New Orleans’ punk-power pop quartet BADZY might technically be a new band—their first official show was on May 18 at the Fred Hampton Free Store—but they did not appear fully formed out of the ether, like a punk rock Aphrodite. Not only has the band been writing songs and practicing together for over a year, but all four members—Jacob Clements (lead vocals/guitar), Ali Hijazi (guitar/vocals), Joey Civella (bass/vocals), and Ashley Parrino (drums/vocals)—are skilled instrumentalists who have played in bands throughout Louisiana for years (Trash Light, Stolen Pill, Gator Bait, Flea Circus). BADZY have hit the ground running over the past three months, playing a handful of shows—including Oh Bondage, Up Yours! Vol. 2 in New York City and a short East Coast tour—and releasing their debut EP, Demonstrations. The three-song EP is catchy punk and garage-infused power pop, a testament to the bands’ dedication to music as both musicians and fans; there are shades of the Ramones and Replacements, and even some Springsteen vibes to boot. This doesn’t mean BADZY is just an imitation of their predecessors, however; they have created a sound and a live show that is very much their own. With lyrics and choruses meant to be sung along to (which happened at their first show, with most of the audience just hearing the songs for the first time), BADZY infuses a new, and much-needed sense of fun into the New Orleans music scene. (BADZY plays the St. Roch Tavern on August 8.) —Mary Beth Campbell
Over the past few years, a new punk scene has emerged across the country, consisting of young, queer bands that are not beholden to any one genre. Punk, like gender, is fluid and cannot be constrained by old mores. Seattle’s Beautiful Freaks is part of this new wave, combining glam, indie, hardcore punk, grunge, metal, jazz, and anything else that sounds good in the mix to create music that is as compelling as it is chaotic. Recorded at the famed London Bridge studio, their feature full-length We Talk to Birds has a more polished production than their earlier releases, but that doesn’t mean they have lost their edge. “Loser Sellouts” (whose title seems to be a dig at Sub Pop) is a vicious takedown of neo-liberal capitalist politics and its invasion of the music industry (“Rock ain’t dead yeah / You just ain’t a part of it / And it’s better off without you yuppie motherfuckers”). “If God” tackles the ongoing trauma that conservative Christianity has caused the queer community (“Chosen family is God / And music is God and pain is God… Gay sex is God”). Other standouts include the blistering “DB Cooper Did Nothing Wrong” and the trippy, melancholic title track. There is a righteous fury in Beautiful Freaks’ music—transforming grief and anger into sharp, confrontational songs that are poised to rile up audiences into action rather than despair. (Beautiful Freaks play the Fred Hampton Free Store on August 10 and The Goat on August 11.) —Mary Beth Campbell
Over the past few months, two members of local d-beat hardheads DRACULA have decided to wear their love for hip-hop on their sleeves by dropping beat tapes under the moniker City Weapons. The collision of punk and hip-hop is nothing new. In one of the most notable New Orleans examples of this phenomenon, Ruby da Cherry has ascended to a level of stardom as half of $UICIDEBOY$ that no one would’ve ever expected when he was hitting drums with local punks Vapo-Rats at dives a decade ago. While City Weapons’ hard-hitting beats don’t seem stadium-bound yet, the duo’s first tape Downtown Demons has earned the approval of Dan Lactose, who has navigated similar murky terrains as the guitarist for powerviolence legends Spazz and beatmaker under the name DJ Eons One. City Weapons’ tapes thus far have shown a major affinity for New York style boom bap, juxtaposing vocals from Mobb Deep (“Flame Wars”), Westside Gunn (“Super Highway”), and Sean Price (“Cyber Bully”) against their own tight beats built from samples sourced from various slabs of wax. While the duo clearly have a lot of love for New York wordsmiths, that doesn’t mean they are without love for the locals. “Big Dogg Chat” is built around Lil Wayne’s vocals, and “Computer Virus” transforms Mystikal‘s “Shake Ya Ass” from booty bouncing classic into a head bop-inducing cut. Whether Hack Da Parish is full of songs you’ve heard a million times or for the first time, City Weapons’ refreshing approach reminds us that sometimes all you need is a new perspective to appreciate an old classic. —William Archambeault
Brooklyn indie rockers DIIV have named their latest release after the “frog in boiling water” metaphor from Daniel Quinn’s philosophical novel The Story of B. As it goes, humans, much like the proverbial frog, will slowly become complacent in hostile conditions (e.g. late-stage capitalism), oblivious to the danger until it is too late. Of course, there are flaws to this metaphor—frogs are exothermic (cold-blooded) and become more active as temperatures rise to lethal levels. Scientific inaccuracy aside, while it makes sense that DIIV chose the original metaphor for this album—the band has dealt with its fair share of fracture over the past few years, and the anxiety of growing existential threats of our current hostile reality cannot be understated—the lyrics rely on a lazy nihilism that doesn’t add anything new to the conversation. Musically, however, the songs on Frog In Boiling Water are well-crafted and hauntingly beautiful. Leaning heavily on reverb-drenched guitars, with lead singer Zachary Cole Smith exercising restraint on his vocals, DIIV has created a dreamlike atmosphere that envelops the listener in a false sense of comfort as the guitars and drums slowly increase the sense of dread and anxiety—a musical commitment to the metaphorical bit. —Mary Beth Campbell
