THE SUMMER IN ROCK

A JOHN’S MUSIC BLOG INVESTIGATION

There’s a lot of music in the world. Too much, one might say. I’ve certainly said it before. Each week, I try to map out what I’m excited about on the chaotic John’s Music Blog Presents: The Report (a New Music tipsheet), but that sadly only scratches the surface of the content I consume. I use confusing criteria as to what music “makes the cut” on the blog—criteria so convoluted that it would probably take an hour-long conversation with me to explain it, if I could even do that, if anyone would even have the constitution to hear me out. But I want to move past those parameters today. Here is a sampler of some halfway recent rock music that I’ve been fucking with. I hope it hits as hard for you as the Amish popcorn sampler that I bought the last time I was in Wisconsin has been hitting for me. 

Wishy “Triple Seven”

The new Wishy album Triple Seven is a satisfying listen, an indie rock redo of what some might call the 1990s “Hot Adult Contemporary” radio format (there was a radio station in Milwaukee called 106.9 The Point that I associate with both Third Eye Blind and Natalie Imbruglia). Wishy’s working in a crowded field, so they live and die on the songwriting. And there are some good songs here. The title track is driven by a jangly acoustic guitar and a subtle-but-essential Think break. The result? A quality bit of VH1core.

208 “DESIRES” 

Garage rock is outside of the zeitgeist right now. But that could all change at the drop of a hat. I’m waiting for The Gories to have a TikTok moment. 208 are a Detroit duo playing the kind of fully fucked no-fi garage that made dive bar floors sticky back in the no-rules aughts. It’s the kind of garage damaged enough that it hits like no wave. For fans of The Hospitals or Tunnel Of Love or Bulb Records—for fans of ear-destroying treble—it’s a big go.

The Garden “Filthy Rabbit Hole”

The importance of The Garden has slowly crept up on me over the past long decade. They were always an outlier in SoCal, which I always appreciated, and it always confused me as to how a band that sounded like The Prodigy meets Mac Demarco were able to be so popular—I think you can’t discount their visual presence—but now I see the band and their whole crew for what they are: A more realized version of what my friends and I were trying to accomplish between the years of 2012 and 2020. The Garden’s style is a crazy synthesis of more canonical “punk” touchpoints, forward-thinking retro allusions, and then just totally wild contemporary cultural gestures. It’s interesting that the band, despite their massive popularity, has only been reviewed on Pitchfork once.

untitled (halo) “that’s honey”

Keeping things in Southern California, untitled (halo) threads the needle between what I’m going to call Mysterious British Person Indie Rock (Dean Blunt/bar italia) and more smoggy, twinkling So-Cal business. Their new single “that’s honey” provides a decent encapsulation, with soft breakbeats and dual vocal damage over Dawson’s Creek guitar. I’m listening to it and I am already halfway to the In-N-Out.

Heavenly Sweetheart (Feat. Liquid Mike) “$300”

Let’s get the fuck out of LA and move over to some music from the upper middle of North America. Heavenly Sweetheart is from Windsor, Ontario. Liquid Mike is from Marquette, Michigan. They both play heavy pop music. “$300” is over in less than two minutes and provides mid-tempo bubblegum grunge thrills for all you fiends out there in Hook City, USA. What am I even talking about? If a music blogger looks you in the eye and tells you that they are not losing their mind, you are talking to a lying music blogger.

OLTH “fire d0ve”

I got a tip from the illustrious Kerwin brothers that NYC rockers OLTH are a cut above the zoomer screamo pack, and the guys told no lies. Released less than a month ago, their new single has all the chaotic rhythms and blood-curdling shrieks you crave, plus spoken word vocals buried under a build that would’ve gotten the whole damn Legion Hall clapping their hands back in the year 2000. I love looking at footage from these new school screamo gigs. People in period-correct tiny shirts and bangs mosh next to people in JNCOs. Good stuff!

Fievel Is Glauque  “As Above So Below”

Not many are making sophisticated, jazzy indie music on the level of Brussels-incepted lifers Fievel Is Glauque. Look, Stereolab doesn’t tap just any band to support them on tour. A lot of the record collector reference holes that I would assume inform this project are a bit outside of my wheelhouse, but the continental cafe pop sound they do is second-to-none. On “As Above So Below,” the fuzzy John McLaughlin-ish guitar solo is the highlight for me.  

aldn “icantbelieveiletyougetaway” 

The shoegaze that is currently being made by heads coming from the ultra-online music universe is often more interesting than the real thing (whatever that is, however you feel like defining it). I’m well past—embarrassingly past—the age where I might feel some sort of die-hard alignment with any single subset of a subset of a sound—it’s always less a sound, if we are being honest, and more of a hyper-specific subcultural stance, based as much on interpersonal relationships and niche aesthetic signposts as the music itself—so I can observe contemporary music in a less tethered fashion. When many people reach this impasse in their relationship with counterculture, they bow out. I’m somehow still interested, so I’ll give an aldn song a listen. (Again: music bloggers; mental illness.)

triage “come n play”

The triage EP from last May has a bit more spunk than a decent amount of the other M.B.P.I.R. bands currently jamming up art school kids' Spotify playlists from Brooklyn to Berlin. The London group’s mild aggression helps sell their music, but then again I’ve always been a bit of a rockist. I have a sneaking suspicion that a few derivatives of this non-genre are going to lead to more than a few unforgettable rock and roll songs. And that is what it is all about, people: unforgettable rock and roll songs.

Poison Ruin “Confrere”

Poison Ruin does a lo-fi pastiche of power metal, punk, and dungeon synth, with dialed-in branding to match. The band makes music that is aimed at a very specialized consumer base; they come from Philly, and when I hear them, I picture their ideal fan being a mulleted punk kid from Philly, too. The grainy black and white video; the chainmail armor; the ying-yang shield. Poison Ruin reverse engineers the mysterious tape-smudged patina of a found live action role playing VHS and then pukes that back onto YouTube. Is it vaporwave for metalheads?