Guts Club make gay doom music. Their experimental sound on past records has ranged from, in their own words, “subdued yet lyrically brutal outsider folk songs” to “a crushingly intense five amp wall of sound.” This is my first time making their sonic acquaintance: a four-track release with songs ranging between seven-and-a-half and nine-and-a-half minutes long, threads of free jazz, stoner metal, and doomgaze woven throughout it. Mainstay of the project Lindsey Baker (who is also a talent buyer currently at No Dice) recruited L. Jett on baritone saxophone and regulars of the local scene Abbey Byers and Violet Jimenez on drums and guitar, respectively. The sound brings to mind Spongehead, a New York noise rock band of the ‘90s that also employed saxophone and screaming lyrics, but here the saxophone adds to that wall of sound, an endless mirage in front of oneself, instead of puncturing the sheet of guitar drones with an aggressive sax solo here and there. The bari sax works with the guitars to add to that constant thrum, giving it texture and shape, like the instrumental equivalent of vocal fry. Baker’s lyrics speak of pain, abandonment, isolation—all standard for doom and drone music—but her yelled lyrics set beneath the guitars and sax make for an eerie, atmospheric EP grounded in this constant pain, rather than being large and imposing in its anger. —Daniella Cherner
JJ Shred (a.k.a. Jeremy Joyce) has taken on many roles in his music—street poet, intergalactic funk master wielding a cosmic-karmic-ray-gun that polymorphs gators into dudes, and with the release of his latest seven-inch, a troubled young punk. The title track, “Bad Kid,” brings a thrashy, drum-driven story about a boy dealt a bad hand turning to a life of crime and violence. It’s a story that’s been told a million times, but Joyce writes a good hook while painting a sympathetic picture. The next half of the record, “TakeALookAtYoSelf” takes a blues and rockabilly approach to another classic trope: the anti-shit-talking song with a big guitar solo. For better or worse, the whole release oozes of biker guy, dad-rock energy. But I think that’s the goal. Joyce clearly loves making music, to the point that he’s manufactured multiple personas to explore new genres and bands much like other musical shapeshifters (George Clinton, David Bowie). And in the age of streaming and SEO, making these alter-egos entirely separate entities is bold. It breaks up your online presence and perhaps your chance of getting noticed. It’s even more admirable to come out with an actual release rather than just another digital single drop. This approach isn’t especially groundbreaking, but you gotta respect the craft of presenting music physically (with neat little stickers), and Joyce’s commitment to exploring genre and constantly reinventing himself. —Dalton Spangler
From local (and my personal) indie favorite People Museum comes a new live album recorded at the Marigny Opera House, and it feels true to their stage presence and live sound. This album includes songs from past releases, as well as two new ones, “A Weight Gets Lighter,” and “With You,” and even two Radiohead covers, “All I Need,” and “Weird Fishes.” Their past work leans more heavily into the electronic side of synthpop, such as their 2021 EP I Could Only See Night, and while that electro influence is still present in more recent releases, like 2023’s Relic, it’s been toned down and softened. That holds true for this release too, and rather than a stylistic departure, it feels more like calming down, becoming quietly and casually confident. On this album they still use a vocoder and some drum machines, and backing synths still provide melody alongside more traditional ensemble instruments, but it’s less heavy-handed. It’s cinematic, lush, and encompasses just as much of the listener’s space as their live performances. The increasingly atmospheric sound is no surprise, given the band’s recent endeavor into writing the original score for DUSK, the headlining ballet in the second program of the Marigny Opera Ballet’s 11th season. People Museum’s move towards a more ethereal sound is solidly anchored by the horn riffs and grooving rhythm section throughout the album, even as lead singer Claire Givens’ voice tugs at its moorings, letting the album float but still maintain its grounding. —Daniella Cherner
The announcement for Porridge Radio’s latest EP, The Machine Starts To Sing, was a bittersweet one: This release, an immediate follow-up to their October 2024 album Clouds In The Sky They Will Always Be There For Me, is also the band’s last after 10 years together. The songs—all written and recorded during the sessions for Clouds In The Sky—are a well-suited swan song. The band wastes no time delving into the emotional mire with melancholic and slightly sinister opener “Machine Starts To Sing.” Reminiscent of OK Computer-era Radiohead, this track finds frontperson and songwriter Dana Margolin at the height of her powers, her voice matching and then surpassing the intensity of the instruments. “OK” is a delicate song, with Margolin’s lyrics of love and loss as well as intense vocals highlighting the contradictions and ambiguities of emotion and experience (“So tell me if you hate yourself / And tell me if you change the world”). “Don’t Want To Dance” is arguably Porridge Radio at their very finest, the song’s arrangement evolving into a full theatrical production as Margolin wrestles with the pain of yearning (“It’s too late to try, but I’m not done trying / I’m not ready to stop loving you yet”). For all the EP’s exploration of the more melancholic side of existence, closer “I’ve Got a Feeling (Stay Lucky)” ends on a more optimistic note: “Write down what you want and talk to it / February is a feeling inside of me and I’m ending it.” After all, existence is a contradictory, ever-changing thing, and where there is frustration and despair there is also hope. —Mary Beth Campbell