The first thing you should know about DC experimental punk five-piece Ekko Astral is that they absolutely refuse to hold back: not in their brash instrumental work, and certainly not in their incisive lyrics, which take an unflinching look at the horrors that surround us. There is far too much at stake to not speak the truth. Lead vocalist Jael Holzman—a former congressional reporter who still writes about energy and climate issues—crafts lyrics about navigating this increasingly hostile world as a trans woman, but she also wants it known that pink balloons “is an album for everybody about universal struggles that should not be put into a box.” Album opener “head empty blues” starts off with discordant guitar notes and the lyrics “I can see you shifting in your seat” before launching into an instrumental storm of searing chords, frantic drum beats, and an ominous bassline to accompany Holzman’s snarling vocals. While pink balloons launches from one emotionally charged noise punk song into another, the band does take a few moments to breathe, notably with the gorgeous, reflective indie pop song “make me young” (“do I come across to [sic] pessimistically / i know myself is a beautiful thing to be”) and the elegiac yet revolutionary call of the Josaleigh Pollett collaboration “i90” (“if you walk through a cemetery / you’ll find people / buried under gravestones of strangers / i have friends still hiding / while you throw a parade”). Ekko Astral knows that one cannot survive or thrive on self-seriousness. Sly pop culture references are sprinkled throughout, and the band is not afraid to take the piss out of hypocrisy with biting humor (“on brand”: “she’s got a pair of / cheetah print pink pumps / made by federal prisoners”). After all, we must confront the uncomfortable reality that we face, but we must also fight for the joy that has been taken and the joy that still remains. —Mary Beth Campbell
Five years since their last single and a whooping 14 years since they dropped their only prior album, Tokyo punk group Kriegshög has emerged from the shadows to lay another siege upon the global underground. Thankfully, Love & Revenge is a lean and mean collection of paint peelers that proves more than worth the wait. While the group’s early releases caught global attention for high speed d-beat executed with blitzkrieg fury, their 2019 single “Paint It Black” offered the first glance at the band’s shift towards a slower mid-range tempo. Love & Revenge flourishes in this new terrain, showcasing a new potential now that they have divested from the arms race of need-for-speed that occupies too much space in d-beat. Songs like “Grey Agony” and “P.S.M.” showcase a borderline psychedelic approach that combines repetitive grooves with fierce low-end tones while retaining much of the attitude that made the group endearing in the first place. This behemoth sound occupies a realm that less bold groups would fear is too desert rock for true disrockers and too full of bloodlust for stoned out Sleep worshipers. No track better amplifies the potential of this approach than the album’s surprisingly catchy closer “冷たい人間” (“Cold Person”), a slow-rolling tornado that disintegrates all within its path. —William Archambeault
If you’ve been following Aaron Boudreaux (a.k.a. MoPodna)’s career, you caught the first glimpse of i can save me back in 2021 when he and Tif Lamson released “sacrifice,” a menacing dance song with heavy keyboard slaps, distorted background yelps, and a catchy vocal hook. While that first single doesn’t sound much like the rest of the album, the whiplash of each song paired with the next is what makes it arresting. The years that Boudreaux, an engineer as well as an artist, put into composing, arranging, and recording all the electronic layers, natural instruments, and four distinct voices helped him bring coherency and shape to a project that, in less adept hands, would have come across as chaotic. The opening track, “i’m nasty” uses Julie Odell’s vocals as a wash to surround the goofy, confessional, tone-setting statement of, “I eat cold gumbo straight out the fridge / no bowl, no microwave / straight out the fridge / I’m nasty.” On the following track ”satsuma,” Odell gets the chance to lift her airy vocals above the blanket of quirky, electronic pop, instead of being buried underneath it. Boudreaux’s soundscapes pair well with the female singers he’s chosen, though several songs feature his own pleasant pop vocals, which weave in and out of the bass and keyboard tracks that he has given equal real estate to in most songs. Boudreaux has created a disarming mix of ballads and bangers and some songs, like “stay” featuring People Museum’s Claire Givens, come across as both. “face down on the guest bed” caught me the most off guard, as I never expected to want to loop a Tame Impala-esque sonic couch of a song about being roofied. —Sabrina Stone
