Quick Spins takes a quick look at recently released albums to make certain you're listening to all the quality music being released these days. And with today being Bandcamp Friday, I'm hoping some of the words below will spur you to actually listen to and then pick up these fine local releases today while all the dough goes directly to the artists!
Tamar Berk has been releasing excellent music for decades through a variety of bands, but in the last 5 years she's released 5 solo albums of such a consistently high quality you'd be forgiven for thinking she's some fresh new voice on the scene. And in a way she is, as these last 5 albums have found Berk finally settling into a sound that is wholly her own, developed from deep inside rather than being driven by genre exploration or current music trends.
On the recently released ocd, Berk continues to mine her past for lyrical inspiration, grafting it onto a solidly rocking' structures that have simultaneously grown more familiar as her own sound, and more ambitious as she continues to expand her sonic terrain, this time leveraging the studio a little more heavily to add lush touches to many numbers without ever crowding the sonic space.
I kept on trying to think of fitting superlatives to tie this review up, but in the end I kept missing the most obvious one: when was the last time you encountered an artist who released 5 exceptional albums with wide appeal that are also deeply personal and near flawless in less than 5 years?! That's not exactly a common occurrence and I promise you won’t regret directing your attention Berk's way.
ocd by Tamar Berk
Chicago icon and (dare I say) musical genius Bobby Conn has been pretty silent for the last couple of years, but it appears he has surfaced from the magical secret Chicago-based laboratory he shares with longtime partner-in-life-and-art Monica BouBou with the bifurcated album Bobby's Place. Conn has a long history of grafting truly disjointed and weird instincts onto a variety of musical backings, most commonly veering into what I'd consider to be political indie glam rock, but that is also a woefully insufficient moniker for the music sprouting and exploding from Conn's mind. Since the '90s, most of Conn's releases have hewed more closely to a single sound, though that sound may change from album to album; sometimes it a collection of poppier nuggets, other times they can be kaleidoscopic nightmares you don't necessarily want to escape from. But every choice Conn makes is always interesting. Bobby's Place has been released as 2 different sides of the same album, playable in either order, but with distinctly different sounds and approaches.
Bobby's Place (Side One) is the more immediately accessible side, creating fractured vision of an adult children's show, powered by Conn's glammier rock inclinations, while Bobby's Place (Side A) is stocked with ambient instrumentals, creating vertiginous landscapes that twirl into your ears and suck you into a slightly different dimension. So, you can either go the Bowie Low route and play (Side One) into (Side A) to start of rockin' and end up floating, or you can treat (Side A) as the musical prologue proving the tunnel to the alternate dimension that is "Bobby's Place" with (Side One). But either order you play this in, the result is always the same: you win.
Bobby Conn is playing a very rare full-band show at Sleeping Village on November 6. While his duo shows with BouBou have always been fun for me, noting beats the power of his music channeled through a full band.
Bobby's Place (Side One) by Bobby Conn Bobby's Place (Side A) by Bobby Conn
I'll say it at the top, because it's something that's important to know: Sloan has never released a bad album. In the 3 decades they've been releasing music, there isn't a single clunker in the bunch. Patrick Pentland, Chris Murphy, Jay Ferguson, and Andrew Scott have always been the core songwriters of the group since 1991, and when they were joined by multi-instrumentalist Gregory Macdonald in 2006 it not only cemented the current line-up, it also spurred the band onto an exceptional third act that is showing no signs of slowing down or growing predictable.
On one hand, this makes sense since Sloan features 4 members who could easily front and write all the music for 4 different bands, but it's also incredibly impressive since Sloan seems to have left any potential head-butting over leadership in the past in favor of 4 interlinked democracies. And with Based On The Best Seller, Sloan delivers one of those kinds of albums that, if you can just get someone to listen to it once, will probably lock in a new fan for life.
Growing amidst a thicket of irresistible hooks, Based on The Best Seller mixes stadium rock with Beatles-esque reveries, art-rock power-pop (believe it!), and even a barroom (or parlor room, pick your poison or lack thereof) piano sing-along. For this album, the band has also deployed a series of movie-trailer related videos that are by no means essential to enjoying the album but does indicate Sloan is channeling a pretty fun creative burst for this album cycle.
I could say to get in on the fun while you can, but with Sloan you can enter their world any time (and at any point of their career) and have a blast. Instead, I'll just say if you haven't checked out Sloan before, this is an excellent starting point!
Based on the Best Seller by Sloan
Rocket traffics in the big sounds of early '90s alterna-rockers, focusing more on the underground indie group sounds that birthed that movement, resulting in local bands transforming into gargantuan mainstream groups. (Think Gish v. Melancholy Of Infinite Sadness, with Rocket still in the far more interesting Gish-stage).
I gushed over Rocket's debut EP when it was released in 2023 and have been eagerly awaiting more music from them (and hoped to finally get a chance to see them live since they never veered far from their home base of Los Angeles). My wait is answered by today's release of their proper full-length debut, R Is For Rocket.
R Is For Rocket trades in some of Rocket's shaggier inclinations and replaced it with glistening shoegaze inspired washes of guitars over the punchier chords nailing the tunes down underneath the squall. Imagine the energy and fuzzy buzz of Weezer meeting the statelier widescreen aspects of a band like Ride, and you have a pretty good idea what you're in for here. But I urge you to check these folks out ASAP; Rocket has been simmering on the launchpad for a while, and are now ready to blast off into your heart. (Sorry, I couldn't resist, but it's also true!)
Rocket FINALLY plays Chicago on November 14 at Scubas. Yippee!
R is for Rocket by Rocket
I didn't know it was possible, but it's starting to feel like Detroit's Ryan Allen has released so many albums he might just be outpacing his heroes in Guided By Voices, with the the majority of those releases being completely solo affairs, Allen handing all the instruments with an impressive ease that would make me jealous if it weren't for the fact he's so goddanged good at it all! Over the last couple of years I've grown increasingly stunned by how prolific Allen has been without once sounding like he's treading water, kicking out solo albums of enviable shredding slices of power-pop and rock and/or roll fury.
One Week Off was recorded during—you guessed it—a week off from work, and grew from what was supposed to be a scrappy 4-track project into a full album, packed with Allen's blend of Buzzcocks meets The Who meets Badfinger meets...you get the idea. Lyrically, Allen is keeping things both timely and personal while remaining relatable as he works through the exact same things you and I do every single day. Only he manages to turn what would be interior monologues for most of us into absolute bangers for all to enjoy.
I only heard One Week Off for the first time yesterday, following a late-night email announcing the surprise release of this album, and in that short time it seems to have been stuck on repeat and is currently threatening to melt my earbuds. Quite honestly this album is so good that even if its extreme hotness caused my earbuds to burst into flame, I wouldn't complain. And neither will you.
One Week Off by Ryan Allen