Big Bliss is the Brooklyn-based brainchild of brothers Cory and Tim Race, and friend/collaborator Wallace May. Formed in late 2015, the trio melds harmonic post-punk grooves with art-rock sensibilities all propped up on the pillars and hooks of pop structure. Their sound is at once melancholic, tense, noisy, and ultimately uplifting, laced with lyricism that ruminates on anxiety, grief, addiction, recovery, devotion, and heartache. Framing these themes is the social ennui unique to generations brought up in our technologically ravaged and increasingly fragile world.

Their 2018 debut LP, At Middle Distance, was released to acclaim from Billboard, The Big Takeover, Aquarium Drunkard and more. (It was one of our favorite albums released that year too – link) Several years of heavy show schedules and relentless touring led to the band being recognized by Oh My Rockness as “NYC’s Hardest Working Band” in 2017, as well as regular appearances at SXSW through 2019.

The band was originally scheduled to begin production on their sophomore album, Vital Return, in April of 2020 with Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Liars, The Drums), but that plan was soon delayed indeterminably in parallel with the rest of the world. Once it was moderately safe to convene in a room together again, equipped with heavy PPE and wide open windows in the January air, the band re-demoed the entire slew of album-contending songs. By the summer of 2021, Schenke and the band were recording in full swing. That summer, May decamped to California, and the brothers assembled a rotating lineup to return to regular live performances the following November. The album was wrapped in the first weeks of 2022, followed shortly by fellow Brooklyn musicians Rose Blanshei and Dan Peskin joining on bass and guitar, respectively.

Vital Return captures the band channeling their love for R.E.M., New Order, Yo La Tengo, and C86 in addition to the twilight of classic post-punk acts like The Cure and Echo & the Bunnymen. However, the album decidedly looks ahead; its themes document a fight for sobriety, moving through the loss of the brothers’ father, coping with collective and generational trauma, and finally seeking out the emotional/spiritual tools needed for us all to rebuild in our current moment in time.

The album comes out Aug. 13th and is available now at popmarket

Silverbacks, from Dublin, have put their debut LP Fad up for pre-order, available July 17th on Central Tones.

Pre-order here

https://silverbacks.bandcamp.com/

Do Nothing, a new band out of Nottingham, UK.

Recommended if you like: The Fall, Arctic Monkeys, Ought

“Pop culture is cyclical, and every now and then a generation of bands coagulates around a particular strain of influences, whether it was Blur and Oasis channeling The Kinks, Wire and The Beatles to create Britpop, or The Strokes and co dusting down Television, Modern Lovers and Velvet Underground” [NME]

Do Nothing is playing SXSW 2020.

They have released 4 tracks and, so far, only a single 7″. Here is their latest, ‘Lebron James’.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S-5yDNPFeA

Big Bliss, a post-punk trio from Brooklyn, has released their debut full-length, At Middle Distance.

They released a 5-track EP, Keep Near, in 2016 which was available on cassette only. (Anyone have one available?)

Recommended if you like: Wolf Parade, Pixies, Modest Mouse, Interpol, Echo and the Bunnymen

It’s available on CD, black vinyl, and digitally on Bandcamp.

How do you describe an album out of time, concerned with the disappearance of culture, of humanity, of nature, of logic and emotion? Why make this album in an era when attention spans have been reduced to next to nothing, and the tactile grains of making music have been further reduced to algorithms and projected playlist placement. Why wake up in the morning? Why hasn’t everything already disappeared?

Deerhunter’s eighth LP forgets the questions and makes up unrelated answers. It gets up, walks around, it records itself in several strategic geographic points across North America. It comes home, restructures itself and goes back to bed to avoid the bad news.

From the opening harpsichord and piano figures of ‘Death in Midsummer’, it is impossible to tell where the record came from. Is ‘No One’s Sleeping’ an outtake of an aborted Kinks recording session in 1977 Berlin with Eno producing? No. That is nostalgia. If there is one thing Deerhunter are making clear it is that they have exhausted themselves with that toxic concept.

What they spend their time doing instead is reinventing their approach to microphones, the drum kit, the harpsichord, the electromechanical and synthetic sounds of keyboards. Whatever guitars are left are pure chrome, plugged straight into the mixing desk with no amplifier or vintage warmth.

The result is as thrilling, haunting, and unpredictable as anything in their roughly 15-year career.

Deerhunter have made a science fiction album about the present. Is it needed right now? Is it relevant? Perhaps only to a small audience. DADA was a reaction to the horrors of war. Punk was a reaction to the slow and vacant 70’s. Hip Hop was a liberated musical culture that challenged the notions presented wholesale about the African-American experience. What is popular music today a reaction to?

4AD Label Site
Amazon

Sprit Award has released their sophomore full length, Muted Crowd.

Via Billboard:

“(Debut Neverending) ended up taking a really long time, and we all had a lot of person stuff that was happening,” Daniel Lyon tells Billboard. “For this one we really wanted to hunker down and get it done and get it out quick. The goal was to have something come out organically and make something that was kind of raw and aggressive. It kind of took on that quality and then took on a shape of its own.

“We were kind of in a whirlwind,” Lyon adds. “I think we work better having deadlines.”

Pick it up at Bandcamp.

Brooklyn based post-punk band Big Bliss has released their debut album, At Middle Distance.

At times they remind me of modern bands like Wolf Parade, but also classics like The Sound, The Church, Bauhaus, and Joy Division.

Order from Bandcamp

“Los Angeles shoegaze outfit Film School have been together for nearly a decade, and with their fourth LP ‘Fission’ coming out on July 20, the band is more congealed than ever, serving up a melodic, fervent, hazy and deeply collaborative effort. Instead of mourning the separation from their label, the band gleaned new inspiration from the change. “It’s like any breakup — you either bury your head in the sand or you use that energy to create something,” lead singer Greg Bertens tells Spinner. “This band’s creative fuel always seems to come from a mix of the freeing energy you get from separation and the challenge to prove you’re still worthy.”

Their new single, ‘Heart Full of Pentagons,’ showcases a shift in sound as bassist Lorelei Plotczyk contributes vocals. With music born of band-practice jam material and idea sprung forth by a friend’s Facebook status, ‘Heart Full of Pentagons’ is an ode to a five-way love triangle — a love pentagon, if you will. It’s a “good, messy” story and a tease of what’s more to come. Film School go on tour this Fall and in the meantime, enjoy the song after the jump.” – Spin