Off-Kilter Pop/Rock with Font, Yard Act, Pond, Everything Everything, and Islands
These categorizations continue to get stupider and stupider. This time around the name of the game is playful. These 5 bands to varying degrees of rock and pop from post-punk to electro-pop all deliver a pretty playful push and pull that, while nebulous, made sense for me to put together.
What Occurs - Islands
Strange Burden - Font
Font are a Texas band that first caught my eye last year when I saw indie blogs hyping up their song It, which I really enjoyed. It also inspired me to listen to their debut single Sentence 1, which I'll forever be wishing I wasn't so late to. That momentum continued to build into this year with more strong singles and a resulting 30-minute debut album. My favorite of those two follow-up singles was Hey Kekule a groovy Talking Heads-ish combination of dance rhythms and chimes with a neurotic punk intensity.
The first non-single on the album is the opening track The Golden Calf a messy and noisy piece of frenetic post-punk. It doesn't start out that way though, instead preferring to present a much tamer cloudiness. The rapturous conclusion it reaches feels like a hilariously far cry from where the album starts. I'm a little bit less fond of Looking At Engines which goes for this youth affirming group chorus in the vein of Los Campesinos. While the band is okay at capturing that sort of energy it doesn't really fit in with either the song or the seeming malaise of the lyrics at all. The final new deep cut is also the longest song on the record Cattle Prod where the band pushes their compositionally playful style even further. Though I can't say I'm in love with every individual part of it, the song does feature some great performances and individual moments.
So that's Font's debut album Strange Burden and though it definitely has some wrinkles, I quite enjoy it. Though the band is obviously inspired by some of the recent breakthrough records across European post-punk scenes they also deploy much dancier flavors in the vein of Talking Heads or LCD Soundsystem on multiple songs here. The results are a debut album that can feel like a bit of a scant listen at just 7 tracks and 28-minutes, but shows off the ambition and potential the band has to one day craft a masterpiece on the same caliber as their experimental rock ilk. 7.5/10
Where's My Utopia? - Yard Act
A few years ago amidst an emergence of post-punk outfits like Black Midi, Black Country New Road, Squid, Shame, and more, Yard Act was in the mix. They contributed a debut album full of mostly shorter songs that clicked with a variety of post-punk fans. While I wasn't head over heels for the record, the band immediately turned around and began releasing material that I liked quite a bit more. Leading into this debut album there were multiple tracks released since their debut that built up more and more excitement for the record.
One of the most striking things about Yard Act is the demeanor of their lead vocalist. His default cadence is a hilariously "too good for anything" type of punky grit that lacks snarl but provides plenty of sarcasm. On the first record from the band it often came off aimless and defensive. But with a major improvement on the lyrical front this album presents a far more pointed and hilarious version where he sounds like a zoomer Craig Finn lambasting the world around him with a nuance most won't even directly understand. A great example of this is We Make Hits which spins the hilarious hipsterisms of LCD Soundsytem's self-aware You Wanted A Hit into an even more irony soaked embrace of those very hits, and does it with an absolutely killer hook.
Much of the record, as in its first 9 songs, are made up of relatively short and to-the point dancy post-punk bangers. It does occasionally dig into its sentimentalities a little more on moments like the chorus of opening track An Illusion and various points throughout The Undertow. I won't say these moments are necessarily all bad, but it's the irony and sarcasm soaked peaks that really grab my attention. Aside from the fact that it steals a beat directly from Parquet Courts' Wide Awake, I like Dream Job's hilarious monotonous nihilism a lot. I'm also a big fan of the other single When The Laughter Stops which gets a great addition from Katy J Pearson who fits right into the Yard Act world.
The record saves its biggest statements for the final two songs including the 7-minute Blackpool Illuminations. The song begins with a long opening spoken word passage about a traumatic childhood injury. It's one of the most methodical songs here in the way it sort of marches with unending fervor through its various passages. That reaches a surprisingly emotional conclusion when the song returns to spoken word but with a much more grim outlook on it's conclusion. It's where the album's thematic quest for a utopia seems to ultimately end in failure.
