In part three of our mid-year wrap-up, Dusted writers list their favorite albums from the year’s first half. Check out parts one and two if you missed them.
Christian Carey
Raven Chacon — Voiceless Mass (New World)
Car Seat Headrest — The Scholars (Matador)
Jürg Frey — Voices (Neu)
Barbara Hannigan, Katia and Marielle Labéque, and David Chalmin — Electric Fields (Alpha)
The Hemphill Stringtet — Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head)
Jenny Hval — Iris Silver Mist (4AD)
loscil — Lake Fire (kranky)
David Murray — Birdly Serenade (Impulse)
Quatuor Diotima — Livre Pour Quatuor (Pentatone)
Steve Reich — Jacob’s Ladder (Nonesuch)
Tim Clarke
Sharp Pins — Radio DDR (K/Perennial)
Moreish Idols — All in the Game (Speedy Wunderground)
Perfume Genius — Glory (Matador)
Richard Dawson — End of the Middle (Weird World)
Dutch Interior — Moneyball (Fat Possum)
Natural Information Society / Bitchin Bajas — Totality (Drag City)
Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)
Lifeguard — Ripped and Torn (Matador)
Bryon Hayes
Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet — HausLive 4 (Hausu Mountain)
Califone — The Villager's Companion (Jealous Butcher)
CHIME OBLIVION — S/T (DEATHGOD CORP)
The Ex — If Your Mirror Breaks (The Ex)
The High Water Marks — Consult the Oracle (Meritorio)
Index for Working Musik — Which Direction Goes the Beam (Tough Love)
Mess Esque — Jay Marie, Comfort Me (Drag City)
Mark Molnar — EXO (Constellation)
The Moles — Composition Book (Splendid Research)
Open Head — What is success (Wharf Cat)
Sam Amidon — Salt River (River Lea)
Sharp Pins — Radio DDR (K)
Steven R. Smith — Triecade (Worstward)
Tim Hecker — Shards (Kranky)
Water Damage — Instruments (12XU)
Alex Johnson
Artificial Go — Musical Chairs (Feel It)
Francis Bebey — Trésor Magnétique (Africa Seven)
Hectorine — Arrow of Love (Take a Turn)
Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)
Cameron Knowler — CRK (Worried Songs)
Willie Lane — Bobcat Turnaround (Cord-Art)
Meetsysteem — Gekleed In Donker, Ze Vroegen Niks (Nous'klaer Audio)
The Tubs — Cotton Crown (Trouble in Mind)
Various — Star Charms (Inscrutable)
Jennifer Kelly
Anika — Abyss (Sacred Bones)
Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)
Motorbike — Kick It Over (Feel It)
Michael Grigoni/Pan*America — New World, Lonely Ride (Kranky)
Jerry David DeCicca — Cardiac Country (Sophomore Lounge)
Caroline — Caroline 2 (Rough Trade)
Pulp — More (Rough Trade)
The Mekons — Horror (Fire)
Ty Segall — Possession (Drag City)
Thalia Zedek Band — The Boat Outside Your Window (Thrill Jockey)
Patrick Masterson
Barker — Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)
Mogwai — The Bad Fire (Temporary Residence Ltd.)
PinkPantheress — Fancy That (Warner)
Boldy James — Conversational Pieces (Real Bad Man) or Permanent Ink (Royal House Recording)
Maribou State — Hallucinating Love (Ninja Tune)
Quade — The Foel Tower (AD 93)
Ghais Guevara — Goyard Ibn Said (Fat Possum)
Ela Minus — Día (Domino)
Anthony Naples — Scanners (ANS)
FACS — Wish Defense (Trouble in Mind)
Maria Somerville — Luster (4AD)
Water Margin — Gleaming Cursed (Darla)
Ian Mathers
Alan Sparkhawk — With Trampled by Turtles (Sub Pop)
Brìghde Chaimbeul — Sunwise (Glitterbeat/tak:til)
Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)
Cloakroom — Last Leg of the Human Table (Closed Casket Activities)
Hekla — Turnar (Phantom Limb)
Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)
loscil — Lake Fire (Kranky)
Oklou — choke enough (True Panther Sounds)
Sleigh Bells — Bunky Becky Birthday Boy (Mom + Pop/Torn Clean)
Walt McClements — On a Painted Ocean (Western Vinyl)
Bill Meyer
AMM with Sachiko M — Testing (Matchless)
The Ancients — The Ancients (Eremite / Black Edition Archives)
The Ex — If Your Mirror Breaks (Ex)
Mike Gangloff — April Is Passing (VHF)
Edith Frost — In Space (Drag City)
Vijay Iyer / Wadada Leo Smith — Defiant Life (ECM)
Damon Locks — List of Demands (International Anthem)
Brandon Lopez / DoYeon Kim — Syzygy Vol. 1 (577)
Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas — Totality (Drag City)
Sarah Belle Reid + Vinny Golia — Accidental Ornithology (Infrequent Seams)
Josh Moss
Sadie Siskin — Sadie Siskin (Drongo Tapes)
David Ivan Neil — I Hope Yer Ok (Perpetual Doom)
Playboi Carti — I Am Music (Interscope )
John Swanke — Horizon Lines (Bud Tapes)
Aux Meadows — Draw Near (Eiderdown)
Jerry David DeCicca — Cardiac Country (Sophomore Lounge)
Free Water Shrew Ensemble — Bounty of the Floe Edge (Drongo Tapes)
Daniel Bachman — Moving Through Light (self released)
Midwestern Medicine — Ripped Headline (self released)
Austin Potter — New Romantic (Cruel Nature/Liquid Library)
Ella Hanshaw — Ella Hanshaw's Black Book (Spinster Records)
Joseph Allred — Old Time Fantasias (Scissor Tail Records)
Ernie Francestine — Alternate Place (WarHen Records)
Today, we present the second part of the Mid-Year Switch, covering artists from Boldy James and Antt Beatz through the War & Treaty. We’ll have lists tomorrow. If you missed yesterday’s post, catch up here.
Boldy James & Antt Beatz — Hommage (Empire)
Who nominated it? Ray Garraty
Did we review it? Yes, Ray wrote, “Hommage is one of the six albums Boldy James put out in 2025. It’s much better than the rest of them.”