Louie Zong is one of those rare people who just never seems to stop creating across various mediums, whether it be making music, crafting art, or even trying his hand at game development. In June and July, the New Orleans-born but Los Angeles-based creative force dropped two albums that explore different aspects of his eclectic craftsmanship. As a musician who has favored releasing recordings on YouTube over traditional gigging, it feels fitting that his July album AQUARIUM CITY is a love letter to ‘80s Japanese city pop and jazz fusion records, which have seen a dramatic rise in popularity in the West in recent years—the direct result of YouTube algorithms. His dedication to capturing the sleek, feel-good atmosphere of those records makes it a fun listen that pairs well with the brutal heat of summer. While I enjoy his attempt at paying tribute to geographically distinct sounds of decades past, I find myself personally more drawn to the chaotic originality of his June album Scrapbook Studio. That album, a compilation of years of odds and ends, showcases his ability to twist recordings to his will and create something new out of the assorted scraps. On “Spaghetti-O Western,” Zong and a drummer play against sampled guitar from a long-forgotten ‘60s record and jaw harp from a Siberian folk record to transform the fragmented pieces into something distinctly their own. Similarly absurd combinations, such as Zong’s chopped up piano playing versus YouTube drum demonstration videos on “The Best Thing Since Sliced Piano,” are plentiful throughout the album, making each track an exciting new journey. —William Archambeault
Magic Hour, the collaboration between Compton-based rapper Jay Worthy (LNDN DRGS) and U.S. producer and vocalist DāM-FunK, is a love letter to West Coast G-Funk. Whether you grew up on the West Coast in the 1990s (shout out to Seattle’s now-defunct KUBE 93.3 FM) or are simply a fan of the genre, Magic Hour invokes nostalgia for lazy, sun-drenched summer days of yore. The duo is not forging any new territory with this album, but there is no need to. Jay Worthy’s delivery remains as smooth as ever, his lyrics telling the time-worn tale of living fast in California, a dream that, while perhaps outdated, does provide short-term escapism and fits within the album’s homage. Guests include a who’s who of West Coast rap (Ty Dolla $ign, Channel Tres, Honda Carter, and more), which adds to the album’s overall atmosphere. DāM-FunK’s production, however, is what really elevates Magic Hour. With seductive basslines and intoxicating beats seamlessly incorporating hip-hop, soul, and funk, DāM-FunK has created a sound that manages to evoke both the 1990s and now, no small feat to pull off. —Mary Beth Campbell
I honestly thought this day would never come. I have literally been teased with a new Belong record since 2011. Year after year I would hear of their merciless and endless self-editing, swaths of (probably amazing) material scrapped. And in all this time in between, there has been almost no ambition by the duo to perform live. Completely preoccupied with their enduring, recorded output, they have felt no urge to share their musical growth in public, correctly assessing the apathetic and fickle nature of the local music scene: “No one cares.” Despite being an internationally noteworthy band with a critically-acclaimed indie debut (October Language) as well as a well-regarded full length (Common Era, released on the highly reputable kranky label), the band, at face value, seems almost impenetrable. Fittingly, I think that many locals who have followed their records would be shocked to learn Belong is, in fact, from New Orleans.
I don’t know Belong’s Turk Dietrich very well. Aside from pulling a chuckle or two by referring to him as Turk Turkleton, or that one time I heckled Ariel Pink at their San Francisco show, I haven’t interacted with him all that much. Between his two other extremely impressive projects—First Tone (with Duane Pitre) and Second Woman (with Josh Eustis)—and rumors that he used to boisterously host a local poker night in Terrytown, he’s always struck me as an enigmatic presence. A sort of prototypical exuberant and brash New Orleans braggadocio mixed with a stern, self-serious Artist musician type—the kind of contradictory personality that really embodies the diametrical nature of our noise/electronic scene.
It’s the other half of the band that I’m more qualified to evaluate, though even as a long-time friend, Mike Jones tends to evade easy description. A radical outlier from the so-called “Westbank” punk scene of the mid-1990s, Mike’s austere demeanor keeps him at odds with the ska-crazed perpetual adolescents or hyper-earnest, overly tender, second-wave emos. While initially quite severe, his aloof nature and quiet rationality obscures an almost fervent, churning intensity. We bonded early on over graphic design, his opinions sufficiently extreme, his assessments unmerciful; indeed, his thumbprint is all over scores of Thou records. And while I have a huge amount of respect for his observations and interactions with design and music, it’s his perspectives on people and relationships that make him a cherished friend.
