Bet you didn't think you'd be getting more new adds so fast! Well, we're catching up. Making up for lost time, if you will. I can't pretend I have any updates to share with you all, so this little intro is going to be short. Enjoy these three reviews by our dedicated staff and DJs, and maybe you'll be moved to listen to some new tunes!

- Lucy Talbot Allen, Music Writing Director

Peach Pit - You and Your Friends

Looking for an album to take your mind off the current state of the world? Look no further, because Peach Pit has provided enough frivolous sound to take you all the way through the end of the summer.

The band comes from Vancouver and comprises Neil Smith on lead vocals, Christopher Vanderkooey on the guitar, Peter Wilton on bass, and Mikey Pascuzzi on the drums. Despite the simplicity of their music, there is a constant aspect of tranquility in the vocals and melody. The musicians got their start back in 2016 with their first EP titled Sweet FA, which includes their most popular song to date, titled “Peach Pit.” This song, along with the other three tracks, is heavy on guitar, smooth on the vocals, and immediately displays to the band’s listeners the carefree indie sound that makes them stand out amongst other musicians within their genre. Their first full album, titled Being so Normal, picked up some speed and shifted directions in sound, but only so much as to expose their versatility as a band, with a mixture of upbeat rhythms and more melancholic stripped down tracks blended in.

Released on April 3, 2020, their sophomore album, You and Your Friends, is automatically a step up and forward from their EP and first album. The album is mostly about relationships, breakups, nostalgia--it is your classic indie rock album curated and ordered to put you in the mood for any occasion. Whether that be a Thursday night kickback with friends or perhaps an emotional late night dance sesh alone in your room, you are bound to experience a rollercoaster of tunes. It opens with “Feelin’ Low (F*ckboy blues)” which is aggressive with guitar, giving it a refined rock sound, but again has Smith’s calming vocals which balance the track perfectly in its message about feeling simultaneously depressed and anarchic after a breakup. The heartbreaker on the album is track 3, titled “Figure 8,” which is a slowed down angst ballad that is almost picturesque in its lyrics about love and its downfalls. Track 5, “Brian’s Movie,” is my personal favorite as it has a feel-good energy with a hint of bedroom pop in the soft drums and dreamy vocals. There are several moody tracks on the album, but track 10, “Thursday,” alters the pattern with a tinge of synth and heavy drums and a rougher undertone to break the consistency.

You and Your Friends is not entirely different from Peach Pit’s EP and first album, which is why it does not stand out to me as being their best album. It has extremely quality songs and melodies, but nothing to make it stand out as completely unique. Peach Pit’s sound has evolved since their beginning pieces, but the dark melancholic tracks combined with the usual bubblegum indie rock sound the band is known for can be a bit turbulent at times. Definitely something to listen to through to the end, but I recommend combining it with their other two albums for the full effect. Happy listening!

- Emma Goad, DJ

RIYL: The Walters, HUNNY, Bane's World, Beach Fossils, Yellow Days, Best Coast
Recommended Tracks: 3, 5, 9, 10, 12
FCC: Explicit (tracks 1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 11)

Grimes - Miss Anthropocene

Many fans were wary of the music that was to come in light of Grimes’ (real name Claire Boucher), relationship with tech mogul and Tesla founder Elon Musk. His energy is undoubtedly of the dad-grilling-on-the-Fourth-of-July dweeb variety, as evidenced by the high-minded twitter fiasco in which he made profound declarations such as: “Short shorts coming soon to Tesla merch” and “What are your fav short shorts?” If Beatles bros are able to maintain the belief that John’s relationship with Yoko Ono was responsible for breaking up The Beatles then maybe the gals are owed this concession. I certainly was wary of Miss Anthropocene, fearing the music I listened to when I was a sad girl in high school would have been corrupted, and I did not want to taint this memory.

However, with an insurmountable amount of free time at my disposal due to current events, I finally gave in and gave Miss Anthropocene a listen. Maybe it is nostalgia, or maybe it is the stir crazy of cabin fever settling in, but I actually prefer this album as a whole to her last release from 2015, Art Angels. While there were certainly tracks on the earlier album I fell in love with, including “Realiti” and “Kill V. Maim,” the album’s overall tone was poppy; these songs were certainly catchy but didn’t seem to evoke the sort of darkness and urgency which Grimes’ work is usually imbued. In interviews surrounding this newest release, Grimes speaks on Art Angels, how this project was a denial—a denial of femininity, of being a ‘girl’ in the societal sense. It is a hard, technological aesthetic that seems to contrast so starkly with the sentimentality of Miss Anthropocene.

In this newest iteration, there is a return to the vulnerable, a return to the unsightly. In her words, each track off of this album is meant to speak to a different form of death or suffering, be it the struggles of drug addiction, as in “Delete Forever,” or the indifference/depression that comes with the ever-imminent news cycle (“My Name is Dark”) or the self-destructive tendencies that come with a “4ÆM” night. Given the dark nature of our time, Miss Anthropocene is well worth the listen. It not only speaks to the dejection and numbness many of us may be experiencing, but also to those hours of solitude spent yearning for the past, made bearable only by the entertainment and comfort foods of our youth. What better than to listen to this newest addition from Grimes to remind us of who we were when we first heard her music.

- Violet Ames, DJ

RIYL: Crystal Castles, Jupiter, Charli XCX, CHVRCHES, that one song from Pitch Perfect
Recommended Tracks: 2, 3, 7, 8
FCC: Explicit (tracks 1, 3, 7)

Basia Bulat - Are You in Love?

Basia Bulat rang in an eerily quiet Aries season with her long-awaited fifth album, Are You In Love? Her signature growl over the short 42 minutes gives one much to consider about the titular question, but perhaps not enough to ponder the often emptily nostalgic lyrics that paint a good first half of the record.

An established singer-songwriter in the contemporary folk community, Bulat has a beautiful knack for building wailing melodies in an uncommon alto register. Opener “Are You In Love?” waltzes listeners through Bulat’s entire range with haunting background flourishes, and keeps you hooked just enough to move on to the next track. Never demanding an answer too emotionally intense, she whispers the simple question to and fro, always leaving some angst to be desired.

Where Bulat shines, though, she sparkles. “Pale Blue” is a standout besides singles “Your Girl” and “Already Forgiven.” Voice warped and cymbals brushed, she creates a snowglobe of yearning and regret: “The sound was wrong/I’d heard it all before.” It spurs a domino effect, an exhale of relief through the end of the album.

On the second-to-last track, “Fables,” the autoharp introduction evokes Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” It’s also Bulat at her most vulnerable, lyrically and musically, on the whole album. “Am I still too young to know/I've been living for a ghost?” resigns us to the fact that even if hypothetically, Bulat was in love, it would have done her no good.

But not to fear. Everything culminates in the most enchanting song, and also the conclusion to the album (perhaps partially as a blessing, partially as a reassurance), “Love is at the End of the World.” In spite of it all, Bulat lets us know that she and love have both found their way to the end of the world, and she awaits her lover to join her there. She awaits you to join her there! Glory be. It’s a gorgeous piece, with Bulat’s constant, soft lilt carrying us into a 30-second outro, and then, the end of the world. Unsatisfyingly, I found no true catharsis to release me with the end of the work, but then, maybe Basia Bulat hasn’t found hers either.

- Claire Bai, Program Director

RIYL: U.S. Girls, Waxahatchee, Martha Wainwright, Neko Case
Recommended Tracks: 1, 3, 9, 12, 13
FCC: Clean

NEW ADDS: Peach Pit, Grimes, Basia Bulat