Jennifer Kelly’s take:
Ray’s the expert on Michigan rap, but I was taken with the slow-moving menace of these cuts. James drawls sharp cultural references and lurid crime narratives over his producer’s slurring, back-slipping beats, many of them lush with florid piano runs but bounded, on the low-end, with resounding, pounding bass. James’ delivery is bleary, exhausted, but knotted up with quick bursts of machine gun sprayed imagery (for instance, in “Concrete Connie” “Now I spin a zip of flake for a pair of sneakers/Nigga still running base like I'm Derek Jeter/Pull up something Dilla play with the foreign features/Now a nigga charging $10.08 for a feature.” ). James brings in fellow Detroiters like Baby Money and BandGang Lonnie Bands for guest appearances, the latter turning up in “Met Me” with an unexpected hockey reference (“like a jetski/I sold so much ice they call me Wayne Gretsky”). Oh right, Canada’s right over the bridge, isn’t it?
Damon Locks — List of Demands (International Anthem)
Who nominated it? Bill Meyer
Did we review it? No (but Bill did here)
Jonathan Shaw’s take:
During “Distance,” the second song on List of Demands, Damon Locks intones, “Urban renewal, redlining and block busting / That’s distance / Disinvestment, destabilization, murder and disenfranchisement are the stories, nonfiction.” Locks effectively grounds his array of concerns in material terms, in concrete and embodied phenomena that change space and drive black and brown people out of neighborhoods, out of nations, out of their very lives. That provides a provocative contrast with Locks’ musicianship, which digitally layers and links jazz and soul music, field recordings, voices of ghosts from the archive of sound he has at his disposal. The complexity of the sampling and arrangements can verge on chaos (check out “Everything’s under Control,” an ironical gesture) or a sort of icy tension (“Click” is redolent of it, full of dread). Locks demonstrates a sharp understanding of how to evoke feeling from all the digitized information he assembles, incisively responding to the rage and despair that has flowed through anyone paying attention to how race operates as a discourse of oppression and of community in the US. Is race a material experience, something in the flesh? Is it socio-cultural construction, something in the language and many, many other symbol systems? A political wedge or an identity? List of Demands has no answers, just more imperatives.
Walt McClements — On A Painted Ocean (Western Vinyl)
Who recommended it? Ian Mathers
Did we review it? Yes, Ian wrote, “The album title’s evocation of a massive body of water, captured at one particular moment (taken from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) is played out over its whole length.”
Bill Meyer’s take:
Walt McClements gravitated to the accordion after experiencing a crisis of relevance while performing song-based music. His approach can be summed up with the equation, minimal gestures + maximal effects = tidal drama. McClements’ intention to treat his instrument like a synthesizer steers him towards undulating waves of sound that radiate the sort of shininess I associate with 1970s vintage string synthesizers. The moments when the music feels most understated and ecclesiastical work best for me; those where he induces guest saxophonist Aurora Nealand to wax melodramatic are a bit too corny.
Mess Esque — Jay Marie, Comfort Me (Drag City)
Who picked it? Bryon Hayes
Did we review it? Yes. Tim Clarke wrote, “being unafraid to let things fall apart is part of the band’s charm and allows their most satisfying moments to feel all the more transcendent.”
Patrick Masterson’s take:
For the first time, Helen Franzmann and Mick Turner were able to record as Mess Esque in one room. Following two remote collaborations in 2021’s Dream #12 and eponymous Mess Esque, Franzmann and Turner have given it another go four years later with Jay Marie, Comfort Me. In a way, the removal of that barrier makes this slightly less of an achievement than what was accomplished for the first two albums, but that’s a minor barb reserved for serious nitpickers; ultimately, this is more enjoyable on a whole than its predecessors. I seem to be on the same page as everyone else in agreeing “Take Me to Your Infinite Garden” is the natural single here given its killer riff and fantastical lyrical leaps, but I’m also with Tim’s review in two other ways: First, the real highlight is without a doubt “That Chair,” a lush, bluesy bummer of a song I could’ve kept listening to for double the length; second, “Let Me Know You” is a cabinet curiosity at best and its removal from the tracklist would’ve done no harm to the overall experience. That it’s the shortest track here is just mercy, the comfort of the remaining songs more than enough to mask its inadequacy. Another fulfilling album from an entity that feels like it could keep doing this forever.
Mogwai — The Bad Fire (Rock Action / Temporary Residence)
Who nominated it? Patrick Masterson
Did we review it? Yes, Christian Carey said, “Mogwai continues to expand its palette while still bringing the noise.”
Tim Clarke’s take:
Over the last 20-odd years, Mogwai’s music has meant a great deal to me at various points. When the band first emerged in the late 1990s, while I was at university, I was really taken by their early compilation, Ten Rapid. Then, in 2003, soon after a close friend of mine died in a car accident, Happy Songs for Happy People offered deep solace. Beyond that, The Hawk Is Howling (2008) also hit the spot, and when I saw them live around the time of 2011’s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, they were excellent. Since then, I can’t say much of Mogwai’s output has registered beyond the surface level. On The Bad Fire, the band seems to focus on their methodology of layering instruments and building a mood, patiently shifting upwards through the gears until your hair’s blown back and the density of sound is chewy and widescreen. This approach works pretty well during the first half of the album, when the band hits cruising altitude and keeps on roaring. I’m especially drawn to two of the songs during the album’s central stretch, “Pale Vegan Hip Pain” and “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others,” where the emotional heft of the music feels a bit more weighty. The Bad Fire is cause enough for me to reevaluate Mogwai’s last few releases to see if there’s more there to appreciate.
Moreish Idols — All in the Game (Speedy Wunderground/PIAS)
Who nominated it? Tim Clarke
Did we review it? Yes, Tim wrote, “On the back of two buzz-building EPs, English quintet Moreish Idols bring sharp songwriting and dynamic band-in-a-room energy to bear on their excellent debut album, All in the Game.”
Christian Carey’s take:
Cornish band Moreish Idols bring a number of different musical styles into play on All in the Game, their debut full length recording. These include psychedelia, post-rock, Brit-pop, and even a splash of laconic speech-song on “Railway.” The title track combines double-tracked lead vocals, falsetto harmonies, undulating rhythm guitar, and post-bop saxophone riffs, including some sheets of sound á la early John Coltrane. On “ACID,” a heady dance and yawping vocals are balanced by heavy rock guitar strums and harmonic minor scales that flirt with being non-Western insertions. One might not be sure on which continent the ardent narrator has dropped a tab, but we know that the result is fervidly unbridled.
The major to minor ying-yang of the chords on “Slouch” are steadily reiterated to dizzying effect. The album closer, “Time’s Wasting,” is a bit shy of two minutes, but its multi-part vocal hook, thrumming bass line, forceful guitar solo, and hazy ambience recall a plethora of past artists. They are blended into a singular concoction, or, as the case may be, tablet.
