It’s a New Year filled with awesome new (or recent) music! This list is all about transporting and absorbing rock/post-punk tunes, so get swept away by the surging guitars, roiling emotions, and propulsive tempos, with a couple of reflective numbers at the end that brood upon the state of our being.
1. “Present:Tense” by Nostalgist – Seattle-based band dives deeply into Catherine Wheel and Sugar’s Wall Of Sound to magnetic effect.
2. “Dweeb” by Teenage Wrist – This LA-based act, now repped by Epitaph!, does the same, but with lighter vocals.
3. “Forever” by Glass Tides – Australian band that takes the best of the above and adds dramatic emo exclamations to the mix. Emogaze, anyone?
4. “Void” by Dead Vibrations – Swedish group that does psych-shoegaze/fuzz-rock right.
5. “Defeated” by Kudzu – Post-punk/indie rock duo will grow on you fast, especially with this blistering track.
6. “Spirit” by Kaptur – Canadian art-rock (Eh?) band gets kinetic and heavy on this defiant number.
7. “Who’s Your Lover” / Nightmare Air – Dense and driving electro-shoegaze-rock (Huh?) with alluring vox.
8. “Turtledoves” by Gingerlys – Taking a page from Russian pinkshinyultrablast!, Brooklyn’s own Gingerlys delivers perfectly crafted dream-pop that dances through the air.
9. “A Pit” by VETO – Shivering strings, and trembling, mournful vocals that hint at Antony Hegarty, capture an anxious mood.
10. “Pulse” by Galapaghost – An elegy to those who lost their lives during the horrific and tragic mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016. And a universal lament against the call to hatred and violence that captures the minds of too many impressionable, close-minded people.