Where's My Utopia? is definitely an improvement for Yard Act even if its deep cuts don't quite live up to the expectation set by the singles. I also can't help but point out the crushing omission of their excellent 2023 single The Trench Coat Museum which would have fit right in on the record and been one of its best songs. But regardless I see this as a step in the right direction for a band who have hit on something pretty unique and exciting with their sound and do it just right enough times to serve up a solid record. 7/10
Stung! - Pond
Australian psych rock band Pond is a project I haven't done the best job at keeping up with. I didn't even become aware of the band until their 2017 album The Weather began to pick up momentum in indie circles. Since then I've heard both of the record they dropped, punctuated by a late and short but positive review of their 2021 effort 9. Now after a three year break the band is back with their 10th studio album, one that I wouldn't have listened to without hearing the single So Lo. While the track is absolutely drowning in some of its influences, namely David Bowie's Fame, I find it completely irresistible for some reason. And I'm pretty glad the infectious nature of the song inspired me to dig deeper into the record.
For a start it exposed me to Neon River, an equally derivative track that has flavors closer to classic rock including a very recognizable guitar riff. But once again despite the influences I find myself enjoying the track. Those more rock flavored influences pop up on a few other highlights throughout the album like Boys Don't Crash. They're also present on elements of the record's 8-minute centerpiece Edge Of The World Pt. 3, a song I like despite the fact that it may wander on a bit more than it really needs to.
Ultimately though, this album isn't too hard to dissect. Even being loosely familiar with both the band itself and the psych rock influences they've long pulled from this album feels like about what I'd expect. While it doesn't do much to elevate itself from a sea of contemporaries it also doesn't really ever feel like its missing the mark. If the kind of blissed out, not too heavy, not too sunny psychedelia with a little bit of rock heft behind it is your kinda thing, this album is definitely worth a shot. 6/10
Mountainhead - Everything Everything
English art pop and art rock outfit Everything Everything are probably the most difficult to contextualize band on this list. While they certainly aren't a band I expect consistent masterpiece albums from, they are strikingly unique in nearly every way and when they're operating at their peak the strange and impossibly infectious bombast of their sound is unmatched. Even though I wasn't head over heels for their last album Raw Data Feel like some critics were I did enjoy it more than the previous two and that had me looking forward to this record. Certain singles from the record also helped me build up hype, though they grew on me slowly like many great Everything Everything songs in the past.
Cold Reactor dropped last year and it wasn't until the record was close to dropping that it really began to click with me. The End Of The Contender was more of an immediate favorite and a song I like more seemingly every time I heard it. One thing the band continues to do is take hooks that feel extremely strange and stand out like a sore thumb out of the gate and somehow morph them into irresistible and incredibly memorable moments. That's the case with R U Happy? whose chorus is sung exactly like it's title is spelled, if that makes any sense, and I love it. Enter The Mirror holds off until just the right moment to erupt into shimmery synths and an elevated performance of it's hook that is incredibly satisfying and one of the standout moments on the record.
Despite the highlights, this album is a bulk 55 minutes that doesn't really feel like it lives up to that billing. Moments like hearing TV Dog and Canary back to back slows the album's momentum down quite a bit and probably should have gotten a second look for slimming down the tracklist a bit. The record also doesn't end on the strongest note highlighted by the strange Your Money, My Summer which never warmed up on me and closer The Witness whose walls of surreal synths barely cover for the complete lack of catchy refrains. Despite the occasional whiffs that would have made pairing the record down a good idea, there's plenty of strong material here. While ir may not be the best songs or the best project I've ever heard from Everything Everything, it certainly reminds me of the potential they have to delight around every turn. 6.5/10
I have a huge soft spot for the brief run of indie rock weirdos The Unicorns. Even though most of their run took place before I was even born I have a lot of fondness for it, punctuated by their only album Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?. That's why I've continued to pay attention to what has popped up in the band's wake, most notably Islands, a band containing two of The Unicorns original line-up. Though they're predominately known for their 2006 effort Return To The Sea, I've also found myself fond of other moments in their career like 2021's Islomania. Though I didn't have any strong thoughts on the Islands record that dropped last year, off-the-wall singles like Drown A Fish and Boll Weevil caught my attention enough to dig into What Occurs in more detail.
While the record gets off to a strong start with the title track and opener, I wish it maintained its most intriguing instincts more across the album. The entire run of songs between the first and second single really fail to serve up any ideas that are attention-grabbing or even many memorable refrains, something Islands normally has in spades. That changes with David Geffen's Jackson Pollock, an achingly slow song but one whose interesting lyrics and intimate almost spoken performance make for a really unique moment right in the middle of the album.
Unfortunately, that hardly creates a shift in energy across the back half of the album. Though What Occurs has a few flash moments and manages to capitalize on some compelling intimacy, in large part it falls for some of the same pitfalls that the band's previous record did. For a project that just dropped it's liveliest record in ages a few years ago, this album is tragically routine. 5/10