David Ivan Neil — I Hope Yer OK (Perpetual Doom)
Who picked it? Joshua Moss
Did we review it? Yes. Joshua wrote, “Rising to the occasion, it is the best produced work in his lengthy catalog, boasting the barest studio sheen and a tight, stripped-back honky-stoner band, the A-OK Players, who lend urgency and back-beat movement to DIN’s emotionally zoomed-in half-slurred confessionals.”
Patrick Masterson’s take:
I went into I Hope Yer OK about as blind as one can go. I knew nothing of David Ivan Neil before this; I didn’t recall a shred of Joshua’s (albeit convincingly argued) mid-March review; hell, I didn’t even look at the tracklist before I pressed play. I just figured I’d wheel it and find my own footing before I dug into the details. It took exactly 40 seconds of opener “Drums” to get me wondering how much Silver Jews this David’s listened to, but over the course of the ensuing three-and-a-half minutes (and nine songs including, sure enough, a cover of “K-Hole”), I Hope Yer OK reveals itself to be more than a mere homage to that David. The approachable, nakedly vulnerable lyrics, as sincere as they are sarcastic, offer an arm around the shoulder the way the album title suggests. This is a friend telling you in a darker moment of perpetual doom that yeah, actually, it’s exactly as bad out there as you think — but you wanna hear something funny? And so you laugh through a wicked hangover and the only instance of mandolin you’ve been able to tolerate in 2025 and you joke about jumping in front of city buses for the payout and you swoon to paeans of broken bird dreams and somehow, when it’s all over, you go to bed sober and acutely aware of the noble futility of the human endeavor, willing (if not eager) to wake up and take another crack at it come morning. Aware, alert, alive: This is what music can make us feel at its most potent, no matter the year or condition. Maybe you’ll feel as much, too, after a quick spin of the DIN.
Did we review it? Yes, Jonathan wrote, “It’s unrelenting — the band’s sonic abuse, and the punishment visited on us all by capital’s latest, ever more vicious version of the mode of production.”
Josh Moss’ take
Portland, Oregon hardcore band RETIREMENT (stylization theirs) doesn’t pull even one tiny punch on ATTENTION ECONOMY, their latest tape for Iron Lung Records. This is music explicitly about living in the “zone of interest” to quote the title of a recent film — the queasy surreal discomfort of knowing, being constantly reminded in jarring, discordant ways, that your comfort and joy is paid for in the brutally extracted blood of other innocent people. RETIREMENT’s crusted over musical assault does a good job of keeping your ~attention~, but this blackened, filthy, metal inflected punk is not 100% blitzkrieg. RETIREMENT makes space in these short songs for eerie atmospheric passages, ambience that oozes out from between the cracks of thrashed out riffs and plodding, pit-moving beats. This is music to put a nitrous boost in your indignation at the state and capital. It demands you open your eyes, like Alex at the end of A Clockwork Orange, and look at the prices everyone is paying for western hegemony.
Sharp Pins — Radio DDR (K/Perennial)
Who picked it? Tim Clarke
Did we review it? Yes, Jennifer Kelly described it as “conjuring the bittersweet baroque pop magic of icons like the Hollies, the Byrds and Tom Petty.”
Ian Mathers’ take:
The opening “Every Time I Hear” immediately makes me think ‘Guided by Voices if they were [even?] more interested in sounding like they were actually from the 1960s,' and while that’s a bit reductive for Radio DDR overall, it’s not a bad start. The Dusted review is correct, I think, in calling this “garage pop” as opposed to rock; any distortion or muddiness feels cozy rather than confronting, and not in a bad way (honestly the more balladic material like “Sycophant” makes for some of the best songs here). More upbeat, jangling material like “If I Was Ever Lonely” manages to walk the line of sounding period appropriate without feeling like mere mimicry; there’s some je ne sais quoi that keeps my “wait, is this just from one of the Nuggets compilations that I never listened to?” alarm from going off. It takes a certain self-confidence as a young band to plant yourself so firmly in such an established lineage (and even less specifically throwback-y songs like the raucous “When You Know” still exist in conversation with that lineage, just more with acts between then and now that also pay homage), but Sharp Pins pay it off. For those with divisive feelings about that legacy of 1960s garage pop (in either direction), you can probably apply those directly here.
Sadie Siskin — Sadie Siskin (Friends of the Road)
Who picked it? Joshua Moss
Did we review it? No
Ray Garraty’s take:
A lot of people get into music-making because you don’t need much to get started, maybe a banjo. But you need to learn how to play banjo first, which is not something many of us will be ready to master. The banjo is not the only element of Sadie Siskin’s self-titled tape’s appeal, which sounds as if it were recorded in pre-recording era, like somebody just sneaked in and recorded it anyway to later release it for a wide public (or not so wide). Its free flowing sound streams bring you back into a forgotten past. When Sadie sings (as on “Rolly Trudum” and “Yea! Wheels Turning At High Heaven”), the music moves towards more traditional ground and gets a bit poppish. Nonetheless, it’s a beautifully made tape.
Steven R. Smith — Triecade (Worstward)
Who nominated it? Bryon Hayes
Did we review it? No
Ian Mathers’ take:
Steven R. Smith (under various monikers) is practically an institution at this point, and one that Dusted has shown plenty of love to over the years. So why is this the first time I’m actually sitting down with one of his records? Sadly, pretty predictable, mundane reasons: too much music in the world to listen to, time is finite and ever passing, his discography is more than a little daunting. I’d just never hit that magic combination of opportunity and motivation on any particular release. Until now! And I’m glad it did, because while I can’t speak to how Triecade compares to the rest of his work, I can say coming to it with very little in the way of expectations I think it’s great. One of the joys of the midyear exchange, then; being “forced” to pay attention in a particular direction and finding the result so richly rewarding. If the credits on Bandcamp didn’t indicate that it’s just Smith himself playing the guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards here I might have thought this was a quartet honed by years of playing live together (and I guess in a sense that’s not inaccurate), so satisfying and seamless is ‘their’ interplay. The whole thing ebbs and flows so smoothly I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to pick out track titles without looking at the player, but who needs to when the whole 36 minutes comes together this well?
The War and Treaty — Plus One (Mercury Nashville)
Who nominated it? Justin Cober-Lake
Did we review it? Yes, Justin said, “With Plus One, they maximize both their personal traits and their broader opportunities for exciting new sounds that still (and happily) sound like where they came from.”
