June Program Titles Released This Week:
Lydia Ainsworth – Phantom Forest CD/LP (Zombie Cat)
On Phantom Forest, Lydia Ainsworth introduces a lush, complex dream world that she created and inhabits largely on her own. It’s a beautiful, vast collection of art pop with hooks about the search for personal connections in the midst of apocalypse and technology. It’s a journey that holds up to close listening (and lyric reading) and to dance floors, but can also exist on a purely emotional plane. Lydia notes that although the self-produced album is considered pop, she approached it as an orchestrator. “Even if I’m dealing purely with synths,” she says, “the songs are like a score, each one an evolving journey. I love to use strings so I’ve included my own arrangements on ‘Tell Me I Exist’ and ‘Can You Find Her Place’. I recorded live musicians on drums, bass, and guitar on ‘Edge Of The Throne’, ‘The Time’, and ‘Floating Dream’, and wove those live elements into my programmed elements.” She wrote and performed everything aside from a re-imagined cover of Pink Floyd’s “Green Is The Color”; two other tracks are co-written with Survive’s Kyle Dixon (Stranger Things), to which Ainsworth wrote melodies and added lyrics to his instrumentals.
Charly Bliss – Young Enough CD/LP (Barsuk)
Charly Bliss has evolved from the bunch of scrappy upstarts behind their brash punk debut Guppy, to the confident, assured artists who have produced the comparatively dynamic and unapologetically pop Young Enough. But, for lead singer Eva Hendricks, the path of this evolution was fraught, as her lyrics inspired by a past abusive relationship show. Songwriting became a source of respite, and, eventually, redemption. “You go through experiences of loss or extreme pain and you just keep moving,” Eva says. “You look around and go, how has the world not stopped? But it is also powerful. It’s like, I’m still here, I’m not a person who is ruled by pain, I still like who I am.” Album tracks “Chat Room” and “Young Enough” are new sonic lynchpins, as is the soaring, mini epic, “Fighting In The Dark”. The delicate synth confessional “Hurt Me” also felt, as Eva puts it, “like something we hadn’t explored yet.” The entire record sounds like a new realm, from the deceptively easeful confessional “Capacity” to the propulsive, more classic pop of
Hard To Believe”. In the end, Young Enough feels joyful and celebratory, but also infused with a new sense of depth and maturity. [Limited edition blue colored vinyl pressing also available.]
Defeater – Defeater CD/LP+MP3 (Epitaph)
Massachusetts hardcore band Defeater’s new self-titled album serves as their fifth full-length release overall and first in four years. Lead single, “Mothers’ Sons” features blistering guitars that take the song into something chaotic and beautiful. Defeater was produced with Will Yip (Quicksand, La Dispute, Blacklisted, Lauryn Hill) whose enthusiasm and talent pushed the songs to their fullest potential. Defeater is as pummeling as it is atmospheric. Yet it’s been a long journey to where the band is now. Years of touring took their toll on the friends that make up the current lineup of Derek Archambault (vocals), Jake Woodruff (guitar), Adam Crowe (guitar), Mike Poulin (bass) and Joe Longobardi (drums). Health, substance abuse issues, and ejecting a longtime member had made a touring hiatus necessary. After a few months at home, working and decompressing, the fire to write a new record caught everyone in a major way.
