NRRD ALERT

A music blog featuring the glorious noise of women, people of color, and queers. Wondering why we do what we do? Click the ABOUT tab over there -> Live it up, nerds. xo, Jude and Jack

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Crush of the Week: Mal Devisa

Let's play a game: You listen to Mal Devisa's new album, and if it's the best new album you've heard this year, you give me a pony. I have a very, very large stable ready.

Mal Devisa is the project of Northhampton's Deja Carr, and Kiid is her first full length album. She has been opening on tour for Mitski lately, which seems like a perfect choice - both have lyrics and voices built for having a lot of feelings in public places.

The most tantalizing part of Kiid is how effortlessly her tracks alternate between meandering, self-reflective ballads to knee slapping rhythm tracks. The album, which starts off with a Mitski-esque belt backed by crunchy guitar, ends with Dominatrix, a head bobbing hip-hop track about self-definition. What a fucking journey. Submerge yourself now:

Kiid by Mal Devisa

xo, Jude.

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So. Much. Great. New. Music. *melts*

Okay yeah, we’ve been bad at updating.

BUT.

There is so much fucking ridiculously great new music out that I can’t not say anything about it.

1. Crater - Talk to Me So I Can Fall Asleep

Let’s start on home turf. Crater is a Seattle band led by Kessiah Gordon and Ceci Gomez, and this is their debut record, though they have so much depth of sound together, you would never know it. This album is fire wrapped in synths and then drowned in a lagoon. Try it yourself.

2. Lucius - Good Grief.

After their incredible first album, I'll admit that I had doubts that the second could be anywhere close to that transcendence. But a couple listens in, I'm convinced that Lucius has maintained their penetrating ratio of 1 part bubblegum pop to four parts heart wrenching gorgeousness. Plus iconic hair.

3. Santigold - 99 Cents

She made us wait three years, which I'm a little sore about, and this album isn't really different enough from her earlier music to warrant that kind of gap. But shit, I love Santigold too much not to just be grateful I've got something new to dance to.

xo, Jude.

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Bathing Culture: To The Max

It’s been a while since I did words about music. This song by Pure Bathing Culture is SO MUCH that I’m full of half words about it, everything at once, but I’m out of practice.

Here’s some of my words. This song is making me feel friendly to the world. It’s about friendship and emotional damage and dancing. It’s in the best tradition of Loveless, stitching a flawless alien landscape out of sound and sliding guitars. It’s got yips and whoops and is unbelievably fun to listen to. We should all be so unembarrassed by our aesthetic. Fuck a guilt, it’s all pleasure.

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Haybaby is the answer to your winterpunk prayers

 Haybaby is a three piece noiseysludgepunk band from Brooklyn, NY who just released their debut full length album a couple weeks ago. And HOLY PUPPIES AND KITTENS it’s the stuff dreams are made of.

Start falling here for Leslie Hong’s lyrics, seemingly from the perspective of a bad date:

“I’m uncomfortable with the length of your hair down there/ I’m disappointed at the cut of your underwear/Still I made you this mix CD/You didn’t even listen to it and you gave it back to me.”

My favorite of theirs (probs because it reeks of everything I love about Sleater-Kinney) is Old Friends. The breakdown a minute and a half in is fucking glorious.

So far their tour sticks to the east coast, but I have dreams of headbanging to this in Seattle for sure.

xo, Jude.

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Holy crap this song is cute

You all deserve to know that Kendrick Lamar has a song about his crush on Beyoncé:

“Make up some bogus shit like, ‘you don’t rub the back of my knees right’”

[johnbcoughlin]

Buffalo Moon is the Nrrd Alert Bilingual Music Sorceress of the week

The album I’m listening to this week is Machista, by Buffalo Moon. Try to decide who in this picture is more unfuckwithable, the pitbulls or the woman:

The album starts off with the title track, which is an awesome antisexist head banger. But it quickly veers into different musical territory. Not many artists could make music somewhere near the tenuous midpoint between Cherry Glazerr and St. Vincent (yeah I said it). Buffalo Moon does it in two languages at once, alternating between Spanish and English.

My favorite song here is “Young and Tender”, which achieves a flawless combination of crashing guitars on the chorus, and chirping, modest verses. When she goes from one to the other… oh my god it’s soooo good.

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reblogging this from my “personal” “tumblr” because I have no idea how to computer.

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Ana Tijoux needs no introduction

She’ll introduce herself. Ella viene:

Read the English translation if you’re monolingual like me! Her lyrics and flow are on fire.

I come to look again to deduce it and awaken the blind eye, fearless, you and I let's decolonize what they taught us with our black hair, with marked cheekbones, with fugitive pride in the tattooed soul.

Heck yes. brb while I dig up every French-Chilean rapper I can find.

NOW WITH BONUS LAURYN HILL COVER:

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Can You Identify This Band Full Of White Guys?

Careful: hair gel and pensive fedoras ahead.

So many dweeby indie white dudes, so little time. I hope you all do terribly!

xo, Jude.

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Proof that Carrie Brownstein is a superhero.

Like we needed more.

The scene: while performing at Pitchfork Music Festival earlier this week, Carrie Brownstein went in for one of her famous high kicks and tooooootally bit it. 

BUT THEN. She gets up in one smooth motion that I still can’t really figure out, while in high heels, without ever stopping playing guitar. A hero walks among us! The glory starts around :30 below.

The best part is she fell right before Corrin sings “When you fall, you will fall the hardest!” Teehee.

xo, Jude.

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Seinabo Sey is soul-full gold.

