Gold Soundz No. 2 (aka Fall into the Music)
by Sebastian Cruz, Staff Writer
Illustration by Emery Aikin
Hi, I’m Sebastian. We may have met before under similar circumstances. If not, or if I hardly made an impression, let me give you a refresher: I listen to too much music and therefore I am a baby. And because I am a baby, a wee baby, I am always covered in my own excrement and babbling “dere’s a bawmb in my caw!” over and over again.
Don’t it feel like Autumn, capital A? The overfamiliar (or perhaps just familiar to ye youngbloods) buzz of new classes now already old; mediocre dining hall cuisine; clear skies and mid-seventies serenity, a gift from climate change’s bosom (and it’s nearly October). Bliss, O bliss! Bands and artists have taken this opportunity to release some music to match these Fall idylls. Hell, I’d have half a mind to say that they released music just for you, all of you, as well as me. Music music music. La la la.
Geese - Getting Killed
These fuckers don’t know when to quit, do they? The mythmaking for a band of their stripe is, at this point, second-nature. It’s barely even worth recollecting the miracle of Geese, a group that happened to do everything right: start a band with enough days-gone-by post-punk gusto (in New York! hoo-rah!) to charm the labels, get signed out of the gate and siphon that delicious sweet label moolah to start actually creating their own sound. It’s a story already written, leaving us with the music. Goddamn it! How inconvenient, since the music is just wonderful. And I mean that in every sense of the word. There’s a glistening, omnivorous world of pure wonder packed into these eleven tunes, and it’s infectious. It blinds you with science, alchemy, whatever the hell. The hype is suffocating but it’s true. Their style is apocalyptic, their emotions are genuine, and there’s a bomb—and Cameron Winter doesn’t say it lightly—in his car. I’m sure he’d die on that hill.
Recommended if you’re… Ready for the rapture REALLY!
Listen to: “Getting Killed”
Wednesday - Bleeds
Just one more alt-country group for the road, please! Bleeds happens to be Wednesday’s leanest, loveliest set of songs since their 2017 inception. Be that as it may, in a sea of musicians fusing their own type of “countrygaze” (an execrable genre tag), Wednesday really have to make themselves stand out. What I’ve found is that no one does this style as controlled and confidently as Wednesday do. And it’s so awesome that Hartzman and guitarist MJ Lenderman had their own Buckingham/Nicks romantic split that inspired both Bleeds and already-classic Manning Fireworks. Almost makes you believe in real love, the kind of love you feel for your ex only some of and/or all of the time.
Recommended if you’re… Big into Pepsi, both uncool and very, very, very attractive.
Listen to: “Townies”
Joanne Robertson - Blurrr
We got Grouper at home, except she finally polished her recording setup and created something higher-fi and deeply, deeply enchanting. Much of this record’s power became clear during a break in the late-late-late summer sweetness, when rain swarmed our campus and ushered in that comforting Northeast Ohio bleakness that one can get lost in. Blurrr’s entrance into my mindspace was purely serendipitous. Robertson’s voice cut through the sheets of rain, distant, ineffable, and gorgeous. Her strums are often irregular, buoyed by cellist Oliver Coates’ balmy drones, which echo in such a lovely way. Atmospheric without being suffocating. Liz Harris, you’re a genius and no one should deny you that, but as the stans have said so emphatically, J.R. is coming for your nachos, big sister.
Recommended if you’re… Wetter than a dog, sadder than a clown, and very patient.
Listen to: “Always Were”
ZelooperZ - Dali Aint Dead
The best rap album to come out last month has both nothing to do with the surrealist painter and everything to do with the surrealist painter. Salvador’s iconography and the semi-serious mention of him quitting cigarettes at the end of the aptly named screed “Fuck Cigarettes” aside, the Detroit wordsmith has a style that jells well with the sensations evoked by Dalí’s abstractions. This album grapples with themes of chaos, perversion, beauty, starkness, an ineffable ability to be boundless in their pursuits, and at the center of it all, genuine truth. The LP also explores love as it relates to hate, or pain or oddity. Or drugs. A lot of drugs. Even Ze agrees that kic’ing the nic is just as important as frying your brain on psychedelics because it’s Awesome. It also helps that primary producer Dilip rolls out 16 of the best beats of the year like he’s folding paper. Impeccable.
Recommended if you’re… A Dalí acolyte/admirer/temporary appreciator/ignoramus.
Listen to: “Hypnagogia” (watch the music video too!)
Rochelle Jordan - Through the Wall
I can finally say that stan Twitter is good for something. Now that Sir X the Living Bowling Ball has taken the site by its unruly horns, I have endured uncountable peeks into the war-torn landscape of worldwide pop & pop culture. It’s a delightful ecosystem to peer into and, occasionally, learn about immaculate pop music from. Jordan has a voice and presence that is pure, effortless decadence. Glamour is the game! Nocturnal with no shame! I get it now, I truly get it!!! It’s uncomplicated, perfectly constructed for dancing, lamenting, and drifting in and out of consciousness. Power to Rochelle Jordan, the Rochillers (her fandom I just made) and to uninhibited internet antics.
Recommended if you’re… The least groovy person in your circle of friends.
Listen to: “Close 2 Me”
Albums People Care About (I Believe)
Cardi B - AM I THE DRAMA?
If you have to ask, then you already have the answer. Cardi, god bless her, is too much, too late on this one. In an attempt to make up for lost time, the former superstar does the typical late-era streaming rapper move and includes too many ideas, songs and styles, before capping it off with a smash single from five years ago (still a heater.)
Recommended if you’re… Also the drama.
Listen to: “WAP”
twenty one pilots - Breach
Hell yes, bro. I’m way past ironic detachment at this point. TOP were so instrumental in my musical journey that not a single bad decision can diminish their power over me. Their dorky Protestant-raps tickle me with ease. It doesn’t really matter that they’ve gotten less interesting, and have made virtually no advancements with the drawn-out concept that they’ve been toying with since I was still wearing my Minecraft Creeper hoodie daily. Slop ‘til you drop, boys.
Recommended if you’re… Fifteen years old in a thirty-year-old body.
Listen to: “RAWFEAR”
Maruja - Pain to Power
In a similar vein to TOP, the English post-rockers have been grinding on the same idea since their inception. Their take on rap-rock in the past has oscillated furiously between righteous and soullessly reductive. It makes sense that their “pain to power” is only ever appropriate for EP-sized bursts, but in a near-hour-long package, it’s wallpaper. The sloganeering doesn’t even make it to IDLES territory (i.e so trite it’s undeniable); the songs are just not there.
Recommended if you’re… Woke beyond reproach.
Listen to: “Look Down On Us”
