Browsing Tag

post-grunge

Elisa Winter – Summer Spent Dreaming: orchestrally apocalyptic post-grunge resonance

Posted on 9 July 2022

While many artists desperately wrestled with their creativity during the first lockdown only to reveal trite lyricism the performer, composer, multi-instrumentalist and baroquely phenomenal recording artist, Elisa Winter foresaw the new normal before the modern plague was on our door.

Finally, her debut album, Summer and Smoke, which was officially released on Summer Solstice 2022, is here to spill orchestrally apocalyptic post-grunge resonance. The LP tracks across the tensions between truth, reality and gaslighting, with the engrossingly stunning highlight, Summer Spent Dreaming.

Lush yet tumultuous. Visceral yet encompassing the detachment we all felt in some capacity, Summer Spent Dreaming is the most authentic aural depiction of the frustration and entropy I’ve heard yet.

Everything changed, in a way it is almost impossible to put in words. I say almost because Elisa Winter discernibly succeeded with “speak to me please, what has happened to you? Searching for you in your eyes, you won’t let me in.” There’s been a disconnect that we’ve kept our heads in the sand about. Thankfully, Elisa Winter is here to vindicate the confusion in our alien relationship with reality and each other.

Elisa Winter’s latest album, Summer and Smoke, is now available to stream via Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

 

The Breathing Method has delivered their vehemently distorted post-grunge howl into the void, Burden

Posted on 17 June 2022

Scottish post-grunge outfit, The Breathing Method, are set to release their vehemently distorted evolution of the 90s Seattle sound, Burden, which will throw you right back to the simpler times when Layne Staley reigned vocal supreme before pulling you into the angst of modernity with frenetic no-wavey guitars that make a juggernaut out of the release.

After the Mudhoney-Esque intro, The Breathing Method career into their own take on the post-grunge textures and don’t take their foot off the fuzz pedal until the outro of a primal scream, which compels you to envy the larynx they came from. Or maybe that’s just me.

Burden will officially release on June 17th; you can check it out for yourselves via Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Lighters in the air for Phatt James’ latest melodic grunge single, Ahead of Line

Posted on 27 May 2022

The evocative rock raconteurs, which form the melodic grunge powerhouse, Phatt James’ are fresh from the release of their latest single, Ahead of Line, which is a sublime convergence of the styles of Incubus and Red Hot Chilli Peppers, with plenty of their own distinction injected in between. Production-wise, the instrumentals gravitate around inexplicably intricate gravitas while the vocals expose nothing but raw soul.

It is still early days for the Bridgeport, Connecticut hailing outfit after releasing their debut EP, Circle Bent, in 2019, but notably, if any new band has what it takes to stir the hearts of 90s and 00s rock fans, it is Phatt James with their familiar yet sincerely original sound.

Ahead of Line is now available to stream on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

West Ridge Circle – Stuck in This Chair: The Ultimate Off-Kilter Alt-90s Ode to Ennui

Posted on 20 April 2022

Taken from their debut EP, Nobody Home, West Ridge Circle’s standout single, Stuck in This Chair, is an eclectic array of era-spanning rock nuances and modernist lyrical vulnerability.

Fans of Pavement, Pixies and Nirvana will want to drink up the 21st-century melancholy that drips through the lyrics and captures the frustration that lingers in unrelenting ennui. It’s tracks like Stuck in This Chair that prove there’s a beauty in collective misery, that now, we can hear lyrics, and it isn’t an Olympian stretch of the imagination to get on the same level. Granted, that isn’t always a given, but West Ridge Circle are thriving on the funk that is writhing through our existential hive minds.

With the J Mascis-style guitar chops, the despondent Americana blues-rock vocals that come with a tinge of the Seattle alt-90s sound and the eerily relatable lyrics, Stuck in This Chair has all the makings of a melancholy alt-rock playlist staple. We hope there’s another release nestled in the pipeline.

Stuck in This Chair is now available to stream on Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

LIVE REVIEW: The Vaulted Skies at The Angel, Nottingham 24/09/2021

Posted on 25 September 2021

The Vaulted Skies were one of the few bands that became the soundtrack to my insanity during lockdown. When they announced their show at The Angel in Nottingham supporting Lesbian Bed Death, I obviously had to be there in full unashamed fangirl fashion.

Starting with their sludgy hard-hitter, Hollowhead, they instantly asserted their ability to create an atmosphere where hearing the music becomes secondary to feeling it. After a delicate guitar intro that feeds intoxicating post-punk opium vibes, they slammed into an arresting amalgamation of shoegaze, rock and grunge with Molko-Esque vocals that cut above the noise.