I highlight the personalities behind the band because I believe that one can draw a very clear line to their creative sensibilities. There is an ever-present contradictory element to the music that’s as “Naturally N’awlins” as the inescapable Westbank drawl in the band members’ accents. On the surface, Belong can come across as quite cheerless. The visual representations of their records are vague and confounding, and the music itself can be melancholic and bleak, doleful, even dirgeful. The guitars can be abrasive, immense walls of sound bordering on noise. But the inexhaustibly repeating motifs and hooks, coupled with meticulous drum loops, careful mixing, and copious amounts of reverb, give even their harshest songs a meditative quality that carries the listener across luscious, otherworldly landscapes. There’s a fuzziness to their songs, a haze that envelopes everything, that obscures and obfuscates. When there are vocals, they’re purposefully ghostly, the content decidedly shrouded, the fragility meaningfully accentuated. The band has spoken of their “dull sound” in the recordings as a means to create an impression of longing. It’s there, that lingering sense of wistfulness, of pining, but underlined with a hopefulness, a delicately optimistic urge. Beneath the superficial ache and bluster, past the cold electronics, and beyond the meticulously constructed fog, there’s an invitation to meet bright sensitivities, passions enflamed, desires met.
Belong’s newest full length, Realistic IX, is at once a detachment from and a summation of their discography. For anyone paying attention, the trajectory seems very clear. The big guitars and hypnotic drone of October Language informed their ambient reconfiguration of psych covers on their Colorloss and Same Places (Slow Version) EPs, and the pop structures drenched in reverb and strewn with distant, spectral vocals inevitably lead to their Common Era full length. All of these qualities are on full display throughout Realistic IX. One would assume that the rawer quality to the production, the louder guitars and percussion, would detract from Belong’s blueprint of dreaminess and yearning, but it has quite the opposite effect. In a sad world full of nostalgia, dark wave this and cold wave that, endless parades of maudlin and forgettable Flock of Seagulls worshiping rejects—Belong has managed to craft a record that embodies the feeling of growing up in the 1980s. Additionally, there’s a nebulous impression of aggression and urgency permeating throughout. If I didn’t know any better, I would imagine that the frustration at the lapse of time between full lengths created that emotion in the sound. But I do know better. I know that behind the scenes they’ve been unfailingly laboring over new material since Common Era, refining their craft, deciphering what they personally wanted to get out of the music and publicly display in their art, abandoning more material than some artists will create over their entire lifespan. I can only hope that one day we all get to hear some of those building blocks in between these two incredible masterpieces!
Fans and critics of Belong will undoubtedly describe them using genre-specific buzzwords like shoegaze, post-punk, krautrock, new wave synth, ambient noise, and drone. Comparisons will be made to My Bloody Valentine, Stereolab, The Cure, Joy Division, Glenn Branca, Grouper, Tim Hecker, Oneohtrix Point Never, etc. But for me Realistic IX, and indeed the entire Belong catalog, is uncharacteristically and uncompromisingly New Orleans. It’s strange music for art galleries, puppet cabarets, and speakeasy gizmo shops. It’s the quiet comfort of maw maw’s house, bingo parlors, Major Video, and Time Saver. It’s broken and uneven concrete sidewalks, ravaged by cracks and fissures, lined with lush and overgrown oak trees. It sounds like adventures in the dead of night, lounging in the balmy heat outside neglected taverns, convening with bizarre and fascinating riffraff. It sounds like two suburban recluses driven by their own perfectionism—and we’re just lucky to get the pieces they deem fit for consumption. —Bryan Funck
Bob Flanagan was an artist of various mediums, most notable for his work with his life partner Sheree Rose. As a child, Flanagan was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis; at the time, most people who were diagnosed did not live past 30. Flanagan beat the odds and lived until he was 43. He lived in Los Angeles writing alongside Dennis Cooper and Jack Skelley, performing at Beyond Baroque, and was also a founding member of Society of Janus, a local S&M club. While Rose and Flanagan created work based on their master-slave relationship, Flanagan often wrote about their lives together and most of these works have been long out of print until now. PEP TALK and Kristina Kite Gallery have now published a complete collection of Flanagan’s poetry, including a work previously unpublished in its entirety, The Book of Medicine. His poems gaze into a world of childish escapism, sexually-driven longing, doldrum days living with illness, and give the reader a look into Flanagan’s world that is deeply personal. Lines like, “You see? A story is always going to be a collaboration between the characters and the action.” from the poem “The World of Science” elaborates on Flanagan’s concepts of collaborative art. Unlike watching Flanagan’s life on screen via the documentary Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, sitting with his written work feels like peeking into someone’s diary. The book includes essays by Sheree Rose, Jack Skelley, Dennis Cooper, and Dodie Bellamy which give insight into their personal relationships with Flanagan and his work. Fun to Be Dead is suggested for fans of Cooper, V. Vale of RE/Search Publications, and Charles Gatewood. —Sara Nicole Storm
