Cam Recommends

Tuvaband’s 2023 record New Orders was one of my very favorites from that absolutely stacked year with its incredibly skilled balance of dance-pop earworms, singer-songwriter lyrical depth (with some being especially–and poignantly–politically relevant1) and just plain musical chops. Each song was so well-crafted and well played and its all to the credit of the figure at the center of the band: Tuva Hellum Marschhäuser. The thing is, this is one of those “musician plays all the instruments and sings too” kinda deals so it’s all the more impressive. And later this year (117 days away from the time of this writing) we’ll be blessed with another album, Seven Ways of Floating. 

We’ve already received three singles and I’d like to highlight “Galloping Chest,” a stunning dream-pop jam that creates its own little insular world as Marschhäuser lays out her animosity towards her own anxieties and the way they manifest. “I’m mixing butterflies and heavy lifting…and I am fucking efficient,” she sings early on. Then she chides, probably to herself, “if you continue to keep quiet, your tongue will deflate, if you keep your eyes closed you’ll miss out and you’ll be too late.”

In the chorus, she starts to shift tone, repeating the mantra: “I am breaking it down, I am breaking it down” and then pleads, “I know you can hear me, please let me in.” Then the beat really kicks in, the swirling synths and fluttering guitar creating a haze through which Tuva can continue to sing, transitioning from herself out of her own inaction to us, the listeners: “I can’t lead the way but I can hold your hand, I’ll take you to a wonderland. And then, “if you want everything to stay the same, then go ahead, put out your own flame,” to remind us that stasis is the death of our own spark. 

1 The album’s title track has of my favorite descriptions/aspirations of a possible near-future utopia: “I dream of people like Amazon Jeff to pay for worldwide civil wages//I dream of closing gaps, and the end of some countries dark ages//I dream of totally new orders, and the end of closed borders//At night we watch the same moon."

If you’re of a certain age, there’s a certain pipe organ riff that instantly sets your nostalgia gauge off and reminds you of earlier, hazier indie-rock days, before algorithmic lists, before endless Grey’s Anatomy needledrops, before it really dissolved into nothing as jangle shout-and-clap poprock took over and then it was all up for grabs by the mid-2010’s…before all that, Wu Lyf inhabited a very particular niche in indie rock when they released their first (and only) full-length record in 2011, and, like certain, earlier permutations of "that" band (e.g. your Velvet Undergrounds, your Televisions, your Neutral Milk Hotels, etc.) they left us with small but extremely potent body of work. Go Tell Fire to The Mountain is just one of those records that I didn’t put on often, but when I did, it always hit so hard and left me exhilarated and exhausted with the potential for guitar music at that time.

Sometimes there’s a hook so fucking massive that’s there’s nothing you can do but get out of its way before it crushes you and hopefully it tumbles into as many people as possible with its sheer awesomeness. So, everyone, in that spirit,  I present to you “See Her,” by up-and-coming pop rockers Adult Leisure. I’m gonna take my own advice here and just get out of its way so you can get rolled over by it too.

From Switzerland come Fomies, a band with a voracious appetite for mixing and matching all the little disparate sub-genres of heavy, prog, stoner and psych rock. Their full-length album, Liminality starts in deep sludge mode before moving into groovy garage rock and then rounding the corner into a small suite of prog-rock goodness with my recommendation today, the tracks "Colossus I,” “Colossus II,” and “Colossus III.” No single track runs longer than five minutes but listening all the way through will set you back nearly a quarter of an hour–but it’ll certainly be time incredibly well-spent.

Babe Rainbow’s first album, The Babe Rainbow,  was self titled, or, rather , it used to be self titled. Apparently late to heed Sean Parker’s advice (via Justin Timberlake) to drop “the ‘The,’” Babe Rainbow were THE Babe Rainbow for their first two albums and while they’ve since moved to a cleaner name it’s a fact that they’re a singular band and nobody else can quite do what they do. Even in the (now) very crowded field of neo-psychedelia they stand out with their relaxed refinement, instrumental mastery, sunny disposition and especially with their ability to touch on real world anxieties while never losing the afternoon-vibin’ groove. “Aquarium cowgirl” is a highlight from their latest and while the song came out in April, I present it to you as a pretty stellar contender for song of the summer (chill edition). 

