TOO MANY SOULS – Avi C. Engel

A most happy new discovery (thank you, Skyjelly): haunting, elegiac vocals over endlessly intriguing instrumental permutations. Releases in a couple of weeks but I’m presently taking a dive into their back catalog to sate me until then. So good.

GOD GAMES – The Kills

The essence of everything I love about Mosshart and Hince distilled in a single face-ripping, soul-baring set. Heavy rotation on my many nighttime trips of back and forth along the backroads and byways. Seven years is a long wait, but if this is what emerges, I’ll gladly an eternity.

album cover: painting of a matator in a bullfight, red lettering: GOD GAMES

SYSTEMIC (Divide and Dissolve, 2023)

Seamlessly jarring and jarringly seamless transitions from pastorale to metal to spoken word poetry to any and all combinations in between that speak profoundly to what I can only imagine the Indigenous experience must be. Revelatory.