected to that person you’ve lied to – or even the people connected to you as the liar. Basically, the Deceiver side acknowledges of the weight everyone has to bear due to your mistakes; the Mirror side is about the acceptance that you (or anyone, really) are capable of hurting others and trying to learn from it and actually listen to the people you’ve hurt.” This record was born in an era of significant lies and is being released into another, where theoretically suffering people find salvation through lies that destroy communities in real time – as if somehow that justifies telling these untruths in the first place.”
Truth is, we always need another record like this, tell me no lies, has peace arrived, I mean we’ve been doing this long enough to have a then unknown band called Nirvana send us a tape in the post (that’s mail to you Americano viewers) and well, we’ve seen it all, we’ve won the lot –
“What, then, are the truths in this work? It’s heavily indebted to ‘90s grunge and noise, heartily recalling the whammy bar bend and distortion pedal power dynamic of Bleach- era Nirvana, the burly backwoods horror of Tad, and the deafeningly laconic riffs and studda-step rhythms of Cherubs. It dispenses with the need for ballads, each track swinging the bat around and hitting anything that walks into its flail”
– Yep, that’s about the truth of it, they swing that bat, they keep on swinging, the mostly hit the spot and yes it is gloriously not of this time nor any other – far too late for the trend, too early and unconcerned with any impending revival and well, why should we come up with new words when those they have already do a good enough job and whatever happened to Red Eye Express and Anorak Lovechild and this Rosa Mota t-shirt is getting rather threadbare now. This is intensely good, it was scheduled to be an Albini job before his untimely passing threw a spanner in those works, it sounds like it is one of his, or in his spirit, I see Bob Weston did the mastering.
“Ultimately, the real truth is that record was made for the band, their friends and family, and a slowly expanding circle of individuals who’ll connect to Birth (Defects)’ direct themes and broken angles as a self-fulfilling prophecy. No lies needed, no hopes of “making it,” no need for any further validation. There are a couple dozen bands in 2025 that’d kill to make something like this, and it’d never even occur to them” – Doug Mosurock. Hey, Doug tells it like it is, they go all the right broken angles and unwound tads of things, it sounds like they, in the best of ways, don’t care what we think over here, it sounds all the better for not caring and for that we care a lot.
Sounds like they went through all kinds of things to make this record, they started it years ago, somewhere in the 2010s, band-crap, self-doubt, things left half finished, then family bereavement and in the end, by the sounds of it, in the end sheer-bloody mindedness to get it done. And it sounds like they were right to finished it. If I was ever to want to play in a band then I’d want to play in this one or at least make this record, it is pretty much a faultless record even if we have all heard it a hundred times before (boring artwork though, there’s probably some deep meaning behind it for them and like I said, they don’t care what I think). Hey, Deceiver/Mirror is a classic punk rock alt.rock noise band records, a blast of a record made by a band clearly needong to make a record like this. A fine record indeed. Recommended.
Deceiver/Mirror is released on Reptilian Records on May 30th, 2025. Here’s the Bandcamp
And so ends another page and a whole load of reviews that no one really needs and what was the point in the first place? Here’s a Hetty Douglas painting….
THE ORGAN 