Like Rick Perlstein‘s series covering the political right (Nixonland, Reaganland, etc.), this book explores how U.S. politics got so terrible. Author John Ganz focuses on the period just after the Cold War. That era often gets more attention culturally than politically—after all, Nirvana, Public Enemy, and The Simpsons were more groundbreaking than George H. W. Bush—but Ganz’s highly readable history reminds us it was a tumultuous time, with layoffs striking the middle class, the Gulf War, unrest after Rodney King‘s beating at the hands of the LAPD, the standoff at Ruby Ridge, general pessimism about economics and race relations, and the ascent of populist white politicians of various stripes like Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and David Duke. The book sometimes feels like a longform version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” outlining various ways “America cracked up,” as the title puts it, without much overarching narrative. Ganz also has a sometimes excessive tendency, like many pop historians, to highlight quotes from historical figures that seem shocking by today’s standards or ironic in hindsight (Howard Stern claiming Jesse Jackson “can’t speak the English language” was hardly the worst of it). Here, though, it’s often useful to show how rhetoric around subjects like race and gender have shifted and how still-relevant figures, like Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump, have (and have not) changed. —Steven Melendez
Since 2010, data has shown steadily increasing rates of self-harm, depression, anxiety, and suicide among teens worldwide. In his newest book, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents the hypothesis that the introduction of smartphones and, along with it, the end of play-based childhood, is the culprit. Most parents have been aware for some time now that screen time can be damaging to young kids, but Haidt provides a thorough breakdown of how the introduction of the smartphone really changed the game for pre-teens and teens, including the differing impacts between girls and boys. He also points out that in direct opposition with their virtually unfettered access to the internet, Gen Z was given incredibly little actual freedom in the real world (a culmination of helicopter parenting driven by the hysteria of a 24/7 news cycle and the hyper-reactivity of society to seeing children “unattended” at any time). He breaks down the benefits of a play-based childhood that are lost when kids are handed devices at a young age and how the rise of social media has led to stunted development, attention fragmentation, social contagion, loneliness, and perfectionism. He addresses the collective pressure parents are under when “everyone else is doing it” becomes the neverending cry of teens without smartphones. He proposes four new societal norms that, if adopted by parents and schools, could help turn the tide of the crisis: 1) No smartphones before high school; 2) No social media before age 16; 3) Phone-free schools; 4) More independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. The movement has gained a fair amount of traction and some of the country’s largest school systems are hopping onboard by banning cell phones entirely during the school day. The data presented in the book is compelling, but critics have argued that Gen Z is facing pressures no previous generation has faced and that smartphones alone can’t be the determining factor of their poor mental health. At the end of the day, the book is a solid read and will certainly give parents something to think about as it relates to the access we give our children to virtual worlds—and the access to them that we’re granting the world in return. —Erin Hall
The MIT Press’ fascinating Platform Studies series explores tech platforms, how their limitations shape work created with them, and how they fit into the larger culture. Previous books have covered technologies like the Atari, Amazon’s Kindle, and Flash, household names with clearer impact than the Virtual Boy, a not-quite-VR game console released by Nintendo in 1995 and canceled for poor sales after about a year. The system required players to awkwardly slip their faces into a tabletop headset, where two red LED displays showed slightly different images to each eye, giving users an illusion of 3D depth (and, critics said, eyestrain and headaches). The authors place it in a centuries-long lineage of optical novelties—from 17th century “peep boxes” to Magic Eye books and various forgotten electronics—and in the nostalgic context of ’90s gaming. Then, the promise of virtual reality far exceeded what anyone could deliver and Nintendo, known for whimsical Mario and Zelda games, awkwardly competed for the post-grunge teen market against edgier SEGA, promoting Virtual Boy through mall popups, horror-inspired ads, and rental discounts at Blockbuster. It’s an entertaining look at something even this well-researched book ultimately can’t make into more than a footnote in video game history. (A free PDF of this book is available at direct.mit.edu.) —Steven Melendez