A man from Uttar Pradesh (northern India) finds himself in the U.S. Army following the expiration of his student visa and meets a sweet Kentucky girl at the military dance. A couple decades later, their son strikes up a conversation with a waitress at her grandmother’s bistro in Atlanta. The two start sending each other home recordings, and before they know it they’re recording overdubs for their self-titled sophomore album at the illustrious Shangri-La studios in Malibu, with their 6-year-old lending percussion. This multicultural, musical fairy tale of sorts is the origin story of the Athens-based duo Sofie Lute and Ranjan Avasthi, who perform as “the Rishis” (after Rishi, the aforementioned 6-year-old). Their new release is the highly anticipated companion piece to 2022’s August Moon (named after their other son, Agast Muni). It brings fresh doses of the ‘90s-tinged, intellectual indie grooves we’ve come to expect from the Elephant 6 collective (under which Primordial Void and Cloud Recordings fall—think Neutral Milk Hotel and of Montreal), with some Liz Phair influence when Lute takes lead vocals on “Robot Factory.” There are musical and lyrical themes inspired by Avasthi’s heritage, especially with “Dharamsala” and “Rishikesh,” the instrumental finale likely to leave listeners a bit closer to enlightenment. Avasthi’s and Lute’s guitar and vocals are rounded out by a reputable crew of Elephant 6 alumni (to include members of Superchunk, The Olivia Tremor Control, and Japancakes) comprising a mini-orchestra complete with horns, strings, woodwinds, and even a taishogoto (a guitar-typewriter hybrid). This lush instrumentation enriches the 10 tracks that range in mood from the peppy opener “Coloring” or cheeky “Criminal Activities,” to the dreamier “Buffalo” and “Stratosphere.” If it leaves you wanting more, you’re in luck: They’ve teased that a third album (named for their daughter Rhea, of course) is in the works. –Angela Calonder
The Self-Help Tapes first appeared on my radar with the 2022 release of Strange Sounds: Volume 2, a sampler of various artists on local label Strange Daisy. It’s a gorgeous, colorful double album, and track one on side D reads, “The Self-Help Tapes // The Bliss & Oblivion,” a track originally off of 2021’s Erit Lux. Such a name intrigued me, caught my attention, and the emotional, guitar-driven indie rock sound that began playing when the needle hit the groove kept it. Contrary to my more recent introduction, The Self-Help Tapes has been a project of New Orleans native (and ANTIGRAVITY contributor) Kevin Comarda since around 2008, when he began performing under that name. He had previously played in Community, the Westbank-based indie rock band of the late ‘90s and early 2000s. In its early years, The Self-Help Tapes was entirely a solo project, though over time Comarda has leaned into collaboration, and this release sees the project as a full, four-person band, including Robert Landry, the drummer for ska punk band BAD OPERATION. A solid indie rock effort, this album isn’t anything new or crazy, but the slightly fuzzed out guitars, driving-but-not-too-aggressive drums, and resigned and searching lyrics make it a good pick for any fan of mellow indie rock and shoegaze ambience. —Daniella Cherner
Horror, Bartees Strange’s third album, is about facing and overcoming one’s fears: the myriad, sometimes mundane fears that we all face, the fears inherent in creating art, and the fears that Strange himself has experienced living as a Black, queer person in a country which has never been safe. Despite the title and album art—which has Strange outfitted like esteemed vampire hunter and daywalker Blade—Horror rarely delves into goth or hard rock (exceptions being “Lovers” and “Loop Defenders”). The songs do, however, showcase his predilection to hop between genres. Refusing to be consigned to a single descriptor, Strange draws inspiration from rap, hip-hop, soul, funk, indie rock, classic rock, pop punk, country, and electronica. Though this is overall a decent album, Horror falls short of its potential, lacking the luster of Strange’s previous efforts. A large part of the issue is that the album is co-produced by Jack Antonoff (Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, Lorde), whose production style is too slick and, frankly, basic for most of Strange’s music. Antonoff’s forte is not, and has never been, intelligent, guitar-driven music. Having said that, there are several catchy and thoughtful tracks that rise above this limitation (“Sober,” “Wants Needs,” “Baltimore,” “Lovers,” “Lie 95”), all of which are worth exploring as they navigate Strange’s fears and related epiphanies. —Mary Beth Campbell
