Browsing Tag

Alt 90s

Shape or Form’s Debut Single, ‘Don’t Turn Away’ Hung Lynchian Melodies, Scuzzy Pop-Punk Antagonism and Alt-90s Nostalgia in the Gallery of Their Ingenuity 

Posted on 1 April 2026

‘Don’t Turn Away’ may ease you in with woozy function-band melodic 80s nostalgia, the kind you’d expect to see people swaying and swooning to in a David Lynch film, but the debut single from Williamsport-based powerhouse Shape or Form, which keeps its tuning geared towards the past to drench the present in the kind of nostalgia that instantly makes your angsty soul feel right at home, dials up the pop-punk antagonism to the scuzziest degree, delivering a grungy homage to the alt-90s.

If Teenage Fanclub, Weezer and other bands in that deliciously visceral vein constitute your playlist staples, this lo-fi slacker jam is essential listening. There’s definitive talent to the way Shape or Form simmers tension into the release; the melodic ease of the opening gives way to a rougher, fuzz-frayed charge without losing its hooky core. That push and pull gives the track its staying power, landing somewhere between basement-show scruffiness and cinema-lit longing.

Formed in late 2023 in North Central Pennsylvania, the four-piece came together fast, driven by shared chemistry and a love of songs that carry familiar hooks without sounding stale. With John on drums, Micah on bass, Patrick on lead guitar, and Vaughn steering rhythm guitar and vocals, the band already sound locked in.

Don’t Turn Away is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Puppies & a Demon blurred psychotropic lines of lo-fi alt-realism in ‘Illusions’

Posted on 17 January 2026

Puppies & a Demon rode the crux of the surf rock wave in Illusions, their psychedelically twisted, lo-fi cruise through grungy indie territory. In one hand, they clutch the kaleidoscopic soul of the 60s, in the other, the sludge of the alt-90s, all while churning up their own brand of sonic dissonance that doesn’t ask for attention so much as it hypnotically absorbs it.

The title may suggest ambiguity, but the creative conviction in the track’s layered textures leaves no room for doubt. Whether you’re new to the idea of reality being little more than smoke and screen, or you’ve been reading behind the veil for years, the impact of this trip is the same. It’s a cosmic exit sign lit by garagey distortion and psychotropic catharsis. The vocals drift between sardonic sweetness and cryptic harbingering, chameleonically slipping in and out of harmony, allowing the freaked-out to be comforted while ruffling the complacent.

Puppies & a Demon are already gaining notoriety for their commitment to sonically warped storytelling. Illusions feels like it bubbled up through the cracks in the pavement after a rainfall of existential dread and came coated in the kind of fuzz that illuminates. There’s method in their madness, but they never let that get in the way of the obscurity. The track’s lo-fi roots hold steady while the band lets their freak flag fly somewhere between the Californian coast and an abandoned squat’s basement speaker stack.

Illusions is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Francis’ Scream Poured Dusky-Sunset Melancholia into the Keys of His Indie Vignette, ‘Cherry Blossoms’

Posted on 25 September 2025

With Francis’ Scream’s latest single, Cherry Blossoms, the enigmatic singer-songwriter doesn’t hand you fragments of his soul; he gives it all for you to devour whole. His vocal timbre delivers the synaesthesia of a dusky Midwestern sunset, colouring the air over indie-folk instrumentals that dress themselves in the plaid aesthetic of the alt-90s. His refusal to emanate anything other than unvarnished truth turns the track into something that claws under your ribs and sits heavy there.

The minor-key piano work sets a wistful foundation, while the lo-fi production lets Cherry Blossoms bloom with a closeness that feels as if it’s just been lifted from a tape deck. When the modest guitar solo arrives, it doesn’t rush to impress, it lingers long enough to let the heartbreak sink in and allow you to drift into your own memories. The lyrics trace the fragile ritual of holding on to someone who is already gone, keeping them alive by revisiting their shadow until the ache starts to feel like company. There is no default to bitterness here, only the kind of emotional honesty that stings in the best possible way.

Since first making waves in the indie underground with his debut, Francis’ Scream has built a reputation for penning tracks that sound like letters you were too afraid to write. With Cherry Blossoms, he leans further into that tender self-exposure, proving that lo-fi indie folk can still cut deeper than any overproduced studio confession.

Cherry Blossoms is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Smiling Jackals Sharpened the Edge of Addiction and Apathy in ‘Health Junkie’

Posted on 14 June 2025

Smiling Jackals didn’t just subvert the usual rock ‘n’ roll tropes in Health Junkie, they twisted the neck of tired clichés and bent James Dean Bradfield-esque guitar solos around cerebrally sardonic snarls until rock and punk created enough friction to singe the skin. The pulse of the progressions itches to break into the cataclysmic outcry of the choruses, but every moment of restraint and release is measured with magnetic precision.

