Mike Krol – Power Chords CD/LP+MP3 (Merge)
Power Chords picks up where 2015’s Turkey left off. It traces Krol’s journey back to punk rock, harnessing both the guitar technique and the musical redemption referenced in its title. He’s wielding the same influences – Misfits, The Strokes, early Weezer, Ramones – but turning up the gravity and the gain. Indeed, Krol has gone somewhere new; yes, he bludgeoned himself with over-analysis and self-loathing, but along the way he stumbled upon a trove of intricate guitar lines and artfully mutating melodies. Music ruined Krol’s life. And then saved it. In chronicling that process, Krol has made his best record – painful, voyeuristic, and angry, but ultimately transcendent and timeless. It is the sound of Krol giving in to a force greater than himself, as though the chords are playing him rather than the other way around.

Rat Boy – Internationally Unknown CD/LP (Hellcat)
UK artist Rat Boy has teamed up with Tim Armstrong to produce his new album, Internationally Unknown. Rat Boy first found Armstrong’s punk/hip-hop band The Transplants in his father’s record collection, and subsequently delved into his back catalog with Rancid and Operation Ivy. Rat Boy had repeatedly mentioned his admiration of Armstrong in interviews, which led to the L.A. punk veteran discovering the young Essex upstart. Rat Boy and Armstrong immediately connected through a shared love for mixing the visceral energy of punk with hip-hop beats. The result is twelve tracks which amplify Rat Boy’s rabble-rousing riot act to a new level. He’s drawing on diverse influences which echo, at various points, The Clash, Beastie Boys, The Prodigy, Rebel MC, Green Day and Run DMC.

Sneaks – Highway Hypnosis CD/LP+MP3 (Merge)
Just as she takes up space in the male-dominated Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area punk scene, Sneaks – AKA Eva Moolchan – takes up space among the patriarchy. Highway Hypnosis, plays on hip-hop, post-punk, and invented words to fill a gap between the feminist underground and genre-specific singles charts. Through it, Moolchan joins the resistance forged by queer black feminists who create, explore, empower, conquer, and play bass. “Like Neneh Cherry, M.I.A., Micachu and other singular stars before them, Sneaks has both the punk spirit and pop sense to carve out her own path in music. Highway Hypnosis is simply the sound of her revving the engine.” – NPR

Swervedriver – Future Ruins CD/LP (Dangerbird)
UK shoegaze legends Swervedriver return with the follow up to 2015’s I Wasn’t Born To Lose You. Future Ruins exhibits Swervedriver’s fabled widescreen escapism, but with a tension that echoes the sleeve image of Coney Island in skeletal monochrome, like a post mortem photograph of a failed utopia. “There’s a lot of foreboding with regard to the future on this album,” says the band’s Adam Franklin. “Space is in there a lot too. In the first song [“Mary Winter”], the character is a spaceman who’s trying to remember what life is really like. Also, it could be about somewhere in the world where winter isn’t like the winter here. A sunny place, but it’s December or January and you’re trying to remember winter. Something’s going on.” Fellow single “Drone Lover” sails and soars while a conscious chorus comments on the depersonalized nature of 21st century techno-warfare.

William Tyler – Goes West CD/LP+MP3 (Merge)
Goes West is the new solo album from the former Silver Jews and Lambchop member backed by a band consisting of singer/songwriter Meg Duffy, guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist and producer Brad Cook, keyboardist James Wallace, drummer Griffin Goldsmith, and engineer Tucker Martine. From M.C. Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger): “William’s new record is the best music that he’s ever made. I’m sure of this because I know and love all of his music intimately, and this album moves me the most, and the most consistently. The first time I heard it was in the late spring in the Texas Hill Country, rolling between limestone and scrub. I was on a cleanse then – no alcohol, no drugs, no evil thoughts – and was astonished at the emotional clarity that the album held. It offered up a model for what I wanted my head to feel like. Goes West marks a sort of narrowing of focus for William’s music; it sounds as though he found a way to point himself directly towards the rich and bittersweet emotional center of his music without being distracted by side trips. Perhaps this is down to the fact that William only plays acoustic guitar on the album, a clear and conscious decision considering that he is one of Nashville’s great electric guitarists.”

Buzzcocks – Another Music In A Different Kitchen [Reissue/1978] CD/LP (Domino)
Buzzcocks – Love Bites [Reissue/1978] CD/LP (Domino)
Domino re-issues the Buzzcocks’ seminal first two albums. Both records have been lovingly restored and remastered from the original ¼” tapes for the first time and come packaged in the original Malcolm Garrett designed sleeves with lavish 8-page booklets containing unseen images and extensive liner notes by famed writer, broadcaster, music journalist and cultural commentator Jon Savage. By the end of 1978 not only had Buzzcocks established themselves as one of the leading-lights of punk but proved themselves as deft songwriters capable of producing three-minute-mini-masterpieces that would endure long after the initial spark of punk had faded. 

Fidlar – Almost Free CD/LP+MP3 (Mom + Pop Music)
Almost Free, the new release from Fidlar touches on many of the tragedies and irritations of modern life: existential dread, gentrification, the inescapable sway of the super-rich and the self-involved, post-breakup telecommunication, performative wokeness, the loneliness of sobriety or the lack thereof. But through sheer force of imagination and unchecked joie de vivre, the L.A.-based band manages to turn feeling wrong into something glorious and essential.

Neil Hamburger – Still Dwelling CD/LP/Cassette (Drag City)
In our time of America’s greatest dismay, it takes ‘America’s Funnyman’ to show the way back to a little bit of love and a whole lot of classic entertainment. With vocal pipes alight and a full studio orchestra featuring a cast of thousands behind him, Neil Hamburger works his way through a series of songs that have helped him through all his trials; by performing them in his own unique way, he hopes to bring relief to the many out there who need it.