Tim Clarke’s take:
If you like your music bold and brassy, The War and Treaty may be for you. Their super-sized amalgam of country, soul and R’n’B is slickly produced, the performances water-tight and in-your-face. Opener “Love Like Whiskey” is over the top in all respects, and “Skyscraper” had me laughing out loud at the band’s audacious move to squeeze in not one but two key changes. Thankfully, after this opening stretch the band does settle into some less intense country numbers with pedal steel and banjo to allow you to catch your breath. However, at 18 songs and nearly 70 minutes, Plus One is way too much in all respects.
For the twelfth year in a row, Dusted writers have exchanged favorite records from the year’s first half, trusting friends and colleagues with the albums they love and embarking on new listening adventures (rap! metal! extended pipe drones!) recommended by their peers.
The basic format remains unchanged. Everybody picks two top albums. Jenny writes down the picks on slips of paper and randomly assigns them to other writers. No one gets their own picks, anything they already reviewed for Dusted or more than one pick from any single person. We all then have about a month to digest other people’s favorite music and write a paragraph or two about what we think.
It probably only works because we like each other, and honestly, there have been years when it didn’t work all that well. But still, when it does function as hoped, the Mid-Year Switch is one of the most enjoyable events on the Dusted calendar. This is one of the good years (i.e., we don’t think anyone will quit because of disrespect for their picks).
It is not, however, one of the consensus years. In other years, we’ve coalesced around a single record—most notably Heron Oblivion in the third iteration of the switch in 2016—or at least produced clumps of approval in the 3-4 nominations range. This year only Horsegirl’s Phoentics On and On got three picks, and notably, it was not anyone’s #1 or #2 choice.
Five albums got two picks each, including perennial favorites like Circuit des Yeux, Jerry David DeCicca, the Ex and Natural Information Society, as well as newcomer (and Lifeguard offshoot) Sharp Pins. That leaves 99 albums that got picked by only one person, anarchy, sure, but also, if you like exploring lists, a fuck ton of music to explore. Today, we’re running the first half alphabetically, starting with Sophie Agnel and Joke Lanz and going all the way to Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith. We’ll have the back end of the alphabet tomorrow and writer’s lists the following day. Enjoy.
Sophie Agnel & Joke Lanz — Ella (Klanggalerie)
Who recommended it? Bill Meyer
Did we review it? No.
Justin Cober-Lake’s take:
Ella might be the most unusual record I've heard this year. Sophie Agnel's a free improvisation pianist and, I think, is often working with a prepared piano. Turntablist Joke Lanz makes up the other half of the duo, meaning no matter how weird Agnel gets, there are always more sound coming to push the music to new places. It's hard to make art much more abstracted than this album. There's no easy point of entry here, the artists mostly eschewing melody and rhythm, but it's possible to get lost in a world that's constantly shifting and surprising.
“Sporadic Bursts of Sympathy” sounds quintessential. Lanz feints at grooves, giving the impression that there's structure to come, but these are just the “bursts.” Agnel likewise offers deep rolls and high plucks, hinting at a fractured piece, as if a song's been deconstructed, only there was no construction there to start with. It's a bold statement, and a challenging listen. “21st Century Humans” closes the album with tension that the pair hesitate to release, although the track does build to a bounce (by their standards). A piano motif gives way to a repeated “good morning” before one final squeak sees us out, as if even approaching linearity inevitably leads to silence.
Anika — Abyss (Sacred Bones)
Who picked it? Jennifer Kelly
Did we review it? Yes. Jennifer Kelly wrote: “It’s one of the best albums so far in 2025.”
Alex Johnson’s take:
The last time I heard Anika was the debut album, a stark but charming mix of minimalist post-punk and skeletal girl-group pop. Contrasting it to sunnier indie contemporaries, Dusted wrote: “its beats are too deliberate to be catchy.” “Deliberate,” I think, as in studied, predictable. Not so on the vastly more powerful Abyss, which is plenty deliberate, but as in purposeful, and catches hold early then never lets go. The basslines are bendy and relentless, the guitars squall and grind and pull out perilous arpeggios, wander but never quite break rank, the drumming is unavoidable, undeniable and airtight with a flourish. The band recorded live and quickly and, in the best way, you can tell. These are dance floor dirges; up tempo laments for modern ruins.
To quote Dusted’s review of this album: “what sets [Anika] apart from many contemporary post-punk front people is that she sings really well.” Exactly. Singing or speaking, often embellished with an echo, she’s just as much orator as lead vocalist. The lyrics, too, are sharp and immediate, narrating said modern ruins. The line “the cars are flying” from “Last Song” doesn’t sound like a technological breakthrough but the result of an explosion. There, Anika seems to be heartbroken by the whole of humanity. You could read “the truth is I don’t really like myself/and the truth is I don’t really like anyone else/and the truth is I’d rather be alone than with you” from “Walk Away” in the same light, or interpersonally. Regardless, it’s the best break-up/kiss-off song I’ve heard this year. The moment a brief, surf-y arc of guitar accompanies Anika’s utterly content “so screw you” is especially satisfying. Start to finish, Abyss is furious, gripping not clenching, a storm stirred up and ridden.
Artificial Go — Musical Chairs (Feel It!)
Who Picked it? Alex Johnson
Did we review it? Yes, Alex wrote that like its namesake, Musical Chairs is “a party event, still precarious, still requiring a sense of balance, but played in a whirling, laughing scramble.”
Bryon Hayes’ take:
I was surprised yet delighted to hear new music from Artificial Go so soon after their debut Hopscotch Fever. As Alex described in his review, the band has grown quite a bit in the intervening months. Musical Chairs moves beyond snappy post-punk to explore thicker guitar textures, poppier song structures, and a broader vocal palette. Earworms like “Circles,” “The World is My Runway” and “Hallelujah” really showcase this sense of progression, yet they retain the band’s signature whimsical charm, which is refreshing. Album closer “Sky Burial” spins off in an entirely new direction, embracing dub-like echo effects. It was good strategy by Artificial Go to save such a digression until the end; we’ll be thirsty for more of it when album number three rolls around.
Barker — Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)
Who recommended it? Patrick Masterson
Did we review it? Yes. Andrew Forell wrote, “Within his template of minimal techno, Barker adds billowing ambient passages and intricate drum programming that unfold with the depth of dub and the logic of jazz."
