The Alt Weekly Roundup (10/23)
Posted: by The Editor
The Alternative Weekly Roundup is a column where our staff plugs a variety of new releases in a concise, streamlined format. Albums, singles, videos, and live sets. Check back each Monday to see what we were jamming the week prior.
Rew – “Plastic Lungs”
One-man band Rew just signed to Philly’s Born Losers Records (home to Anthony Green, Cathedral Bells, TrueAnon, and Bleary Eyed among others), and to celebrate he’s released the new single “Plastic Lungs.” Like the best songs off last year’s Quiet All the Time, “Plastic Lungs” captures the feeling of walking home alone in the rain, a dreary dreampop track that should appeal to fans of Born Losers alumni Knifeplay.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Afterbirth – In But Not Of
Slam metal inherently requires buy-in. You have the pig squeal vocals that sit over everything. It’s a logical extreme of a certain subset of death metal in certain ways. You can’t get much more ridiculous. Afterbirth takes some of those tropes and adds some flourishes. There are prog deviations and other outside metal influences. But it never becomes proggy or experimental for its own sake, working to make the song more interesting than anything else.
Hugo Reyes | @hvreyes5
The American Analog Set – “Konika and Malico”
Keys jingle over a slinky baseline, and just like that The American Analog Set is back. “Konika and Malico” is one of two singles off the band’s upcoming For Forever, the band’s seventh studio album and first in 18 years. By the sounds of the track and opener “Camp Don’t Count,” it’ll be like they never left; “Konika and Malico” is the same kind of stretched-thin indie rock they’d been making on later records after getting too lively for slowcore. It’s soft and stirring, cut from a similar cloth as your most broken-in Sea and Cake LP, winding melodies over stately riffs.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Odium – Demo 1994
Recently, I was idly scrolling Bandcamp and came across a newly uncovered demo from 1994 for a band called Odium. The description was interesting, boasting members from the influential hardcore band Merauder and the underrated Troycore group Withstand. Though you may have preconceptions of something more menacing and closer to the “jud-jud” guitar tone of metallic hardcore, there is very little on the demo. It has as much in common with a Slayer record as anything that the hardcore scene produced in the early 1990s.
Hugo Reyes | @hvreyes5
Neighboring Sounds – Cold in the Smart City
We’ve written a lot about the various great emo scenes in Indonesia and Japan, but it’s time the world takes notice of the Norwegian emo scene. Youth Pictures of Florence Henderson and You Could Be a Cop are mainstays, of course, along with up-and-comers Flight Mode and Probleman, and with Cold in the Smart City, Neighboring Sounds is making a case to be the best of all. The band’s take on emo is clearly informed by Sunny Day Real Estate and pre-“The Middle” Jimmy Eat World, with a decidedly hookier bent; it’s revivalist in the sense that it calls back to an earlier era while never feeling outdated.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Chinese Telephones – “Radianna” & “Come and See Me”
There is something quaint about new music from Chinese Telephones. In the 2000s, you couldn’t avoid the type of pop-punk they were writing. Of course, Punknews users gave their self-titled record four and a half stars in 2007. Who are we kidding to pretend like the website that came to define a certain subsect of punk wouldn’t like what they described as Screeching Weasles-indebted punk? The two songs released for Outta My Hands aren’t revelatory; I would call it sturdy pop-punk. You won’t find any surprises, but that doesn’t make Chinese Telephones any less enjoyable.
Hugo Reyes | @hvreyes5
Mini Trees – “Push and Pull”
Mini Trees hasn’t lost momentum since 2021’s Always in Motion LP. Lexi Vega’s been dropping remixes of cuts off that album all year, and she’s finally put out a new track, the wispy, autumnal “Push and Pull,” which feels far higher-stakes than anything else she’s released before.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
The Alternative’s ‘New Music Friday’ playlist
Each week our editor Lindsy Carrasquillo compiles a playlist of songs our staff has been jamming. We post it on Fridays on Twitter and then include it in each edition of the Weekly Roundup to make sure you don’t miss any of the great music we’re recommending.
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