Distortion-soaked and dark: Rural France's SLOTHS is their jangliest, most baroque record yet — organs, horns, and mellotron layered over buzzing guitars, celebrating the absurdities of getting older while holding firm to their "Pavement playing Teenage Fanclub" mission statement. Publicity Department's S. Michael Brook And The Steam-Powered Trains delivers half an hour of crunchy guitars and two-part vocal harmonies, power pop influences distorted through 90s alt rock sensibilities. Coma Beach's Passion/Bliss is a five-track fever dream straddling punk abrasion and post-punk hallucination, steeped in Beckett's existential turmoil, while Padded Waltz's Hand Me Down gives shame, embarrassment, and insecurity their own voice, asking how those feelings shape who we become.
Alternative Rock releases
“'A Madman's Dream/Mind Descending' fuses punk’s feral bite with post‑punk’s cold precision, lurching between fever‑dream urgency and razor‑edged clarity”