There’s no empty swagger in Health Junkie, only feral finesse. Smiling Jackals are clearly on a mission to etch out a legacy with volition charged by intellectual firepower. The nostalgia-choked touches may nod to their formative sonic lineage, but there’s no coasting on borrowed memory. They weaponise the raw grungy fidelity as a conduit for angst, catharsis, and lyrical gold with enough weight to put them on the Forbes rich list, if sonic currency counted.

Reigniting the flame they lit before stepping back in the early 2000s, the trio’s return carries scars instead of sheen. Barry Sloane’s vocals hit like serrated confessionals, Nick Kilroe keeps the rhythm volatile and muscular, while Rob Nico’s lyrics cut between social commentary and spiritual unrest with riffs that kick like divine retribution.

Health Junkie is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Red Maker Bottled the Buzz of Anhedonic Resignation in ‘Boring’

Posted on 13 June 2025
Red Maker

Grunge doesn’t often come with a sugar rush, but Boring by Red Maker is enough to trigger a diabetic coma. Every synthline, scream and scuzzed-out riff pushes you closer to the edge of cathartic combustion. The way it leans into the lo-fi scuzz of the alt-90s and glazes it with 00s alt-rock motifs while delivering post-hardcore screamo fervour creates a sonic overload that feels like Grandaddy throwing punches instead of petals.

Written by Morgan Harris, Kyle Dowling, Mason Harris and Samuel Di Vito, and produced by Mark Dahm at The Warehouse Recording Studio, Boring thrives in chaos. It’s a frenzy of fervour that whips you into the frenetic energy-spiking mania while delivering a potent shot of vindication to anyone who knows the suffocation of anhedonia. The repetition in the lyrics captures the futility of trying to find meaning when life is monochrome, while the delivery punches a hole straight through it.

With Morgan Harris on vocals and guitar, Kyle Dowling on lead guitar, Mason Harris on bass, and Sam Di Vito on drums, Red Maker detonated a refusal to play it safe. Their sonic identity is sharp, sneering and soaked in angst without pretence. They’ve toured alongside The Kickback, Belmont and Vision Video, but Boring puts them in a different lane entirely. When it hits the airwaves on June 13th, the tectonic plates of alternative rock will undoubtedly shift in Red Maker’s direction.

Boring is now available to stream on all major platforms. Check out the artist via their label’s website here. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Bliss Foxx Tore Through Alt-Rock Apathy with Grunge-Tinged Venom in ‘Stretch’

Posted on 11 June 2025

Stretch by Bliss Foxx is a viscerally infectious outpouring of pure grunge-tinged furore that picks up where Hole left off and catapults the sound into the future of cataclysmically cathartic alt-rock. The angst of the alt-90s still tears its way through the frenetic onslaught of the guitars that were never strung to know mercy as they chug to the blistering rhythm section, but there’s nothing retrograde about the fury in this release. Instead of choking the hit with nostalgia, Bliss Foxx prowled into the pantheon of contemporary alt-rock with all the mainstream appeal and magnetism of Destroy Boys and Amyl and the Sniffers. If you’re looking for a track to shake the cobwebs out of your synapses, look no further.

This Portland-hailing powerhouse didn’t just plug into a current. They generated it. With unapologetically raw hooks and an uncompromising attitude, they’ve taken the force of punk, the hooks of power pop, and the emotion of alternative rock and fed them through a distortion pedal soaked in sweat and swagger.

The vocals snarl, the momentum thrashes, and the attitude bleeds through every carefully calibrated blow, allowing Stretch to prove their capacity to write with venom while making it stick in your head like bubblegum.

Stretch is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Find other ways to connect with Bliss Foxx here. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Park National Spilled the Soul-Spiked Ache of Loving Through Self-Loathing in the Shoegazed Emo Anthem, ‘Your Mom’s House’

Posted on 15 May 2025

It took a few decades for Midwest emo to grow up, but that long-awaited maturity resounds in the sludgy shoegazed guitar tones of Your Mom’s House by Park National, which still delivers the visceral ache of emotions pouring out into a world that is all too ready to distort them with dissonance. But the cultivation on display that carves its way through the locked-on emotive target overdriven guitar tones elevates this anthem of ennui to the nth degree.

With one of the strongest guitar solos I’ve ever heard in emo-adjacent territory paired with the sheer striking sensibility of Your Mom’s House, which delivers the pained refrain of “just because I can’t love myself, doesn’t mean I can’t love you”, it is no surprise that Park National is amassing followers like there’s no tomorrow with the smorgasbord of resonance he distills into his vignettes.

