It’s been an eventful week. Riot Fest is back in its longtime home and FYA Fest is looking for a new one. I kicked off my week by seeing Slipknot and Knocked Loose, and right after that, Knocked Loose announced a headlining tour (with Militarie Gun, Drain, and The Garden). For more clowns and facepaint, Gathering of the Juggalos goes down this weekend in Ohio.

As for this week’s new albums, I highlight five below, and Bill tackles more in Indie Basement, including Pom Poko, The Soundcarriers, HiFi Sean & David McAlmont, Quivers, and the new Panda Bear & Sonic Boom EP with mariachi versions of songs from 2022’s Reset. On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Post Malone, YG, Beabadoobee, Charly Bliss, your arms are my cocoon, Thotcrime, Family Dinner, Morgan Wade, Jae Skeese, NoCap, Dark Tranquillity, Durkalini & Surf Gang, Muscadine Bloodline, Foster the People, Blind Pilot, 38 Spesh, Gucci Mane & DJ Drama, Horse Jumper of Love, Ray LaMontagne, Extinction A.D., Delicate Steve, Matty (Badbadnotgood), Hamish Hawk, Lesibu Grand, Rosie Lowe, Tony Martinez, Ben Sollee, Shelby Lynne, Chuck Johnson, Lindsay Reamer, the Holy Blade (God’s Hate/Twitching Tongues) EP, Bella White’s covers EP, the Koreless EP, the Aoife O’Donovan & Hawktail EP, the live Palehound album, the live Willi Carlisle album, the Piri Reis anthology, Velocity Girl’s remixed and expanded edition of Copacetic, and the 15th anniversary edition of Dinosaur Jr.’s Farm.

Read on for my picks. What’s your favorite release of the week?

Gel – Persona EP (Blue Grape Music)
The NJ hardcore band deliver their catchiest, most memorable, and best record yet without toning down an ounce of their usual fury

Whenever a hardcore band starts getting hype from outside the hardcore scene, it’s hard not to wonder if they’ll lean into the crossover appeal and start embracing grunge or indie rock or some other non-hardcore genre. A lot of great music has come from bands doing that, but it’s also exciting to hear a band keep pushing themselves within the confines of heavy, aggressive hardcore, and that’s exactly what Gel did on their new EP Persona. It was produced and engineered by Jon Markson, who’s become a go-to guy for hardcore and hardcore-related bands with wide appeal (including Drug Church, Drain, Koyo, One Step Closer, and more), and the band credits Jon with having “an ear for things that we wouldn’t have immediately had an ear for.” Jon also helps Gel get a much bigger, clearer sound than they had on last year’s great Only Constant LP, and the production upgrade works perfectly with the evolution of Gel’s songwriting. The songs are catchier, more memorable, and more unpredictable but they’re never more melodic or less abrasive than the songs on Only Constant. Gel have clearly become a tighter, stronger band and far better songwriters than they were just a year or so ago, and Persona completely captures the jump they’ve made since Only Constant came out. It’s the best thing they’ve done yet.

Combat – Stay Golden (Counter Intuitive)
The year’s most ambitious emo concept album comes from rising Baltimore band Combat

Combat are a new-ish emo/indie/punk band from Baltimore, and their sophomore album (and Counter Intuitive debut) is a highly ambitious concept album / semi-rock opera with recurring lyrical themes, musical reprises, and two lengthy multi-part suites. It takes its cues from albums like Bomb the Music Industry!’s Vacation, Prince Daddy & the Hyena’s Cosmic Thrill Seekers, and Origami Angel’s Gami Gang (the latter two of which also came out on Counter Intuitive), and it was also produced by Origami Angel’s Ryland Heagy, who helped make Combat sound massive compared to their tinny 2022 debut LP Text Me When You Get Back without abandoning any of the band’s raw charm. I feel pretty safe saying it’s my favorite emo album I’ve heard all year, and you can read much more about it here.

Tinashe – Quantum Baby (Nice Life/Tinashe Music)
Tinashe follows her surprise hit “Nasty” with a brief new album that does what the airy R&B singer does best

Tinashe’s relationship with the mainstream has long been rocky and unpredictable. After a series of impressive self-released mixtapes, she signed to RCA for her 2014 debut album Aquarius and the album birthed her first charting hit, “2 On.” Aquarius had a couple other minor hits on the R&B charts, but after that, the constant evolution of her artistry was met by diminishing commercial returns. She ended up parting ways with RCA after 2018’s Joyride, put out two independent albums, and then signed to Ricky Reed’s Atlantic imprint Nice Life for 2023’s BB/ANG3L, the first installment of a planned trilogy. Then, the internet worked its magic. Back in April, Tinashe released “Nasty,” the first single from the second act of her new trilogy, Quantum Baby. It’s a great song, but it pretty much sounds like any old Tinashe song. The difference, is that this one went super viral thanks to a TikTok trend soundtracked by a 10-second clip of the song, and the “Nasty”-related memes just kept coming from there (you may know it as the “is somebody gonna match my freak?” song). It turned into her first hit since “2 On,” and it put a whole lot more eyes on Quantum Baby than BB/ANG3L had. The attention is long overdue, and hopefully it’ll make a lot of people realize that she’s got plenty more where “Nasty” came from. Like BB/ANG3L, Quantum Baby is a short project (eight songs in 22 minutes), and most of it has the same airy, electronic R&B appeal that Tinashe has had since her influential early mixtapes. The one song that breaks from her usual ethereal vibes is also the one that sounds most like an instant hit, “No Broke Boys,” a “No Scrubs”/”Bills, Bills, Bills”-style anthem with a group-vocal singalong that’ll be stuck in your head after one listen. What “Nasty” proves, though, is that Tinashe doesn’t need to follow an established hitmaking formula to have a hit. She just needs the world to realize how infectious it is when she does what she’s always done best.

Starflyer 59 – Lust For Gold (Velvet Blue Music)
Jason Martin revisits his ’90s roots on his shoegaziest album in years

As shoegaze began to interact more with punk, metal, and other forms of heavier music throughout the 2010s, one band that was pinpointed as an influence on heavy shoegaze was Riverside, CA band Starflyer 59, whose first two albums (1994’s Silver and 1995’s Gold) put a doomy twist on the shoegazy sounds that were coming out of the UK. Bandleader Jason Martin has kept the band alive for 30+ years straight but started moving on from shoegaze over the years, but now, he has a lust for Gold. He calls his shoegaziest album in years “a longing to return to youth, to that time when music felt new and exciting, where it felt like the future was wide open,” and the lyrics of the song “1995” echo that same sentiment. But, he adds, “I wasn’t trying to recreate the past, as much as I was just trying to feel excited about the process.” Lust For Gold is indeed drenched in the sludgy, wall-of-sound shoegaze that Jason brought to Silver and Gold, but you’d never mistake it for one of his ’90s albums. A big part of that is because he more recently developed a brooding baritone that brings to mind artists like present-day Nick Cave and The National, and also just because his songwriting has evolved so much over the years. Lust For Gold has the urgency of Jason’s ’90s classics and the reflective tone of his more recent work all at once. It’s not returning to a form as much as it’s reimagining one.

Wishy – Triple Seven (Winspear)
Wishy swirl together a range of ’90s rock subgenres on their debut LP

After a pair of promising 2023 EPs, Indianapolis’ Wishy have unveiled even more catchy, shoegazy alt-rock on their debut full-length album. Songwriters Kevin Krauter and Nina Pitchkites have a natural chemistry as they trade off on vocals, which sends dreamier tracks like “Love on the Outside,” “Triple Seven,” and “Sick Sweet” (with its whoop of exuberance) soaring. That sweetness is tempered on “Game,” where Krauter and Pitchkites’ harmonies float above squalling guitars, and closing track “Spit,” which really leans into the ’90s feel. Earlier, “Busted” recalls The Strokes-style indie rock, and the intro to “Honey” made me think of nothing so much as The New Radicals’ 1998 hit “You Get What You Give.” Wishy use their influences as starting points to build on, though, and in their place under the broad shoegaze umbrella, they stand out with their knack for writing songs you keep wanting to come back to. [Amanda Hatfield]

—

Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Pom Poko, The Soundcarriers, HiFi Sean & David McAlmont, Quivers, and Panda Bear & Sonic Boom‘s mariachi EP.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases archive.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out our new episode with The Get Up Kids about Something To Write Home About for its 25th anniversary.

Pick up the BrooklynVegan x Alexisonfire special edition 80-page magazine, which tells the career-spanning story of Alexisonfire and comes on its own or paired with our new exclusive AOF box set and/or individual reissues, in the BV shop. Also pick up the new Glassjaw box set & book, created in part with BrooklynVegan.

And, if you haven’t already, subscribe to the new BrooklynVegan digital magazine for free! Our first three editions are out now, with cover stars Jessica Pratt, Mannequin Pussy and Paramore.