First Listens: March 2024

I like to keep track of albums I'm hearing for the first time. I stole this practice from the great critic Daniel Bromfield, hoping in part that doing so will make me write something as good as his review of Tim Hecker's No Highs. It hasn't happened yet, but I do like looking back at the end of the month to see where I've been. I'm not ranking or reviewing them, but since I'm only counting albums I've made it all the way through, you can assume they're either good enough to keep me from putting on something else or so bland I forgot I had it on. You make the call!

Here are my First Listens for March 2024. Those marked with the asterisk are highly reco'd.

Gaadge, Somewhere Down Below (2023)
The rare album that sounds better on laptop speakers than in headphones.

SUCKER, Seein' God EP (2024)
There are always a ton of young bands who want to sound like Hum. In 1995, that meant you could think of yourself as adjacent to a band that was adjacent to the mainstream—far enough away not to lose cred, close enough to build an audience. In 2000, it meant you could make one of the era’s greatest albums and sell a million copies to what some would call the wrong audience. In 2024, it means you're fully underground, and that you probably have a bigger audience than those '95 bands did. Selling records is another matter altogether.

Genital Shame, Chronic Illness Wish (2024) *
Phenomenally good experimental black metal from the person who coined the genre TWBM—Trans Woman Black Metal. Erin Dawson's music is both rich and brittle; she builds some pleasingly ugly ambient soundscapes; she has loads of riffs. Sometimes Chronic Illness Wish seems like it's a black metal album that's having a dream about being a darkwave or dream-pop album. There's probably something to be said about how the dark, abrasive, and ambiguous beauty of black metal is fertile ground for trans musicians, and for my $ the level of power and vulnerability Erin's able to draw out here makes it a top-tier metal release and probably simply a top-tier release so far this year. One of my faves and an album I'd like to find an excuse to write more about.

funeral homes, Blue Heaven (2022)
Fizzy shoegaze

Rocket, Versions of You (2022) *
Like SUCKER, but with very strong hooks.

Tosser, Total Restraint (2020)
Like SUCKER, but with very strong riffs. (No disrespect to SUCKER, I'm just enjoying my bit.)

Shabaka, Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace (2024) *
For whatever reason, Shabaka's work with Sons of Kemet and The Comet is Coming never grabbed me. Maybe I just don't like the saxophone anymore, I don't know, but now that he's focusing on the flute I have a fuller appreciation of how flexible and nuanced his playing is, and for how grand the world he's built for it feels. I loved his soloing on Amaro Freitas' new record, and the work he puts in here is uniformly great. Another top-tier record.

Gatecreeper, Superstitious Vision (2024)
Desert death metal

Vive la Void, Vive la Void (2018)
Even ten or so years after the Stranger Things soundtrack, I still can't decide if this kind of '80s movie OST pastiche dark-synth stuff is supposed to be ironic or not, which makes it difficult for me to understand how to relate to it. A me problem, for sure, everyone else seems to be having a great time.

Knocked Loose, You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To (2024)
A little knuckle-dragging never hurt anybody, but I only have room for like 1.5 metalcore bands in my heart and I'm probably more of a Jesus Piece girl. This one turns me on more than what I've heard from Knocked Loose in the past, though. I want to spend a bit more time with it but when music makes such a strong point of telling you how serious it's being, I find it very hard to take it seriously.

Jackson do Pandeiro, Nossas Raízes (1974) *
While writing my review of Amaro Freitas' Y'Y, I was trying to learn a bit more about regional Brazilian styles like baião, of which Pandeiro is one of the greats. I don't know any of his stuff beyond this album, but it's exceptionally good.

Offernat, Where Nothing Grows (2024)
Skinned alive! Left to die!

Meridian Brothers, Meridian Brothers and El Grupo Renacimiento (2022) *
I texted like fifteen people about this record, I lost a whole day to it. This guy Eblis Alvarez plays around with traditional Latin American genres and filters them through a kind of junk-drawer psychedelic sensibility. For this record, he invented a salsa band from the 1970s and pretended that he'd "rediscovered" them; the album is the "result" of "their" "collaboration" "together," a legit salsa record that sounds like it was recorded by a hip young-ish guy. Great Tiny Desk, too.