T.A.C.K. brings homemade hooks and lures straight from the proverbial trailer park—boot-stomping, blue-collar, literally phoned-in cow-punk that reels you in with every rough guitar strum and trash-can-lid-laden drum hit. They’re a two-piece band from New Orleans comprising Stella on drums and Roach on guitar, with both pulling double duty on vocals which they perform through old-school rotary phones instead of traditional microphones. TACKLE is their first full-length album following a small self-titled EP released in 2023. Recorded by local punk-savant David Sabludowsky and mastered by indie-head Ross Farbe (Video Age, Esther Rose, The Lostines), the lo-fi, rough-around-the-edges quality of their live performances translates crisply to recording. Possessing an ironic presence, T.A.C.K. writes light-hearted, fast and dirty tracks about traditional country subjects like trucks and tailgates, but with a quick wit. Outside the usual subject matter though, T.A.C.K. tackles some heavier subjects like sexual objectification on “YES CHEF” or the suffocation of working a shit job on “BLUE RACER.” The latter directly uses the imagery of a racer snake crawling up your spine to illustrate the constricting feeling of the day-in, day-out grind, while its comparatively long run-time and its slow, foot-tapping beat (compared to their usual minute-long boot stompers) musically reflects it as well. Much like how a good tackle box is prepared with everything you need to go down to the fishing hole, TACKLE covers its bases while demonstrating a fresh take on an often gimmicky genre. —Dalton Spangler
In Katherine Min’s posthumously published second novel, a troubled daughter seeks vengeance on the man she believes to be responsible for her mother’s death: a serial Asian fetishist. Omniscient narration outlines the thrilling trajectory of its main characters: Kyoko, the murderous punk rocker; Daniel, the classical violinist and calculating Casanova; and Alma, the one who got away. This book is gripping, yet playful in confronting the many thorny facets of Asian fetishization. Min’s prose reminds me of Tom Robbins at his best—some lines were so well-written (and uncomfortable) that I had to double back to fully appreciate them. I’m grateful to the author’s daughter Kayla Min Andrews, whose dedicated efforts revived this formidable work. It’s a tender tribute to her mother’s craft. I loved reading it, but ultimately find The Fetishist difficult to pin down. Certain characters absolutely sparkle with life, and others feel stereotypical. While it’s clear Min was a master at sculpting sentences, the story raises nuanced questions that its tidy resolution feels at odds with. Like The Fetishist’s provocative subject matter, that’s just something readers will have to confront themselves. —Terra Durio
Oral histories are usually quick to read. Paper of Wreckage, an oral history of the New York Post during the years it’s mostly been owned by Rupert Murdoch, is not. It’s not the fault of the authors. Former Post editors, they’ve interviewed hundreds of Post journalists and others connected with the publication, distilling that down to a mostly fascinating account of the paper. It’s the actual facts that make the book hard to consume. Murdoch transformed a once liberal-leaning daily into the print centerpiece of his media empire, where even scrupulously reported political stories are phrased, headlined, and photo-illustrated in line with his leanings. That set the stage for his creation of Fox News, for today’s right-wing media ecosystem, and for perennial Post subject Donald Trump. Those basic facts, undisputed by the authors’ sources, along with the frequent appearance of characters like Roy Cohn, can make it difficult to enjoy the many well-told tales of 1980s New York, reportorial derring-do (which sometimes crossed its own ethical lines), unparalleled headline wit, and general staff debauchery. But if you can stomach it, the book is still worth reading for a unique look at how the media got this way. —Steven Melendez
My introduction to Marco Rasi was in simpler times, when he was known to me and many others on the #NOLATwitter community as @marcorasi1960, a photographer who posts striking images of New Orleans, often shot with drone assistance. Even when viewed within the confines of a smartphone, his photos of New Orleans are pretty spectacular. Rasi, a certified drone pilot and retired civil engineer, has accumulated many such images into an extremely sleek tome, Nocturnal New Orleans, with a foreword and accompanying captions by prolific geographer-writer Richard Campanella. This collection heavily favors the French Quarter, seemingly covering almost every square inch, but also ventures out into the Bywater, Treme, Algiers Point, and even the Fisherman’s Castle at Irish Bayou, to depict our region after the sun has set. With such a provocative yet limiting subject matter, Nocturnal New Orleans can teeter between richly stylistic and a little dense, both in the photos and the accompanying text. Writes Campanella in the foreword, “nocturnal New Orleans has since the 1700s unleashed the Dionysian in people—and earned Apollonian rebuke.” Both Rasi and Campanella wrestle between the magic and mundane of New Orleans at night—and while the aerial photos are quite mesmerizing (if somewhat repetitive after 200+ pages), it’s the ground-level photos that speak to me the most. It’s awe-inspiring to see a parade lit up from above, or the tropical colors splashed on historic buildings of the city juxtaposed against the darkness, but a simple image of an Advocate newspaper box at the corner of First and Magazine bears witness to a time and place that will not always be here. Nocturnal New Orleans does make an impressive coffee table book—but keep it around for your kids and grandkids, so they can experience this city in a way they may not be able to in their time. —Dan Fox
Two origin stories wind through Lucy Sante’s book I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition. The book opens in 2021 as Sante, at 66, comes out as a trans woman to her closest friends via an email with the subject line “A bombshell,” evoking the power of femme fatales and Lichtenstein-worthy billboards. She adds, “My name is Lucy Marie Sante, only one letter added to my deadname,” declaring her personal revolution. The first origin story is set in her birthplace of Belgium, but her life’s arc appears to catalyze on Halloween, 1959 in New York City, where she (then named Luc) and her parents walked through streets dense with lurid signage, unchaperoned children in costumes, and general sleaze before they moved back to Belgium. Recognizing the city as a space of autonomy and adventure, Sante’s engagement with New York culture and bohemianism would progress after her parents’ return to the states. She would later champion the people of city underworlds in books like Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York in her extensive literary career. The book continues in peripatetic fashion with recalls and insights, punctuated by the FaceApp photos that re-picture her true gender using her old photos. Shifting to her present life in Upstate New York, frustrations with access to quality wigs, trans-friendly boutiques, and services such as electrolysis during the pandemic and its quarantines seems a world away from the avoided events, people, and intimacy where someone might discover her great secret in her life as a man. The secret endured through dating, partnerships, marriages, and parenthood, underscoring the internalized policing of her true gender, and contrasting to the openness of the art scenes, CBGB, and queer bars of her Downtown NYC. Music frames these environments as it spills out of clubs, record players, live shows, with the likes of the Marvelettes, Patti Smith, Grandmaster Flash, the Floaters, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Manu Dibango, and Gloria Gaynor. The Isley Brothers’ “That Lady” looms large as well. The book is titled after a Velvet Underground song, the lyric, “Got my eyes wide open” is like a silent refrain throughout the book. It is a young trans woman student named Leor in friend Barbara Ess’ photography class at Bard who helps Lucy to envision her future. With Leor’s guidance as her trans godmother, Lucy “cracks her egg,” meaning to come out. Lucy realizes, “My body already knew that stuff,” as she practiced moving like a woman. Her last page warns of the dangers for trans people, “Particularly Black trans women and the indigent and the homeless.” Less than three years later, the “T” for Transgender was removed from the Stonewall website and then its storied monument in New York City, soon after the “Q” for Queer, and the “+” that stands for numerous gender identities, were erased as well. —Veronica Cross
Local heroes People Museum have always baked a certain theatricality into their act—their lighting is striking, and they seem most at home in grand and unusual settings which highlight the drama of their soaring melodies. Since they’re now practically a house band for the Marigny Opera House, a collaborative performance with the Marigny Opera Ballet seemed like a no-brainer. DUSK, a two-part ballet choreographed by Diogo de Lima and Cassi Abranches, featured contemporary dance vignettes, each corresponding to People Museum songs. The first ballet based its choreography on some of the band’s previous hits, and while its concept seemed well-developed, it felt a little out of reach. A string of staccato solos introduced a physical vocabulary which only really began to speak in the final duets. The pas de deux between Edward Spots and Joshua P. Bell was the highlight. Both men devoted their physical power to tenderness, wrapping one another up in delicate strength. Overall, though, the dancing never quite seemed to connect to the music, instead running its own course alongside the songs. But in the second ballet, which was working with new musical material, musicians and performers found a true meeting place, suffusing the Marigny Opera House with a crackling energy. Choreographer Cassi Abranches used the whole company to great effect. Brief solos and duets punctuated dynamic group choreography with emotional range. The company is made up of such a strong group of dancers—performers like Mares Sanchez enthrall with even the subtlest movements—that you could feel the satisfaction of watching their bodies catch the music in your bones. By the final number, the band and the ballet had completely merged, taking the audience to a place that, by final bows, they clearly didn’t want to leave. —Holly Devon