Justin Cober-Lake's take:
Sam Barker does something extremely impressive on this album: he makes a craft out of formalizing ostensibly chaotic movement. There's some jazz influence here, and the sense of an underlying order comes through at times, but the movement of each of these pieces is all Barker. The rhythms start tight and subtly change, altering each track, but without ever jarring; it's truly drift and not madness. Just as the songs move, the album gradually shifts, but always in a way that feels organic and sensible. Barker has elements of jazz, techno, minimalism, ambient, and more, but it never feels like a mishmash or an exercise in juxtaposition. The album's whole progression has a focused fluidity (if such a phrase makes sense). The song can have slow atmospheric passages, but when it winds up in a complex rhythmic stretch, it feels like a natural, if unanticipated, result. That's the genius of the album, and Barker makes it sound so easy, as if it could happen by chance.
Blood Monolith — The Calling of Fire (Profound Lore)
Who nominated it? Jonathan Shaw
Did we review it? Yes, Jonathan wrote “Your reviewer is moderately tempted simply to repeat ‘this rules’ a few hundred times, in place of attempting to describe or understand the music on The Calling of Fire, Blood Monolith’s debut LP. While repeating the clause (foaming at the mouth, clenching fists, roiling in a dank cellar…) would constitute a review of sorts, it’s likely not what folks show up to Dusted to read. Too bad.”
Ray Garraty’s take:
This does rule, no way to deny it. While Blood Monolith has an eye on the past, the band never just simply indulges in Death or Siege or any other grindcore-ish Mastodon worship from the 1990s. Its music corrupts your ears but is not corrupted by the modernizing tendencies which have soured a lot of metal music lately. It never pats you on the back, reassuring you in your soft cushion taste in metal. It just slaps you in the face and gives a nice blow to your skull. Maybe that is why The Calling of Fire angered some metal fans who were asking for… melody? Well, not everything is supposed to be melodic. This isn’t.
Raven Chacon — Voiceless Mass (New World)
3 track album
Who picked it? Christian Carey
Did we review it? No
Alex Johnson’s take:
“Voiceless Mass” opens with a chime, followed by a rumble. It’s almost but not quite overwhelming; it swaddles and carries the listener in. For music largely structured around sustained notes, nothing really lingers. The effect for me was of a slideshow of landscapes: each scene displaying then giving way, echoing but not replicating what came before. “Biyán” demands attention in a different way. Grand swaths of terrain swapped for ground-level observation of organisms. Squeaky-door horns and hard-to-place but charismatic scribbles of playing dominate the movements but are tempered (and given emphasis) by the transitional calm of a high violin or a fade to near-silence. Like the chime from “Voiceless Mass,” timpani is a catalyst, signaling another sliding, chirping crescendo or a cue for the squiggling, scraping strings to exit stage left.
Voiceless Mass isn’t quite voiceless. If the title track is a mass due to elemental power, “Owl Song,” the only piece with discernible vocals, is a mass as in teeming. There are chants and short shrieks. A wobbling yet lucid soprano is paired with a burst of jazz drumming. A piano is struck. New voices jump in, up and down the scale, before tagging in an instrument of similar timbre. Strings are plucked, bows grind, vocal notes are, at times, more gnawed than sung. There are whistles and gunshots of timpani. “Owl Song” sounds less like a musical ensemble than a bustling cast of character actors. It completes the album’s journey from the monuments of “Voiceless Mass” and bristling fauna of “Biyán” to the chaotic joys and strains of humanity.
Brighde Chaimbeul — Sunwise (tak:til)
Who nominated it? Ian Mathers
Did we review it? Yes, Ian wrote, “Even more so than on the excellent Carry Them with Us there’s a powerfully ceremonial feeling to this set of songs, aided by the even more minimal instrumental lineup and that frosty, imposing first side.”
Jennifer Kelly’s take:
Brighde Chaimbeul is a master of the Scottish smallpipes, a hand-held wind instrument related to the (somewhat larger and better known) bagpipes. It’s a traditional instrument backed by centuries of lore and practice and Chaimbeul has all that under her belt (she’s won folk piping contests), plus a restless experimental bent that has led her to collaborate with Colin Stetson, Caroline Polachek and others. Sunwise bends archaic resonances towards the shape-shifting forms of modern improvisatory drone. The opener, “Dùsgadh/Waking,” is more or less unadulterated tone, one sustained note that flickers and vibrates uninterrupted for just over nine minutes. If you go with it, which takes some meditative intent, it becomes a portal to stillness, a link to reverberations both within and outside this particular music. It stops you dead, in other words. “A' Chailleach” continues in that vein, but with a bit more frolic in it; to the long murmuring laments, she adds a bit of melodic flourish, which builds and finally culminates in some lovely highland evocative singing. Sunwise is a family enterprise. Chaimbeul’s dad closes “Duan” with some stirring (but inscrutable) Gaelic spoken verse, while her brother Eòsaph sings with her on the closing “The Rain is Wine and the Stones Are Cheese,” the lightest-hearted and most dance-able of these tracks. Music from the stone age might easily turn constraining, especially for younger, female artists, but Chaimbeul is too much of a free spirit for that. She frees it without disrespecting it and uses its forms for her own 21st century ends.
Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)
9 track album
Who Picked it? Jennifer Kelly
Did we review it? Yes, Christian wrote, "Fohr’s songwriting is as strong as ever and her singing voice is singular."
Bryon’s take:
In his Dusted review of -io, Tim Clarke found the album "couches existential terror within ritualistic performance and orchestral musicality, and is often a challenging listen." If you replace "orchestral musicality" with "chilly EBM," he could be describing Halo on the Inside rather aptly. Haley Fohr has travelled deeper into the darkness with this record, wrapping her powerful voice in thick synthetic harmonies torn from the dust of Stranger Things’ parallel world. The music is icy and sinister, but elegant and rhythmic. The melodies and textures tangle with the vast expanse of Fohr’s signature croon to evoke imagery consistent with nocturnal activity. She’s constructed a frigid funk that is at home both on the dance floor and in a good set of headphones. I can imagine Helena Hauff spinning these songs in an abandoned power plant or a sweaty, black-walled basement. I can also see Halo on the Inside as the perfect soundtrack to a midnight stroll. It’s new territory for Fohr stylistically, but this album retains enough of her signature spirit to fit snugly within her overall body of work.