Nine Inch Nails, Fixed (1992)
I love that Trent Reznor insisted that this and Further Down the Spiral weren't remixes so much as reinterpretations and re-representations of the proper album versions. The title conceit works better on this series—I had a cute little "if it ain't broken don't fixed it" joke in here for a moment—but for me Fixed feels like it's looking at Broken the whole time, whereas Further Down the Spiral almost seems unaware of The Downward Spiral's existence. Relatedly, I've been thinking about transforming all my Grateful Dead/Dead and Company energy into NINergy.

Kyoko Takenaka & Tomoki Sanders, Planet Q (2023)
Tomoki is Pharoah's kid, and the homies at In Sheep's Clothing had a hand in putting this out, so it sounds pretty much exactly like you'd imagine: brassy, lush, spacey, a lotus floating in still and rippling pools simultaneously. Best part is when it gets a little cute.

Tidiane Thiam, Africa Yontii (2024)
Beautiful Senegalese folk on the undefeated Sahel Sounds.

Guerra / de Paiva / Hornsby / Konradsen, Contrahouse (2024)
The literal Bruce Hornsby playing around with deep house and ECM jazz. Alas, "Big Time Sensuality 2" isn't the Bjork song.

Bury Them and Keep Quiet, Eternal Transience of Being (2022)
A canonical work in the history of TWBM that I was hipped to by Leah B. Levinson's write-up of the Genital Shame record, in which Leah dropped like a thousand artist names.

Enzo Randisi, Enzo Randisi (1979)
Jeremy Larson texted me "Can I interest you in an Italian private press vibraphone-led jazz fusion album that features some guy named Enzo Randisi on vibes and his son, Riccardo Randisi, on the Rhodes and ARP?" The answer is yes, and it always will be.

Victory Over the Sun, Dance You Monster to My Soft Song! (2023)
TWBM canon

Lust Hag, Mistress in the Mirror (2023)
TWBM canon

Earth, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (2008)
Fine, but for me not the drone-metal masterpiece it's made out to be.

Earth, 2 (Special Low Frequency Version) (1993) *
Even better than the drone-metal masterpiece it's made out to be.

Sonic Youth & Jim O’Rourke, Invito Al Cielo (SYR 3) (1998) *
In college, anyone you asked would say that the SYR records were unlistenable and try to make you listen to EVOL or something. I'm not saying I would've understood this record in 2005—in fact, sure, I would've hated this record in 2005—but it's not nearly as impenetrable as I thought it might be. At times it's genuinely beautiful, but Jim O'Rourke's presence makes that a given.

Alice Coltrane, The Carnegie Hall Concert (2024) *
You really just have to list the personnel: Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Cecil McBee, Tulsi Reynolds, Jimmy Garrison, Archie Shepp, Ed Blackwell, Clifford Jarvis, Kumar Kramer. An exceptionally good ensemble led by one of jazz's most strident and self-assured players at the height of her power.

Boris, Amplifier Worship (1998) *
I'll say!

Loveliescrushing, girl echo sun veils (2010) *
It's fun to think that shoegaze was unfashionable for like 30 years and these guys just kept making gigantic, impenetrable, beautiful music. Like peering at an English garden through thick layers of sheer fabric.

Hello Mary, Hello Mary (2023) *
For reasons I hope I don't have to explain, I'm a total sucker for exactly this kind of music: heavy '90s-indebted alt-rock played by women. There are a bunch of those bands on this list, but I think this is the best of them, or at least their self-titled from last year is the best record of the bunch. The three members of Hello Mary are all like 19 and 21, and this is their first full-length, but the compositional sophistication and the ghosty Mary Timony harmonies feel much more seasoned; I think they're doing a rondo in "Special Treat." I'm like 7% worried that they're an industry plant, mostly because they have a Rolling Stone profile but I've never heard anyone talk about them, which couldn't possibly be evidence of my becoming out of touch. Anyway, even if they're secretly being propped by Republic, the songs work for me, so I don't care too much. I'm more concerned that they called Car Seat Headrest and Twin Peaks "classic indie" and one of them said Neutral Milk Hotel is music her dad likes in this RS piece. Anyway I appreciate them living the 90s girlhood I never got to have is my point.

La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela, The Tamburas of Pandit Pran Nath (1999)
Text exchange with Jonathan Williger: