This week I have new releases from TORRES, Dordeduh, and The Armed. Cool, right? It’s like all these bands want to keep making and releasing music, right? What a world we live in!

TORRES – Thirstier
(July 30, 2021)

Mackenzie Scott’s main influences are Broadway and Sylvia Plath. Melodrama all around! But while her approach to music is undoubtedly theatrical, the musician who performs under the name TORRES seems far from clinically depressed on her fifth album Thirstier. This stuff is uplifting and jubilant, calling up vivid images of Fountains of Wayne, the Lemonheads, and many other ’90s American power pop acts.

My TORRES experience is limited to her self-titled debut and her sophomore effort Splinter, but this one is markedly more upbeat and loaded to the brim with tasty hooks. Hooks so tasty, in fact, that it might even rival Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee as the most legitimately positive pop album to come out in the post-(sorta)-pandemic era of 2021. “Hug from a Dinosaur” is the quintessential song here, displaying soaring synths and happy hand claps as she sings “What comprises all this joy I feel and where was it before?/Ancient and еternal and surreal as a hug from a dinosaur“. Even the closer “Keep the Devil Out” repeats the phrase “Everybody wants to go to heaven/But nobody wants to die to get there” but keeps it positive in the verses with lines like “I for one am gonna dig us out of here/I have got all the hope I need/To keep the devil out my ear“. And all this powerful music is complimented immaculately with Scott’s powerful voice, evoking PJ Harvey at her most passionate.

Mackenzie Scott had dropped her last album in early 2020, right before COVID hit. I don’t know WHAT happened to her during that time period, but I gotta get me some of that for myself.

Early Verdict:

Dordeduh – Har
(May 14, 2021)

Dordeduh comes from three Romanian words: “dor”, “de”, and “duh”. It means “longing for spirit”. Dor-De-Duh.

More importantly, this Romanian metal band was the result of a more well-known Romanian metal band splintering in 2009, Negură Bunget. At the time, two of the three members broke off from the black metal project and formed Dordeduh. Har is their second studio album since 2012. It’s pretty good.

People familiar with Negură Bunget will recognize a lot of the same stuff: harsh, throaty, desperate growls, occasionally folky rhythms, long and sprawling suites, and bongo-type drumming. Unlike Negură Bunget, Dordeduh presents itself as more of a progressive post-metal project that aims to display the prettier side of black metal (oxymoron notwithstanding). I am reminded heavily of established atmospheric and spacious progressive post-metal acts such as Rosetta, the Ocean, Callisto, or Isis with even more attention paid to complexity in song structure and an almost through-composed approach akin to, like, a classical symphony or something.

Usually with albums like this I’m prepared to be completely bored out of my skull, but I’m pretty impressed with how dynamic this album is and how different it seems with each listen. My literal only complaint is that feels LOOOONG, god does it feel long. But, hey, in the right mood you can really lose yourself in this. Have fun!

Early Verdict:

The Armed – ULTRAPOP
(April 16, 2021)

The anonymous noisecore outfit from Detroit continues to mystify fans and critics alike. ULTRAPOP is a swirling mess of hyperactive, glossy metallic hardcore and chaotic yelling. Never a dull moment!

The unknown collective adds at least 13 guest musicians to their roster for their fourth album, and all of them spend 39 minutes punishing their poor instruments into a mangled heap. While the drums get a thrashing and the guitars belt out high-pitched and distorted, melodic riffage, everything is constantly awash in neon DayGlo synthesizers.

And it never manages to be boring, in spite of the usual homogeneity of this brand of hardcore music. Occasional slow parts keep the ear fixated, such as most of “Bad Selection”, for example, which sounds like a pleasant and unassuming indie rock song. What I really like about ULTRAPOP is that, even with my complete inability to intellectualize this kind of haphazard music beyond “I like it” or “I don’t like it”, there was no question where this album stood on the rigid dichotomy. Thumbs up all the way.

Early Verdict: