Cam Recommends

I mean. Listen to the first 20 seconds and look at the album cover–with its sunglass-bedecked flying purple pufferfish shooting out a laser beam for a silhouetted surfer to ride–and you should have everything you need to know on if you’re going to enjoy this thing or not. Groovy, sometimes experimental, jammy instrumental rock with a tight-as-hell three piece unit composed of two guitars and drums, Baleine presents an extremely fun album that’ll be a perfect reminder of windy spring beach days for the upcoming hot summer doldrums. 

Yeah, they’re one of the biggest acts in rock, with over a decade of extremely high-profile appearances, collaborations and crossovers and multiple critically-acclaimed, high-selling albums but somehow, I still think that Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver is underappreciated. With each album, I feel like he enters a world that says, “do we really need another Bon Iver record?” and yet each has presented a new facet of the seemingly endless wellspring of Bon Iver’s musical inclinations and abilities. With the new SABLE, fABLE, Vernon unveils something like the ur-Bon Iver record, where it seems to take everything they’ve every done, and everything anyone has ever said about them, and blend it into a near-perfect musical cocktail. There’s bits and pieces from his earlier, “guys with a guitar in the woods,” stuff, more mournful, electronics-tinged ballads from the likes of 22, A Million, and the big-hearted, open-fields sounds of the seminal self-titled album from 2011, and there’s even moments of neo-gospel, like from some of his extracurricular collaborations. And that’s where we land with the track I want to flag here, the stupendous and near-transcendent “Day One.” Stuttering synths and a dusty piano give way to a rising multi-voice choir as Vernon pleads, “can I get a rewind, just this once if you don’t mind?” And then, of course, the rejoinder that he’s been taught better, since, “day one.” The guest singer and backup choir carry us home, both uplifted and spent, which probably encapsulates the ultimate end-state of any dedicated listen to a Bon Iver project in the first place.

The first 30 seconds don’t really prepare the listener for what’s to follow as a jangly tuned is plucked out on a nylon string guitar until a classic metal riff rises to the fore before being swallowed by pummeling kick drums, walls of noise and the swirling double-tracked vocals that strain towards a smog-choked stratosphere. Eventually we’re treated to a fuzzy, even groovy guitar solo as waves of howling noise continue to crash against our eardrums. Shades of Chelsea Wolfe and some old-school Sabbath in equal measure, Messa have put together a fantastic knotted black-hole of a song that sits alongside other equally ripping bangers on their also highly recommended full length, The Spin, which is filled with similar goth-tinged, heavy-psych rockers. 

Italian longform prog-rock that very much puts me in mind of work from legendary Spanish folk-metal rockers Mago de Oz. Nuova Era has releases that stretch back to the mid 80’s and this new record from earlier this year is their first in almost a decade. It’s also nearly an hour long and is split across two tracks. The first is the longer of the two and the main show here. It features rollicking riffs, chugging long-winded rhythmic jams, pipe organs galore, frantic, near operatic wailing in Italian and Spanish (with lots of lyrics alluding to internal torment, guilt and the dark depths of the mind…and the sea; so, you know, the album is riffing on the classic Jules Verne book from which it takes its name), gentle burbles of oceanic field recordings, horn sections, mournful turned-tirumphant chrome-gleaned guitar solos and just unabashed levels of confidence as it careens in tone between the dead serious and profoundly silly. One glance at the cover art shows that Nuova Era have their tongues planted firmly in cheek in regards to the themes but one listen also demonstrates the profound level of craft and love for the act of musical storytelling that Nuova Era pushes forward with this project. A fantastically fun listen.

Immaculately conceived and executed goth rock. It starts with an insistent bass line chugging underneath haunted vocals. Soon drums join in, expertly building tension until the guitars finally explode as singer Julia Sabra howls into the void: “there’s nowhere left to go!” Then she backs off as the song continues to rage in dark anthemic peels of noise. Powerful stuff.