Ezale — Town Taxes (Foreal Foreal)
Who nominated it? Ray Garraty
Did we review it? Nope
Jonathan Shaw’s take:
Town Taxes flashes by in 22 minutes of rump-shaking, sunny sounds, lightened even more by Ezale’s slightly nasal, upper-register voice. There’s a winning charm to the record’s sonic textures, which gravitate more toward radio-friendly Earth, Wind, & Fire or late-1970s Gap Band than harder funk or the grit of neo-soul. Those bright surfaces belie some of the more interesting thematics Ezale engages; the release’s high point (sorry…) may be “Ironic,” which suggests the complicated feelings that lurk just under the music’s incessant search for pleasures. It’s a good song. For sure, among the persistent, prevailing concerns of hip hop, Town Taxes is a lot more interested in getting smoked up and chasing girls than it is in stacking cash or flashing gats. But by the time you get to closing track “Make Her Gig,” it’s clear just how much of the ostensibly good time comes at the expense of women (or, inevitably, in the parlance of Town Taxes, “bitches”): Ezale croons, “I bet you I can make her do what I tell her to / I bet you I can make her gig without her wig / Hangin with me instead of watchin her kids.” And it’s there from the jump, as on opening track “Hang Wit Them,” when he happily chirps, “Ain’ no tellin what the bitch’d do / I was all on her face like barbecue.” Swell. It feels like punching down. Seems like there must be other ways to elevate the self, or to get higher.
Hectorine — Arrow of Love (Take a Turn)
Who nominated it? Alex Johnson
Did we review it? Yes, Alex called the album, “ornate without being baroque and whimsical without affectation. This is precise and dramatic, yet conjured and dreamy music, delivered with devotion.”
Christian Carey’s take:
Sarah Gagnon is the creative songwriter and vocalist behind Hectorine, and explores a dark Sumerian myth on Arrow of Love, her third full length recording. It is the story of Inanna, an ancient Sumerian warrior goddess who goes to hell and back (literally) in a tale of fratricide, demons, human sacrifice, and a final (sort of) redemption. Gagnon channeled the depths of this dark tale, in part, to exorcise recent losses in her own life, both of a job and a relationship.
Arrow of Love juxtaposes lyrics as desolate as Inanna’s story and her own grief, with music that is (self-described) soft rock that is artful in approach. The overall result is eloquent in its restraint, with co-producer Geoff Saba providing multiple instruments to create a bed of sound, as well as several adroit saxophone solos, to accompany Gagnon’s expressive alto voice. The title tune is an example of the fetching results, with a synth solo appearing prominently and a cocoon of backing vocals from Betsy Gran and Joel Robinow. Ancient Sumerian soft rock? Sure.
Jenny Hval — Iris Silver Mist (4AD records)
Who nominated it? Tim Clarke
Did we review it? Yes, Tim wrote, “Jenny Hval brings acute intelligence and a conceptual bent to all of her work, infusing her art-pop with depth and intricacy.”
Josh Moss’ take:
Iris Silver Mist, the latest record from Norwegian singer/songwriter Jenny Hval, is centered around her ethereal, ice-clear voice, but the production styles pull from across decades and genres to create a modern, experiential take on art pop. The sounds of the Pure Moods compilation blend with the experimentalism of Björk, early ought’s indie-dance-pop moves meet the hermetic melodicism of Kate Bush. Spoken word elements throughout seem to emphasize the album’s themes of sensory and tactile experience — one that sticks out describes the physical movement of a sound being recorded, and ends with “Happy Birthday,” nearly shouted. Sound being recorded and played back; in other words conceived and born. The album is named after a rare perfume scent and is at least in part inspired by the collision of a budding music career with the grim realities of the COVID pandemic. This could be seen as the loss of one sense, which can force a being to lean harder on another to interact with reality — but in this case Jenny Hval’s quarantine-era obsession with scent led her back around to music, resulting in Iris Silver Mist.
Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith — Defiant Life (ECM)
Who picked it? Justin Cober-Lake
Did we review it? No
Bill Meyer’s take:
Dusted may not have reviewed this record, but I covered it for the Wire a few months ago. Then and now, I am taken by the music’s grave dignity, which is very much in tune with the tragedy of our time and aware of its sturdy links to the crimes of earlier ones. Now well into his 80s, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith sounds unreasonably great on a horn not known for its kindness to age. Vijay Iyer makes spacious, sympathetic frameworks for Smith from rumbling piano and muted electric keyboard textures; I can't think of a better setting in which to hear him. The only way in which this record has dimmed since I heard it is that, having attended one of the duo’s concerts, I know that they’re even more compelling in person.
Buck Curran — Far Driven Sun (Obsolete/Echodelick/ESP-Disk)
Buck Curran’s latest record celebrates craft of all types. The craft of melody, of musicianship, of tone, of capturing and shaping sounds; of building the instruments themselves. A one-of-a-kind acoustic guitar, the 30-year-old, hand-built Butterfly, is presented in lush vistas, layered with stabs of counterpoint, gentle shades of reverb and the soft scrape of fingers on strings. Buck came up in the same freak folk circles as Jack Rose, and he is the guardian of Robbie Basho’s guitar. Despite these potent influences, Buck has found his own voice in steel string centered instrumental music. His playing is patient and pristine, but these assemblies of blended guitar owe as much to classic rock as they do to any other guitar soli tradition. The melodicism and accessibility of the songs on Far Driven Sun recall those notable tracks where rockers go Takoma style, or at least instrumental, and strike gold — think of Black Sabbath’s “Fluff”, Duane Allman’s “Little Martha,” even the delicate spaces of Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross”—that’s the sort of dreamy, wide-open territory covered on the path to the Far Driven Sun.
Far Driven Sun asks listeners to pay attention to the guitar itself, the sound of its materiality, in a way that few records insist on. The opening track, which shares a title with the record, introduces the instrument with a sparse melodic figure, alone at first, then joined by a complimentary riff. The close, high-definition recording style admits creaks and the sounds of friction, but it also recreates the sustain and warmth of this rare construction of sacred, exotic wood. It’s a short tune, the star of the show stepping out from behind the curtain. Once introductions have been dispensed with, other possibilities are immediately explored. The propulsive “Unicorn Song” lays down a bed of strums over which a brass slide and an e-bow are used on the Butterfly to make sounds so sonorous and smooth you would swear it was the neck pickup on a Jazz Master being played through a vintage Fender Twin, not an acoustic guitar. Throughout Far Driven Sun Curran weaves guitars masterfully. Sheets of slide, sonic aurora, embed themselves between the hollows of patient fingerstyle arpeggios; waves of e-bow ambience crash against rhythmic shores, beauty resides in the spaces between sparse notes. Far Driven Sun is proof positive of the way in which a purposefully limited palette, instrumental in this case, can push creative boundaries.
