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From the southern wilds of Athens, GA comes young four-piece, New Madrid. Their music is a dynamic mixture of underwater-psych-rock that engages the listener in fully textured aural landscapes, both on record and live. Their acclaimed 2012 independent debut, Yardboat – engineered by David Barbe (Deerhunter, Drive-By Truckers) at Chase Park Transduction- displayed the band’s inherent talents and introduces a distinctive sound budding with sonic energy.  In their ever-thriving music- mecca hometown, Yardboat garnered “Album of the Year,” and the band’s formula of constant touring and creative restlessness earned them “Artist of the Year” at the Flagpole Music Awards. In the summer of 2013, New Madrid signed to local start-up Normaltown Records, and entered the studio to record what would become Sunswimmer. Their second full-length finds New Madrid further exploring depths of psychedelia and textured noise. The new record presents a New Madrid audibly settled into itself. Focused into a collection of collaborative songs, the band delves into a more experimental soundscape. Recorded solely on analog tape during a cool, wet July – once again under the direction of David Barbe – Sunswimmer telegraphs a newly confident self-knowledge, from the assertive opening riff of the churning “Manners” to the infectious driving beat behind “Forest Gum.” The tracks here are more concentrated than Yardboat’s offerings, but fans of New Madrid’s expansive tendencies will be sated by the record’s final 25 minutes, which are characterized by two linear compositions (“Homesick” and “And She Smiles”). The album’s body of music was conceived as a singular piece and is best consumed that way. In a digital age, when song snippets skip cross-country on the backs of broadband, Sunswimmer is a testament that making music for shared space still remains. With their sophomore album, New Madrid continues to redefine…

Recording engineer from Athens, GA and co-owner of Chase Park Transduction with Andy Lemaster.

Simon Joyner is among America’s best songwriters, so says Gillian Welch, Conor Oberst, Kevin Morby, and others. With his new double LP, Step Into The Earthquake, the songwriter strikes for the personal while acknowledging that the times they are a-changin’ around us again. In fact, things are leaning shitty right now, and the characters in Joyner’s songs experience the dissolution of comfort amid anxious concerns regarding our turbulent times. Some of this is addressed directly in his most overtly political songs since his Room Temperature days, but it’s primarily the way the characters behave and the near fatalism they confront in their daily lives. We all feel it, and natural disasters aside, avoiding acknowledgement of earthquakes emanating within can cause the most damage. Joyner traverses the human predicament, in general, and the American psyche specifically, using fiction to tell difficult truths. Characters struggle through personal crises while absorbing America’s currently failing experiment. “Galveston” details a couple’s doomed trip to visit a loved one dying in a hospital. “Illuminations” and “Annie’s Blues” explore the difficult relationships between parents and their adult children. “I’m Feeling It Today” slowly expands from an individual level in the first verse, through a couple’s relationship problems in the second, to the systems of oppression in the third, ending with the whole country’s state of being as the song concludes, taking place on election night from an Omaha bar. The epic last song on the album, “I Dreamed I Saw Lou Reed Last Night,” takes up the whole fourth side and it’s part dream, part invocation. Both Lou Reed and Woody Guthrie are channeled so that Joyner may follow their lead, holding a final mirror up to America as the album concludes. At the heart of this song cycle is the desire to connect in a time of upheaval. To record, Joyner’s band, the Ghosts, holed up with longtime collaborator, Michael Krassner (Boxhead Ensemble), in Omaha’s ARC Studio, developing songs from skeletal foundations (captured on the limited edition The Phoenix Demos) to full-on group efforts. Hence, each compositions’ power comes equally from the lyrics working in tandem with the subtle arrangements. Joyner’s vision may be dark but it stops short of nihilism. Where do we go from here? The best move towards answering that question is knowing where we stand right now. Joyner’s expansive album offers a poet’s truthful view, however disconcerting, that to survive whatever is coming for us, we have to confront and understand it first. So, go ahead and step into the earthquake.