Park National is the project of Chicago’s Liam Fagan, who broke through in 2020 with the self-produced The Big Glad, a record soaked in coming-of-age angst and serrated emo-pop textures. He’s now barrelling into new sonic territory with You Have to Keep Searching, a lo-fi-flecked, fuzz-soaked, genre-warping body of work that serves as a conduit for catharsis and chaos in equal measure. Guided by a DIY ethos and unflinching introspection, Fagan’s evolution is anything but obscure.

Your Mom’s House is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Andrea Sandruvi Scored a Lament into the Strings of Post-Grunge in ‘Fate’

Posted on 3 May 2025

With his third single, Fate, Andrea Sandruvi went beyond tuning into the tones of post-grunge —he dredged the stylings from a place where anguish clings to melody like silt to skin. Inspired by a tragic incident in Piemonte, where a young man succumbed to despair and drowned in the cold indifference of a river, Fate kindles the dark side of kismet into an ocean of post-grunge emotion; you’ll struggle to keep your head above the waves as visceral vulnerability crashes over you.

The ethereal backing harmonies lend euphony to the production, which could have been torn from a tape deck cradling an alt-90s demo if it weren’t for the polish that swathes the agony in the progressive instrumental transgressions. With nods to artists in the same vein as Incubus and bluesy guitar motifs to temper the raw tendrils of grunge, there’s no denying the independent artist’s authenticity. Nothing in the instrumental arrangement feels borrowed. Every melodic movement sways under the weight of lived experience and a mind glazed with melancholia.

From picking up a guitar after a bolt-of-lightning visit from cousin Alessandro to playing countless covers in dimly lit clubs, Sandruvi’s roots in alternative and grunge run deeper than stylistic mimicry. Now, after cutting his teeth rearranging rock and pop in acoustic formats, he’s filtering that raw emotionality into original compositions, each track springing from something felt rather than forced. Fate doesn’t ask to be understood—it makes sure you feel every ache of it.

Fate is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

FGA Pulls the Splinters from Alt-90s Anguish in the Melodic Riptide ‘What’s Wrong’

Posted on 2 May 2025

With hauntingly angular, melodically emotive indie rock guitar hooks working in complete synergy with the vocals as they croon, soar, and get to the crux of the raw core of the emotional underpinnings, What’s Wrong by FGA is a riptide of affecting intensity, packaged within a melodiously cathartic serenade for the wearied.

If you could imagine what it would sound like if the Manic Street Preachers and Interpol converged their guitar styles around vocals that sporadically tease elements of The Strokes, you’ll get an idea of the kind of alt-90s-adjacent sanctuary you’ll find within the blistered yet blissful tonality of What’s Wrong.

Behind FGA is a Texan artist with a gift for channelling emotional devastation into nuanced sonic nostalgia. There’s no sleek posturing, no gimmick-laden distractions—just the unfiltered distillation of angst, framed through reverb-heavy guitars that flicker like failing fluorescents in a memory-soaked rehearsal room.

What’s Wrong doesn’t scream for attention; it coils its intensity around you and waits for you to meet it halfway. The push-pull between the evocative vocal restraint and the guitar lines that rise and writhe like phantom limbs of ‘90s angst leaves a mark without ever begging for one to be made.

What’s Wrong is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link.  If you don’t mind amassing a new nostalgically rich alt-90s obsession, hit play.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

All Violet’s ‘Animals Domestic’ Fires a Sonorous Bullet Through Indie-Rock’s Corporate Cage

Posted on 20 April 2025

Soft yet sonorous, All Violet’s single ‘Animals Domestic’ pulls you into a vortex of emotion refracted like a prism, a kaleidoscope channelling echoes of Pavement, Badly Drawn Boy, and The Goo Goo Dolls, where the jangly edges of 90s alt-indie collide unapologetically with Americana twang. It’s a sound that settles deep in your chest even as its earworm burrows relentlessly deeper, determined to make its home permanent.

Penned as a war cry against the rising corporate tide, dulling our minds and chaining us to cubicles, Animals Domestic is bathed in venomous vitriol spat at advertising overlords and the sportification of politics, questioning the existential malaise that comes from clock-watching and sleepwalking through life. With a hook that laments, “Is this all it means to be alive? Busy counting sheep until you die,” the song confronts modern existence’s psychological confinement head-on, pleading defiantly for something more tangible than neon-lit consumerist illusions.

Anchored by satisfyingly slick riffs and lyrics sharp enough to pierce the facade of commercial comfort, ‘Animals Domestic’ leaves a lingering mark—a salve for anyone who’s bruised themselves trying to decode life’s absurdities. All Violet, fronted fiercely by the enigmatic BT, ensures their indie-rock revolt resonates loud enough to crack corporate cages wide open.

‘Animals Domestic’ is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast