Rachel Gagliardi used to be a member of the bands Slutever and Upset, and she started Pouty back in 2013 as a duo with Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner, releasing one song a day. Pouty evolved into Gagliardi’s solo project, and she released the extremely cool debut album Forgot About Me in 2024. Today, she’s back…
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The hosts, nominees and top five for Peer-Voted APRA Song of the Year have been announced for thecentenary edition of the 2026 APRA Music Awards, to be held on Wednesday, April 29 at Sydney’sHordern Pavilion. This year’s Song of the Year top five features three previous winners from across the musical spectrum.2025 winners Amyl and […]Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
-Frank Zappa (?)
In the wake of seeing Sunn O))) live in Washington, DC on Friday, April 10, I’ve been grappling once again with the words above, brushing up against the inadequacy of language in certain contexts. It’s incredibly humbling, particularly when words are usually easy to find, easy to manipulate. The show was at the Lincoln Theater, a venerable old theater that reminded me fleetingly of Pittsburgh’s dearly departed Syria Mosque; tattered, cozily lived-in, two levels, sepia-toned, and reeking of nostalgia. My destination was Orchestra L, row A. The word “orchestra” itself should communicate plenty about not just the venue, but possibly where Sunn O))) locate themselves in the musical firmament these days. On the horizon, as I enter, is an ominous wall of 100-watt Sunn O))) Model T’s astride Hiwatt cabinets with some Ampex SVT’s thrown in for good measure. I kept walking until the horizon dissolved and I was sitting directly in front of Greg Anderson’s side of this foreboding, eardrum-battering wall of aural domination and doom. The band encouraged “a no phone experience,” which I applaud, but it was hard not to take awestruck photos of their gear.
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Smoke slowly started billowing forth simultaneously with a tape that spliced together live banter from Venom shows. No songs, just Cronos saying goofy KISS-style rock’n’rollisms. This is important to note, as is the fact that Sunn 0)))’s new self-titled record contains a song called: “Does Anyone Hear Like Venom?” It is a key Sunn 0))) paradox. Despite the black metal/cold Nordic heart at the core of their initial musical partnership and the very serious, solemn way they present themselves in a live setting, there is a sense of humor, joy, and celebration in the art Sunn 0))) produces. The robes emphasize the solemnity while invoking a sense of a ritual, but I suspect they also hide an occasional grin between the duo and perhaps even a wink and a nod reserved for particularly enraptured audience members. After all, Stephen O’ Malley once remarked, “We’re kind of about having too much.” Which is another way of saying they’re celebrating excess. Knowingly. Doing so requires having at least humor about said endeavor.
Cronos eventually stops telling us we’re “Wild, man. Wild!” and two men appear, largely obscured by smoke and mist. One picks up a 2005 Les Paul Deluxe Goldtop. The other, a gorgeous Travis Bean TB1000A. Their weapons of choice. The conjuring begins. Drop-A tuning. Tone first. Deep, fathomless tone. Staggering sheets of sound start to permeate the century-old space more quickly, severely, and thoroughly than the omnipresent mist. It quickly exerts its palpability and undeniable physical presence. Punishing, oceanic cascades of distorted sound waves attack my skull and chest. It starts to move, to undulate, to pulse. Anderson and O’Malley play expertly off each other, theatrically accentuating a pending down-stroked chord they know’ll have enough power to fracture the sidewalks of U Street. Rumbling, bassy cloud formations pour forth and rain heavily down on devotees seeking purity somehow in this torrential baptism of noise. One thing nonbelievers have trouble understanding is just how adept these two acolytes are at imbuing these titanic sound with dynamism. There is an undeniable ebb and flow in the heinously over-saturated slow burning builds that eventually combust like burning stars. Speaking recently of their current two-man iteration, O’Malley said, “The fundamental ideas of the ensemble, the instrumentation were all there in the distortion.” Living perilously alongside and within the maelstrom. You can hear it breathe. Feel it sigh, groan, gasp and scream.
The set really started seething when “XXAANN” sprawled out of the speakers and the droning swells became more serrated, settling into mountainous overdriven clouds of ferocious high-gain madness. The guitarists masterfully controlled these searing lightning bolts of distortion, which melted into ancient lakes of saturation that seemed to ooze from the ceiling. Anderson’s guitar emitted savagely low sub-bass frequencies, which were on display during the show’s true crescendo: the roiling, monolithic “Butch’s Guns.” Towering pillars of monstrous Tom G. Warrior tones/riffs erupted from O’Malley like electrical storms before blurring into a glitchy, screeching Merzbow-meets-Bernard Herrmann inspired denouement. I actually thought one of Anderson’s amps was going to explode. The shining, buzzing tubes appeared to levitate, a whole beautiful line of desperately overheated 6550 vacuum tubes…straining. After Butch laid his guns down, there were suffocating waves of droning bass-heavy dissonance and feedback, which somehow extinguished itself before anything burned or tumbled down. A wave of celebratory joy swept through the smoke and noise. The two men put down their guitars and smiled.
–Dennis J. Seese
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Sunn O))) is available now via Sub Pop.
Anchor 1976 / Think Like A Key 2025 Arrestingly modest offering from a stalwart of English melodic rock – given an anniversary shine destined to bring out the record’s soft colors. As his impeccable pedigree, forged via stints with THE … Continue reading
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Failure release Location Lost in just a few days. The grunge greats have shared “The Air’s On Fire” and “A Way Down,” and today they’re back with the highly anticipated Hayley Williams collab “The Rising Skyline.” “Failure doesn’t do a lot of collaborations, but my friendship with Hayley, and her long standing support of the…
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For a while now, we’ve been hearing rumbilngs about a new album from Show Me The Body, the difficult-to-describe New York hardcore-ish band. They’ve done a lot of touring and put out a good amount of music in recent years, but they haven’t released a proper album since Trouble The Water in 2022. Lately, they’ve…
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I really want to write a book about fusion. Not just as a specific musical genre, but as an ethos. Because the music of the six-year span from 1969 to 1975, which I often feel was the best era for music, period, was almost entirely defined by the values of fusion: technological advances and advances in instrumental technique; the blurring of lines between jazz, rock, funk, soul, Latin music, African music, and more; and a kind of spiritual openness that manifested in lyrical and musical concepts. From Miles Davis to all his ex-bandmates’ bands (Mwandishi, the Headhunters, Return To Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report) to Alice Coltrane to Pharoah Sanders to Santana to Earth, Wind & Fire to Eddie Palmieri, Willie Colón and the Fania All-Stars, and many more, it was all one thing.
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Basement have released another song from their upcoming album ‘WIRED’, and it showcases the band’s talent for penning insatiable hooks.
Following on from the release of the album’s title track, as well as singles ‘Broken By Design’ and ‘The Way I Feel’, ‘Head Alight’ is another instant classic that comes jam-packed with hooks.
On the band’s latest track, vocalist Andrew Fisher has said:
“What started out as a love song quickly evolved into something a lot more ethereal. Alex was picking up on what I was saying in a far broader and otherworldly way. He saw it less in a romantic way – a more universal look at the idea of someone’s soul or essence being so powerful and beautiful you can’t look away. This really excited me because it allowed me to get out of my head and focus on something way more abstract and therefore, hopefully more expansive.” Fisher continues, “I hadn’t really approached songwriting like this before and I found it really fulfilling. We were really stuck with this sound – focusing on the guitar leading it, in a very indie rock early 2000s thing. It just never felt right. The more we added, the less I liked it. John stripped everything back and it became so much more powerful.”
Check out the song’s official music video, directed by Kaylinn Duffy, below:
‘WIRED’ is set for release on May 08 via Run For Cover Records.
It will also feature the delightfully fuzzy ‘The Way I Feel’:
‘Broken By Design’:
And this belter of a title track:
The band will play some special album release shows around the UK in May.
Take a look at where you can catch them below:
MAY
07 – BRIGHTON Chalk
08 – LONDON 26 Leake St
09 – LEEDS Boom
10 – MANCHESTER Projekts
11 – GLASGOW Mono
12 – NOTTINGHAM Rough Trade
13 – BRISTOL Fleece
14 – KINGSTON Fighting Cocks
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