“Named after his favorite blaxploitation actor, Thalmus Rasulala is a new solo project from Atlanta music mainstay Jonathan Merenivitch. Over the past few years, the multi-instrumentalist and vocalist has helped craft futuristic pop with Janelle Monáe, atmospheric dream pop for Del Venicci, and harsh art rock for Jock Gang, while still finding time to lead Shepherds, whose most recent LP, Exit Youth, managed to touch upon everything from bleak post-punk, to ambient drone and fuzzed-out rock. Now, it appears, you can add country music to his long resume of styles. According to Merenivitch, he created the project in order to reconcile his inherent desire for acceptance with his longing for solitude. “I find that country music is the most appropriate vehicle for these thoughts and ideas,” he explains via email. “The songs will cover heartbreak, police brutality, nostalgia and the general anxiety of existence. Also, never forget George Jones has soul.” On Thalmus Rasulala’s debut single, “Blame,” Merenivitch opts for airy simplicity with silky, serene guitars that bend and warp around a steady backbeat and washed-out vocals that cling like static sheets to the track’s background. Subject-wise, it’s classic country — a bittersweet ode to broken love, regret, and trying to move forward — but the recording makes it feel distant like an old, worn photograph neglected on a dusty shelf. There’s no word yet on when a record may be due, so for now just enjoy the sound of one of the scene’s most malleable artists stretching his wings and exploring new directions.”  -Immersive Atlanta

What does it mean to be a post hunk? Is that just a clever phrase for a dad bod? Maybe. Or, if we’re referring to the post in a record collector’s sense, then perhaps John Pierce and Alex Teich want to step beyond not just the physical aspects of the stud, but the entire “look-good-to-get-ahead” mentality. Look around in any given dive bar, and you’ll see that the further underground you go, the more rigidly suave the uniform gets; they hang in the same circles, they hold the same casually cool facade, they nod their heads in the same statuesque stance. As a regular partner to man-about-town Yancey Ballard, Pierce has no doubt seen all these patterns on the wall; so while their current outfit Shouldies sidesteps simple punk trappings completely, Post Hunk attacks the norm from the inside. This carnival-crazy debut Celebrity Pets isn’t so much a game-changer, though, as a game in and of itself. With cheeky synths, fuming punk vocals, and perky two-minute tunes, Pierce invokes the wackier new wave hijinks of XTC and Split Enz; even the solemn ballad that opens the album “Late part1” thrusts you at once into the absurd: “I was born two hours ago / am I late?” Granted, that question also launches us straight into the perpetually incoming traffic of the social media era, another toy in Post Hunk’s playpen. “Two steps from irrelevance / life is right on time,” Pierce shouts on “Big Al on Campus,” with enough nonchalance to imply that he’s both in on and outside of the ongoing popularity contest. Why even bother, after all, when—as the title track suggests—a famous stranger’s adorable dog could attract more love and fans than the average human Watching Post Hunk cavort around the crux of our times is fun, sure. But a whole album of such antics would barely stand in an era where bands are now clamoring to tap their finger on the modern malaise. Fortunately, Celebrity Pets balances the duo’s manic satire with some equally strong pop tunes, like the Costello-esque lead single “Sleep.” Of course, even in these relatively calmer moments, Pierce’s keen eye on the crowd doesn’t falter; when he twists an old nursery rhyme into “first comes love, and now the hesitation,” I at least can immediately recall a thousand times that I almost reached out to someone and couldn’t, even before Facebook or Twitter. Could our carefully segmented social spheres hold us back from the marriage and the baby carriage? Or were some of us just stuck in a rut to begin with? All this and more adds up to a solid first outing, albeit one cut criminally short. Celebrity Petsalso doesn’t quite convey the quaint country side to Post Hunk’s exuberant live shows, where Pierce and Teich remind you that they’re really just sweet Southern boys at heart with ears for a good yarn. Granted, that may just mean that the zany duo’s infiltration of the status quo works best in the dives where those calcified cool circles actually congregate. But until that chance comes back around, Celebrity Pets nevertheless answers the basic question that comes with the name Post Hunk—so what does that mean?—with enough verve to convince you that they are, in fact, way better than hunks. Or dad bods, for that matter.

Within Rose Hotel, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jordan Reynolds weaves a tapestry of nuanced indie-rock songcraft that pulls from a palette of psychedelic shimmer and folk influence via her Southeastern roots. Where her 2019 debut ‘I Will Only Come When It’s a Yes’ presented a coming-of-age tale, ‘A Pawn Surrender’, her forthcoming sophomore album nourishes the garden of adulthood with a cohesive but genre-spanning approach.