Canadian big time post hardcore punks Billy Talent are back with long awaited, several times delayed new album. Besides already known singles such as Forgiveness I+II there are all together ten songs on this one. Billy Talent got some really great innovations in their songwriting like saxophone solo, some keyboards, but it is still that nice melodic punk rock/post hardcore we all grown to love as the years went by. Songs like Reckless Paradise, Judged which are more straightforward punk song or I Beg To Differ are my personal favorites, but ballad The Wolf made my skin crawl with goosebumps, such fantastic melodies and backing vocal harmonies on that one. ForYou is another great example how superb this band is in their songwriting. Musicianship, songwriting, vocals, melodies, everything is just done really really on higher level concerning this record. Awesome new album!
Deafheaven are back with their new full length opus! I must admit that I didn t pay much attention to these guys prior to this record, but I heard my friend talking praises about their music, so I decided to have a listen when this record came out. This is pure dreamy soundscape for darkened hearts and souls that love dark, love melancholy and love their post black metal and so called blackgaze. The music of Deafheaven incorporates pop, metal, indie rock and dark, dreamy passages and make it in a way that is accessible, pleasure to listen and make you feel sad, yet happy at the same time. Vocals are clean, also recalling that dreamy vibe in me as a listener, yet keeping me alert for something out of nightmare lurking behind corners of the derelict, abandoned city that I am wandering through carried by the music. This album is a personal experience, as in makers of music, also as listeners of music. Every person should experience this one in their own, unique way. That is what makes it so beautiful.
Distributed by Revolver USA & Cargo UK Co-released with Tough Love Records (London)
“Party Store” is about repetition – generation to generation and within a life. It’s also about the almost altar-like character of some corner store counters: the kid photos and signed dollar bills and lucky charms and out-dated notices and ancient advertisements and winning tickets. Around here, I call corner stores corner stores, but that sounded like a terrible name for a song. I’m from the East Coast where we called corner stores “bodegas”, which is also a terrible name for a song. So we went with the Midwestern American version, “party store”, and figured we could get away with it as Aaron is from Indiana. – Karina Gill, 2021
>> Cindy’s third LP arrives in quick succession, the quietly devastating 1:2. Jesse Jackson on bass, Simon Phillips on drums and Aaron Diko on keyboards weave the perfectly thin web behind Gill’s slow Velvety strums and murmured melodies. The rhythm section brings the crude flow, while the keys add subtle and surreal counterpoint to the withering world Gill depicts in her lyrics. “Songs tie together seemingly disparate things by the logic of mood,” Gill tries to explain. This isn’t dream-pop sunshine bliss; half-closed black drapes hang on the window where the narrator stares into the middle distance. “Sometimes you say you’re feeling small/You plan all day for your own funeral”, she intones in Party Store. Gill has a way of halting her phrasing that makes it feel like her thoughts are gently tumbling into the abyss. It’s this unsettling quality mixed with the hazy atmosphere that makes Cindy’s new LP 100% addicting and the perfect antidote to comfort listening. – Glenn Donaldson, 2021
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