New to Sam Jr. ? Check out his 2022 debut album’s nihilist fuzz-psychedelia full of flutes, bongos and wah wah guitars, mixed by audio king Dave Fridmann. Or his 2024 album Inner Shadow hailed as his Ride The Lightning era mixed by DFA1979’s Sebastien Grainger. But judge for yourself. All I’m saying is, if you’re into hot fuzz, Sam Jr. will make you rather happy. “My concept for awhile writing songs was actually ‘What would the Dude’s band from The Big Lebowski sound like?’” laughs Sam, Jr., the titular architect behind this long-overdue solo stepping-out. I’m a hardwired optimist and a mellow person overall, and I want that to come across in the songs.” If you enjoy overdriven Stooges sleaze and expertly deployed noise of the Spacemen 3 / A Place to Bury Strangers variety and the thought of, say, T. Rex covering some of the more obscure B-sides on Barbed Wire Kisses or the Primal Scream who made XTRMNTR going back in time to remake Screamadelica with far more cynicism … well, that’s in the ballpark. But why give it all away? If it sounds like you’re gonna like it you’re probably gonna love it. More importantly, it sounds exactly the way Sam, Jr., wanted it to sound and he loves it. He went through a lot to get here. But maybe he had to go through a lot to get here.
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Montreal’s TV Erased formed in 2019, quickly producing a series of blown-out DIY recordings in their cramped Avenue Du Parc jam space. These embryonic documents, initially released as singles on Bandcamp, later compiled on a limited cassette via Montreal’s Stress Test Records, are noisy, jagged, visceral blasts that sit uncomfortably at the intersections of post-punk, no wave and experimental art-rock. As the pandemic era engulfed the band’s aspirations of playing live, TV Erased focused on recording their debut album. The resulting If you get, I want was conceived at various studios in Montreal over the course of three years. The music, with wryly tenebrous song titles like “Matte Black,” “Two Funerals” and “It’s Halloween,” is a goth-tinged blend of post-punk and post-hardcore, evoking the spectres of bands like The Ex, Fugazi, Public Image Limited, Southern Death Cult, Unwound and early Blonde Redhead, as well as the sonic experimentalism of (please excuse us) Can and Faust. Walls of tape noise and manipulated samples hiss and crash as strange, intertwining guitar lines vandalize repetitive, hypnotic drum and bass grooves; rhythmically hooky vocals, steeped in dreamy, modulating delays, punch holes through the clatter, grounding the jams within the “song” paradigm, but always teetering on the edge of the precipice. This primitive, kinetic chaos is balanced by the band’s ability to craft obliquely exciting hooks. The record’s sonic identity, crafted with co-producer Adrian Popovich, has a confounding cold looseness to it, like a robot learning to play rock and roll, or if the Stooges had recorded Funhouse with Martin Hannett instead of Don Gallucci. TV Erased are Montreal scene, ahem, veterans who variously play in art-rock band SUUNS, synth rock band We Are Wolves, experimental pop project Rip Pop Mutant, baroque psych rock combo Pang Attack, indie rock duo Physical Congas and noise punk band FRVITS.
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Bitchcore duo OLGA’s debut LP, I Am Porn, is a not-so-subtle statement on the state of the music industry. It unabashedly leverages and makes relevant the tired truism, ‘sex sells,’ for a post-Spotify economy where people think listening to music is okay as long as you don’t pay for it. With dark, industrial, electronic instrumentation, the songs are anatomically true to pop. For fans of Nine Inch Nails, Patriarchy, and N8NOFACE.
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