Originally it was their gothy dancey hit, Does Anyone Else Feel (Strange)? which ended the set that won me over; the mix of inimitably intricate guitars over a filthy four-on-the-floor beat naturally had me hooked. But with the emergence of their demo release of their slower indie single, Almost Happy, my adoration became far more multifaceted.

Whether they’re creating floor-fillers or stripped-back melodic tracks, there’s a magnetism that proves emotion always comes before ego, which makes it so easy to lose yourself in their sonic alchemy through the sense of unfiltered connectedness.

The Vaulted Skies is easily one of the most criminally underrated alternative acts in the UK right now. Anyone with a proclivity towards pensiveness and pioneering alt-rock should be paying attention.

Listen on YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud

Photo Credit: Rich Lindley Photography

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Angelo Amarello – A perfect summery invitation in ‘Let’s Drink’.

Posted on 21 April 2021

It seems like everyone’s starting to think about the end of lock-down and getting back out to seeing friends, sharing a drink, maybe going to the pub…with ‘Let’s Drink’, Angelo Amarello sings us an ode to overindulgence and perhaps having just one glass of wine too many and waking in the morning ‘with a hammer on your mind’.

It’s fun, it rocks out in a very, very well-put-together post-grunge radio-friendly kind of way – think The Calling or the Goo Goo Dolls, and maybe at times even a little single-releases-Bring Me The Horizon – with one of the catchiest choruses we’ve heard so far this year. Amerello’s voice is perfect for the track (or vice versa), laconic without being lazy and effortlessly familiar, instantly. It’s a great, perfect, summer radio rock single, and a wonderful look forward to the end of isolation.

Check out ‘Let’s Drink’ on Spotify; follow Amarello on Facebook.

Review by Alex Holmes

Autumn Reverie raise the standard with new electrically-charged eleven-track EP ‘Twenty Twenty’

Posted on 23 February 2021

With a sensationally healthy outbreak of thunderous music for the soul, Autumn Reverie turn the temperature up on a cold year with the brilliant ‘Twenty Twenty‘.

Autumn Reverie are a fiery five-piece Post Grunge band from Madison, Wisconsin in the USA, who have a sound that is born from that pure love of making that timeless rock music which stands the test of time throughout all generations.

With particular highlights being headline track ‘Stalemate‘, ‘Cast Away‘ and ‘Buried‘, they warm up your willing ears with that special kind of flourishing soundscape, that has you somehow happy, sad and reflective at the same time.

Their signature heavy sound breaks the windows and does a great job of annoying those pesky neighbors with bad music taste, who you don’t like anyway.

Their melodic riffs are certainly as good-if not better than advertised-and you feel their pulsating passion on each EP-worthy track. With zero fillers, they have managed to put together a collection of excellent songs that lifts the roof off and powers into your mind with gut-wrenching vocals, that has the hairs on your back standing up to impressive attention.

New eleven-track EP ‘Twenty Twenty‘ from Wisconsin grunge rockers Autumn Reverie, is that tremendous thump at your perspective, that lets you into their galvanizing world of high octane music. They tear through the boundaries with a release that shakes the hinges off the doors and lets you know that real music with meaning is still out there.

Stream this epic release on Spotify and see more on their IG.

Reviewed by Llewelyn Screen

The Night Suns release post grunge track ‘Smoke’

Posted on 19 August 2017

Post grunge? Is that a thing? Well, if it is then The Night Suns fit right into such a category. You can hear the last dissonant chords of the end of the grunge era drift through their music, as well as the muscular and more polished alt-rock sound of the modern era and between the two The Night Suns find their own singular voice.

But it is cleverer than the simple meeting and re-matching of those two genres. There is a clever dynamic at work in their approach to composition, one that often feels as if they are going to head off into more progressive rock territories but which stops short of any unnecessary noodling or sounds aping. Instead they prove to be masters of taking all the classic sounds from across a number of heavier genres, blend them with melody and deft atmospherics and produce a sound all of their own.

It might be quite obvious where they come from musically but where they are going is a far more interesting prospect.

Banzai.Giant’s stoner-alt rock track ‘Melancholia’

Posted on 10 August 2017

If you try to unpack Banzai.Giant stoner-alt rock sound you soon find that it is built from some surprisingly deft textures. Rather than just the usual grunge grunt and heavy riffs, there are layers of electronic wash, chiming, jangle pop guitars, progressive passages and dramatic symphonic rock theatre.  All of which is rather pleasing. It is good to come across a band that understand that making an impact isn’t merely the business of volume control, but is more about dynamics and the building of layers to contour the sound.

Post-grunge? Is that a thing? If it is it suits Melancholia which proves great at capturing all of the power of the intent and delivery of the rawest of grunge bands and doing it by drawing the deftest of lines and leaving behind the “I hate by mum because she made me tidy my room” parochialism which was often at the heart of the scene.