There’s something in the water up there in Scandinavia that seems to inspire fantastic psych/stoner hardrock and Sweden’s Caboose has been apparently drinking liberally from that font. Left For Dust is 9 songs and 30 minutes of fist-pumping, head-nodding, dingy-bar hard rock that is as fun as it is energetic. “Crimzon Haze,” the track I’ve dropped here, is a pretty great representation of the sound overall and a great way to get the heart-pumping to boot!

I was only about halfway through my first listen of this fantastic song from Tunde Adebimpe’s new solo record before I decided I needed to add it to my recommendations list. Adebimpe, best known as frontman for TV On the Radio, has shown again and again his mastery of creating gritty pop hooks mixed with experimental indie/hip-hop style production techniques and, with “Ate the Moon,” he shows he’s still at the top of his game. A children’s choir surfaces over growling guitars and an unstoppable beat carries us to the explosive second half of the song as Adebimpe warms of us the “man who ate the moon” and the fact that it while it sounds like “such a ridiculous story,” it still ends with the man choking to death because he bit off more than he could chew. 

Carmel Smickersgill released one of my very favorite songs from 2022, the remarkable “Questioning,” which was all heavily processed child-like vocals and spiraling, shimmering synths put to stunning effect. She released it as part of a short EP titled We Get What We and We Don’t Get Upset and as the years ticked by I was starting to think she meant it. Even so, with a song as powerful as “Questioning” under her belt, Smickersgill certainly didn’t “owe” listeners anything and so, when she dropped this new EP I was actually more nervous than anything else. How could she possibly follow up a song that I’ve been moving up the list of favorite songs of all time with each passing year? 

I needn't have worried. With the 20-minute Unsolicited Advice, Smickersgill showcases not only her incredible talent and musical chops but also her seemingly boundless vision and ambition. Functioning as something of a concept album, each track takes its title from those cliche bits of “wisdom” that pass as advice from those who rarely truly understand the unique challenges of any given situation to a person–at least with any understanding as to the true nature of said difficulties. Thus, I think the overall minor-key tone of nearly the entire enterprise, communicating her ambivalence–if not outright hostility–towards the hollowness of these style of platitudes in the face of real suffering.

“Have Faith,” starts in forward motion, a pummeling beat over distraught vocal samples. Soon, what sounds like a hopeful flute tries to break through, only to be immediately countered by a rising wall of static. The two elements sonically duke it out for several bars, before melding together into something a bit more emotionally ambiguous as the beat kicks into high gear and everything races towards a galvanizing key-change. In the second half a warbling vocal fights to gain a toehold over the now-distinctly overwhelming and minor-key synth washes and beats. Smickersgill then allows her own voice to come fully into focus, though just under enough digital water to not quite be able to make out the words. Something about “ours to make” or “ours to take.” Regardless, the complexity of the song and its final moments, without clear resolution, demonstrate the ultimate, let’s say ambivalence towards that most meaningless of advice: to “have faith.”

While not a fully-sung album, she certainly deploys more lyrics than in her previous project. Mixing lyrics with experimental electronic compositions can prove problematic but here Smickersgill shows just as deft a touch as with every other element here. Mostly used as texture, when the lyrics do stand out, it’s often because of the mantra-like nature with which they’re deployed. “Build the Habit,” repeats its own advice endlessly, to the point where it either takes root or washes away (much like habits themselves, the song seems to suggest). In “Know You’re Loved” she avoids even stating the titular phrase, but instead repeats a series of interlocking imperative declarations “feel my arms they’re wrapped around you, I will hold you in this embrace until you, feel my arms they’re wrapped around you…”

The penultimate track, “Let It Happen” is the most ethereal song of the bunch and the one with lyrics that tell the most consistent story, of leaving a note in a certain bench in a curiously empty airport. The liminal space she invokes with her words are complimented by cavernous blips and bloops, floating into a dark nothingness. Perhaps recognizing that the name of the song itself the most ineffectual bit of advice presented here.

And then we come to the final track and easily the most upbeat and transcendent of the lot with “Suck Don’t Sip.” Notably absent of any detectable vocal samples and positively radiant by the time the swirling synths lock in for the back half against galloping, energetic percussion, it certainly implies that this particular bit of advice, that to hedonistically suck and not sip is the only real bit of wisdom that can bring true joy.

With that, the thesis of this EP comes full circle and we’re left to contemplate (what should be) our own ambivalent feelings of passing along received bits of wisdom that ultimately are of little to no utility (how many times have you heard the “everything happens for a reason” claptrap?). Beyond that, with the thrilling ending suggesting that maybe, just maybe, encouraging others to seek their passions is the only real worthwhile advice you can give someone.

Stradling the gulf between the misty spectral modular synths of an act like Craven Faults and the big hard-hitting beats of classic IDM bangers from the likes of Black Dog, Sinemis’s Farewell is an almost unbelievably compelling listen. “Exit Democracy” is the longest track by over a minute compared to its kin but I think still stands as a good representation of the record overall and a heart-pounding exercise in how layering ethereal elements until their breaking point can create an unstoppable, mind-altering groove. 

Daniel Brandt’s six-minute mini-epic already starts in second gear with a tension-filled baseline that quickly proceeds to find a head-nodding krautrock rhythm that carries us through the increasingly galloping back-half of the song as spiky synths intercept the additional percussion loops. Surprisingly, it never fully explodes into dance-floor chaos, instead choosing to keep us slightly off-kilter, occasionally dropping out the rhythmic backbone to shower us with mournful synth pads. In that sense, it wears its Computer World lineage proudly on its sleeve, but from another angle, I think it also serves to reinforce the aural thesis of the entire track. It is, after all, more about the journey than the destination. 

Sometimes you just need a good ol’ fashioned slice of bedroom indie pop–admittedly I probably need it more than most, coming of music-age in the era when this kind of stuff was brand new and fresh and so, yeah, there’s maybe a bit of me trying to reclaim some lost youth. But, no matter, miscellaneous owl puts forward a tremendous collection of small-scale, heartfelt, synth-tinged mini-epics with the cloud chamber, the quick 26 minute album from which this track hails. The whole thing zips by like a sunbeam on a warm spring day but opener “Tender and Laughing” might still be the standout.

It sounds a little mean to write it out in black and white like this, but, apparently, it’s the truth: this band needed a different singer. At least, for me. Their breakthrough from 2022, Ants From Up There, earned a lot of critical and fan chatter but I mostly bounced off of it. With their new record, they coalesce around a sound that I can’t help but describe as “jaunty”--and while that’s a touch reductive, I will say that I wouldn’t have even taken a listen to this album if not for an intrepid Reddit user who slammed into the r/joannanewsom forum, Kool-Aid Man style, and simply dropped a link to this new BCNR album and one sentence saying something like: “you people are gonna love this.” And, yeah, if you–like me–are in love with Newsom’s particular brand of semi-timeless but still old-time-coded folk chamber-pop (especially as demonstrated Have One on Me and Divers) then this one does hit particularly hard.

Two and a half hours of spectacular psych/stoner/prog rock from two highly regarded players in the game, Drop Out III is a spectacular way to spend your time. There’s certainly a lot of music here and a lot to be said, but, really, it’s probably better to just dim the lights, put this one on and let it wash over you and experience the trip first-hand.

No single line from a song this year has gone as hard for me as this one from Sky_A: “if the powder is dry and the angle is true, yeah, you know what to do.” The song containing the lyric, “Sit With Us,” is a remarkable bit of songwriting from the London-based musician. I’m reminded a bit of electronic producer Apparat in the vocal stylings and even some of the off-kilter electronic sounds but Sky_A also leans heavily into math-rock to achieve fully achieve its singular and epic sound. “Sit With Us,” bounces around, never quite settling on a comfortable song structure, careening into slamming interludes between verses and in the back half of the track it breaks down and rebuilds completely with chugging guitars and roiling drums. The entire album, Labyrinths, is a bracing, sometimes bewildering, but always captivating listen and if this track piques your interest, hit play on the LP!