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Spanish Love Songs – No Joy (indie rock, emo)
For every genre, no matter how inherently off-putting, there always seems to be that one band who still manage to break through on the sheer basis of simply being better than everybody else.* For me and overwrought, emotional indie-rock, that band are Spanish Love Songs. From frontman Dylan Slocum's trademark warble, to the jangley, pop-punk-infused indie-rock laid down by the rest of the band—which now comes infused with trendy 80's post punk and new wave influences—everything about this bands seems tailor made to ensure that I should hate them. But they're just too good and, for the second time in a row, they've delivered a collection of songs that are utterly undeniable.
2020's Brave Faces Everyone was an instant classic that firmly established Spanish Love Songs as the definitive act of the modern emo/indie-rock movement. Joy isn't quite as good as its world-beating predecessor, but it's about as close as they or any other band could have hoped to come. If anything, No Joy should be a more palatable offering for heavy music fans. Slocum's overwrought affectations, while still very much in play, have being reigned in considerably. Moreover, while there has always been a pessimism at the heart of Spanish Love Songs' sound, the tellingly titled No Joy wears its darkness far more readily. From the starkness of its cover, to it's more bass-heavy post-punk palette and frequently harrowing narratives, No Joy is a bleak affair that also seems to succumb to its sorrows far more readily than the outwardly defiant Brave Faces Everyone.
This band and this album can be a lot a lot of the time but there's an emotional depth and craftsmanship that keeps me continually transfixed, where supposedly comparable offerings from respected artists like The Menzingers or The Wonder Years repeatedly send me running for cover. Personally, I find more kinship between this record and early U2 or even recent Taylor Swift than the indie/pop-punk scene that birthed it. Seriously, you wanna make these guys the biggest band in the world, get these guys (and girl) opening for Swift and/or at least covering "Anti-Hero", stat!
*I haven't come across a good ska band yet, but I'm sure they're out there...
Triple Kill – Blackened Dawn (melodic power thrash)
Feeling a bit bummed out after listening to Spanish Love Songs, or defiantly determined that the band just aren't "your thing"? There couldn't be a better palette-cleanser than rising Australian metal superstars Triple Kill and their ferocious second album, Blackened Dawn. The band's hearty thrash and modern metal core is both bolstered and set apart by vocalist Rodney Goolagong's power metal-style falsettos, which enable the rest of the band to get surprisingly heavy at times while still benefiting from and indulging in all the excesses of classic heavy metal extravagance.
If there's one major drawback to the album, it's that lead single "Shai-Hulud" towers like its namesake amid the album's other tracks. Maybe that "God Emperor!!' mosh-call just hits differently after finally jumping back into the Dune sequels recently, but it's a high benchmark for the burgeoning band to iterate upon for future releases. The video is also fucking hilarious. The album itself is available via bandcamp, but you're going to want to watch this one.