Seinabo Sey is a Swedish musician gearing up to put out her first full-length album later this year, and I could not be more excited. Sey makes infectious, danceable music that is ridiculously full of heart and hope, but never in a way that feels trite. Plus, her music videos are fucking gold - the best are odes to friendship and blackness and the joy that comes from struggle.

She released a single today, and the video+song are everything I love about her. The dancing. The beat. The style.

Are you hooked yet? Keep the feeling going:

There is a way to be yourself, I assure you this/ There's a way to catch your dreams without falling asleep.

It always gets me.

xo, Jude

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Jude’s Summer Jams 2015

The rumors are true - I am often more focused on scouring the internet for the perfect summer songs than actually being outside doing summery things. This is reason number 100000 that I am a massive nerd. It's like I have a blog about that or something. 

A self-portrait:

BUT.

You can be the benefactor of my guilty fixation on making the perfect summer playlist by actually going out and doing the tan-inducing romping that these songs deserve.

Here’s my summer tunes for 2015! All song by bands led by women and/or people of color, mostly new music, a range of languages and genres. Get to it!

1. Comin Thru - Kwamie Liv 2. Smooth Sailin’ - Leon Bridges 3. Just a Story - OKENYO 4. Automaton - Là-Bas 5. I Like Being Alone - Xenia Rubinos 6. U-Huh - Tkay Maidza 7. Devil’s Touch - TIAAN 8. Fiesta - Bomba Estéreo 9. Raising the Skate - Speedy Ortiz 10. How We Be - Sinkane 11. Yoga - Janelle Monáe 12. Foolish - Alpine 13. Boa Noite - Karol Conka 14.  Bros - Wolf Alice 15. Renee - Sales

xo, Jude.

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I’m just gonna leave this here....

xo, Jude.

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Fresh gospel, served two ways by serpentwithfeet and Algiers.

Recently, two new artists putting out unique music heavily influenced by gospel have stolen my heart/eardrums. Behold:

1. serpentwithfeet (no album yet, but his Soundcloud is here)

serpentwithfeet refers to his music as “pagan gospel,” which sums it up nicely. In his words, “PaganGospel is the title of my movement. When I walk down the street it is PaganGospel, when I read tarot cards it is PaganGospel, when I masturbate or produce a song, it is PaganGospel. It is everything I do. I did come up with this title. But black people have always been queens of intersectionality and consolidation. I’m just trying to be resourceful as I can be and PaganGospel seemed like a cute way to integrate all of my passions.”

serpentwithfeet’s music pairs delicate melodies with bold orchestration and tender lyrics about how hard it can be to stay connected to each other when we’re each fighting our own battles. My absolute favorite song of his is ‘four ethers’:

serpentwithfeets lovingly brushes on that same emotional place that Perfume Genius hits for me as well - the strength that queer identity helps you squeeze out of fragility. For a great interview of him, go here.

2. Algiers, self-titled debut album out now!

Algiers conversely calls their music “gospel punk”, and one article poignantly described described the experience of listening to them as “like cramming a Marxist treatise in one ear and a church organ in the other.”

Algiers sound is crunchy and harsh, but catchy as fuck at the same time. Catch the bug here:

Both these musicians deserve far more exposure than they have right now, so get to it, Nrrds! We have work to do.

xo, Jude.

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This Noonie Bao video is dedicated to the art of completely losing your shit in the comfort of your own home.

Noonie Bao is a Swedish artist venturing out to make her own music after writing several hits for Charli XCX. And this video for her first single is EPIC.

This video details many of the daily activities that millennials (a.k.a. snake people) enjoy, like:

- having a mental breakdown and smashing all your groceries to death in an alley - getting your hair stuck in a vacuum cleaner - taping birthday candles to all of your fingers

It’s like looking in a mirror! Watch and learn.

xo, Jude

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Log off of Twitter and listen to this new Robyn song

This has been a terrible week, but don’t let it end without listening to “Love is Free”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y8qj6

“It’s all over this city, sometimes in the nitty sometimes in the gritty.”

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Adult Mom is queerfeelz for days.

Adult Mom’s music hits so close to home for me that I can’t even really write about it, so I’ll keep it short. Adult Mom is Steph Knipe, who has a ridiculous knack for writing deceptively simple lyrics that run deep.

Their song Survival, which contemplates coming out to your parents and not feeling queer enough has immediately been added to my personal list of songs that I can’t listen to in public because I will have 100000queerfeelings™ and become unable to function appropriately around others.

The line from that song that goes “I set fire to abusers like a war/ I am a terror but I don’t know what it is I fight for,” is delightfully reminiscent of Mitski holding her breath with a baseball bat in Townie. I really hope those two hang out. I propose a supergroup called Adult Momski.

Listen to this gorgeousness yourself (if you’re in the comfort of your own home):

Here’s a great interview of them too if you wanna go down that rabbithole like I obviously have today.

xo, Jude

[smartassjen]

music by trans women?

[runicmaquette-deactivated201612]

 smartassjen:

We’re looking for music for Her Story and I’d love to feature songs by trans women.

Here are the ones I can think of offhand. Can you all reblog and add other names? Thanks!

Note: I know of a bunch of live folk and punk artists, but we’re only looking for professionally produced recordings at this time.

Mina Caputo (Life of Agony) Laura Jane Grace (Against Me!) Namoli Brennet Our Lady J Isley Reust (Spectacular Spectacular) Kaycee Ortiz Jelena (Desert Tundra) Rie Daises Shawna Virago

You should consider including works by Wendy Carlos! Her film scores are probably her most famous work (Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Tron) but Switched-On Bach is awesome and from what I gather important in the history of synthesizers and electronic music.

[carrrabiner]

Perhaps nrrd-alert has some suggestions!

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Antony Hegarty and Mya Byrne!