There is an exception to every rule, however, and on the climactic cut “ILiad (Slight Return),” Buck brings a rhythm section to bear on a theme that was explored earlier on the album, a structural/titular reference to Jimi Hendrix’s unforgettable revisitation of “Voodoo Chile” that closes out Electric Ladyland. In “ILiad (Slight Return)” one can almost hear a future full band Buck Curran record. His rock-inflected playing works just as well with the advent of bass and insistent drums as it does with his own tasteful overdubs, but the deployment is so restrained: the textbook definition of leaving them wanting more.
Thematically, Far Driven Sun is a record about how the vast expanse and wonder of the universe is situated and experienced locally, in the carbon atoms of the wood of a singular guitar, or in the intimate human galaxies that are families. Tunes like “Unicorn Song,” which was named by Buck’s daughter and appears three times in different incarnations across the record, or “You Are My Sun” demonstrate that this creative cosmos revolves around children and partners, the closeness of the home hearth. “ILiad (Slight Return),” “Deserto Parallax” and the album’s title track show the cosmic and spiritual distances covered in this musical journey. Ultimately, however, much like the Odyssey, the classical companion to the Iliad invoked in the peak moment of Far Driven Sun, this is a record about returning home to the things that are essentially important. The cherished family and the perfectly crafted, one-of-a-kind tools that inspire the best work an artist can do. Buck might have taken a queue here from the legendary cuisine of his adopted home country, Italy. Just a few simple ingredients and a lot of love and intention produce a sublime result.
Kelby Clark — Language of the Torch (Tentative Power)
Kelby Clark is an LA-by-way-of-Georgia banjo player who blends divergent styles and approaches to forge his own novel direction for the instrument. Over a series of mostly self-released home-spun recordings from the past five or so years, he has honed his approach, expanding the traditions of his point of origin in the American south to include free improvisation and eastern modalities — an alchemy familiar to Sandy Bull, a fellow stretcher of the vocabulary of the banjo and of the concept of “folk” and the traditional. His sparse and appropriately fiery new LP Language of the Torch, available January 10th of next year from Tentative Power, represents a significant milestone in his development of his own science of the banjo, a statement of intent for his artistic practice. It also marks the inaugural 12” LP release from the Baton Rouge, Louisiana label.
Across the seven searching pieces that make up Language of the Torch, Clark constructs a labyrinthine world of music from solo banjo and occasional, subdued harmonium, centered around two longform tracks, “Tennessee Raag Pt.1” and “Tennessee Raag Pt. 3” – there is no part two. These songs help situate the album among its influences, the titles suggesting an imaginational space where Appalachia and India overlap, an interzone frequently visited by practitioners of “American Primitive” music. The intentionally skewed numbering invokes John Fahey, another sometime-raga-obsessive, whose volumes of guitar music are numbered in a non-sensical, non-sequential manner, thumbing the nose at the very concept of numbers and of archiving or cataloging art in volumes. Clark improvises and composes, but on Language of the Torch, the two lengthy “Raags” and the six-minute opening salvo, “Time’s Arc,” feel like the compositions that anchor the shorter, more exploratory tracks that fall between them. Clark’s banjo twangs and drones almost sitar-like during these mesmerizing endurance runs, rough edges flattening over time like water-worn limestone.
In contrast to the patience of these bucolic “Raags,” the shorter tracks on Language of the Torch have an immediacy and attack to them and entertain more old-time flourishes. The concise title cut is perhaps the most traditional, the bends and swoops here feel related to Americana, a brief nod to and deconstruction of familiar forms. Clark is a fluid player, but the percussive nature of the banjo can run counter to fluidity — the most explosive of these improvisations, “Apis,” begins abruptly with an aggressive right-hand trill before it clatters apart and back together again like a musical version of Marcel Duchamp’s Modernist classic “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.” This song is a stand-out and the heaviest example of Clark’s burning vision for the banjo, the “concert instrument” ambition expressed by his forebears in the American Primitive movement.
All traditional forms of music, from Indian Classical to Appalachian Old-Time and permutations between, seem narrowly determined upon a superficial look but reveal their universal nature to those willing to let go of semiotics and sink into their visionary streams. This makes these forms excellent starting points for experimentation, established structures that contain the instructions to build new universes, if one is bold enough to try to read them, and that is what Kelby Clark attempts here with the 5-string banjo and the various traditions from which he draws inspiration. The liner notes for Language of the Torch take the form of a poem by hammered dulcimer player Jen Powers, a fellow traveler on the path of exploding the scope of the traditional. I think the passage below illuminates the process at hand, the conversation between tradition and interpreter:
And maybe now you're wondering
whether you are the conjurer
or the conjured,
and if you really want to know which it is
Calendar Year is a diaristic album, its songs marking time passing in communion with the beings, places and phenomenon in Risker’s close surroundings. It’s personal songwriting; the art of reflecting lived experience in a delicately psychedelic atmosphere. A grounded point of view, but through the warped lens of perception. The sounds recall the reveries of outré folk/pop from throughout the decades, from pastoral idylls of Vashti Bunyan and Nick Drake to the “freak” journeys of Joanna Newsome and Devendra Banhart.
This is Risker’s second album under her own name, coming seven years after the debut, and the dormant interval has leant a well-earned depth to the material. To shade in the sonic image of Calendar Year, Risker enlisted some select Chicago musicians, including members of Fran, Minor Moon and Finom. Tunes like the opening track “Camera Obscura” and “Diamonds in the Snow” have a vintage feel; breathy flute weaves in and out of finger-style guitar lines and jazzy, sparse drums, providing a foundation for ethereal doubled vocals. More modern, experimental indie rock moves appear on songs like “He’s Gone” and “City Hours”, the latter leaning into its shoegaze and dream-pop tendencies hard, verbing the vocals out into indistinction and invoking the crystalline warble of The Cocteau Twins before exploding into a noisy motorik outro, one of a few nods to rock’n’roll rhythmic propulsion on a predominantly gentle album. All these varied tones are glued together by a mostly analog ½ inch tape recording process and the skills of engineer/producer Dave Vettraino.
Thematically these songs are slices of life that do touch on subjects of motherhood and family, but to listen to a record of songs by a woman songwriter and throw out the word domesticity feels both trite and unfair. When our eyes are open, we can see that the smallest moments and details in life contain the entirety of creation, and the vignettes on Calendar Year seem to be asking the listener to make that consideration. “RHOJP (Real Housewives of Jefferson Park)” is a meditation on how hyper-modernity scrambles our ability to do just that, as the media that we can hardly avoid soaking in makes us question and judge everything about ourselves, restricting us to the surface when we were built to dive. “For Huck, This Afternoon” returns to the small moments to hold on tight. It’s a litany of the minute, terribly beautiful experiences parents and children share every day, how precious they are, how simultaneously fleeting and eternal. The existential repetition of refilling your kid’s water is mundane and mythical. It even has the vibe of a children’s song, with playful background vocals and a circus-style loopy keyboard solo at the end. It’s a parent-song to rival Loudon Wainwright III’s “Daughter” or David Bowie’s “Kooks.”
The hushed “Twirl, Planet Twirl” seems to sum up the outlook of Calendar Year. “Twirl, planet twirl, I adore you, all summer long I explore you.” It’s an open-hearted and open-eyed record. It was written in 2020, a year of dread, but you wouldn’t know it. In the days, weeks and months of Calendar Year, everything has sublimity and wonder inherent in it if you have the patience to look. Even if it’s easy to get distracted, it’s always worth the effort. “Make a wish that’s possible, big enough to share, is there really truth, it’s only just a point of view, it’s up to you.”
The Worm Moon is the fifth full length LP from New Hampshire’s Footings, home to the songs of underground music lifer Eric Gagne. Out now on Feeding Tube records, The Worm Moon is an immersive set of brief skeletal folk-rock missives and instrumental interludes that rewards repeated through-listens. Thematically The Worm Moon deals with attempts to find peace and growth within spaces of decay and stagnation, reflecting its title which refers to a full moon in March. A time when the worms start moving again, and all the new possibilities of spring are just around the corner – but we are also reminded of all that living tissue which fell the previous Autumn, upon which the worms feast. Like many works of art surfacing at this point in history, this record lets loose the feelings, thoughts and melodies that gestated during the dread-soaked peak of the COVID pandemic, only to burst forth and escape into the wind, or into the grooves of an LP, as that set of anxieties gave way to others.
There is a sense of restlessness both emotional and physical in the words of The Worm Moon, but the music is focused, consistent and concise, the product of a group that operates on long shared common ground. The band lays down sparse arrangements of guitar, bass, drums and keyboards which are further elaborated on by viola, pedal steel, and back-up vocal figures. These vocal arrangements and layers of viola pull the sound vaguely in the direction of woodsy, droned-out psychedelia, while the songs themselves and pedal steel give the music a country feel. Footings have served as Will Oldham’s backing band for stretches, and it is clear how that would be appropriate, with their exploratory playing and arrangements, leaning into jazz and post-rock in places, tied up into short songs with steady backbeats and dry tones. For all the brevity, this music also contains deep catharsis in the performances alone, especially in the two musical interludes that share the album’s title, and the extended final track. “The Worm Moon Part 2” is a particularly beautiful explosion of near free jazz by way of a rock band.
At its heart The Worm Moon centers around the songwriting, personal and poetic, and the voice of the songwriter, deep and soft, at times comped into a pleasant diffusion, at times close-mic’d and breathy. There is a restlessness but there is a tension; is it restlessness to leave or to come home? The lead single, “Reverie” seems to be about the solace that can be found in motion, the joy of hitting the road, “heading out at first light” and the call to “drive forever if I could.” In the almost honky-tonk atmosphere of “Dreams”, Gagne and vocalist/guitarist Candace Clement sing “where can I go when I just need to go, I just need to disappear.” At the other pole of desire lies the album closer. “I Won’t Go,” feels like a tender pledge to stay with a partner no matter what, featuring a lengthy noise rock intro, the one nod on The Worm Moon to stretching out a jam, then repeating the titular line in an emotional, high-flying round-style vocal with Clement. In between these poles are imagistic glimpses at life, family, and aging through mixed circumstance. In the opening line of the album itself Gagne sings “how can we move forward when we’re going nowhere?” This comes across more like a feeling or a vibe than a statement of geography and it seems to suggest that in the world of The Worm Moon there are myriad ways to move, to leave and come home, and they don’t all take place on foot or in a car, they can be journeys of the heart and mind; one can return home to place or to a person, even to themselves.
Joseph Allred — Old Time Fantasias (Scissor Tail Editions)
In loving progress since 2023, Joseph Allred’s latest LP, Old Time Fantasias (out now on Scissor Tail Editions) finds them employing their most expansive instrumental palette to date and leaning on their strengths as both a multi-instrumentalist and a sensitive collaborator, elaborating on the excellent group effort What Strange Flowers Grow In The Shadewith a lush orchestral offering that speaks as much to Allred’s roots in a doom metal band as it does to John Fahey’s work with Spirit on The Yellow Princess or with New Orleans musicians on his “and his Orchestra” records. Like all of Joseph’s work, it reaches into visionary territory by being so firmly rooted in tradition while simultaneously being their’s alone, a tough trick to pull off. These mystical Fantasias carry the listener away to a second space, an alternate river of time that flows in a parallel but meandering course with history.
To help them accomplish that alchemy, Allred called on several tried-and-true players, most notably Hans Chew, a pianist well known as an enabler of steel string wizardry for his indelible work with Jack Rose. Despite further contributions from their brother Mikey Allred, Magic Tuber String Band, experimental banjoist Kelby Clark, and others, most of the arrangements heard on this record were performed by Joseph, conjuring Old Time Fantasias from layers of stringed instruments, woodwinds, and keyboards – from oud to clarinet to mellotron, with many stops in between. Allred also plays the drum kit throughout the record, providing a sturdy trunk of rhythm from which these melodies and harmonies branch out, and giving a beat oriented rock’n’roll edge to the proceedings.
At the heart of these compositions however lies Joseph’s main instrument, the guitar: six-string, 12- string, acoustic, electric and baritone. Stomping on the county line in perfect American Primitive measure, swirling in stately Eastern (both Middle and European) vistas, twanging like a Leone soundtrack, spilling out like a huge shoegaze chorus; some of the electric guitar work here is what reveals their roots in heavy rock music. The album opener “The Groundhog”, swings in an almost ragtime, vintage way, Chew’s limber piano runs twining themselves with Allred’s fingerstyle acoustic playing like stems in a flower crown, ready to dance around the May Pole. “Cub Creek Blues, Part II” is where the members of Magic Tuber Stringband make their appearance, lending banjo and fiddle to this whistful, wordless Appalachian ballad that shifts gears midway into an avant-garde barn dance. “Tracks in the Snow” feels like a Branko Mataja riff with full band overdubs, evoking a wintry pastoral revery, calm but with the menace of early darkness. The centerpiece of Old Time Fantasias is “Ditch Lilly Suite,” a nearly ten-minute track that moves through different interpretations of and variations on a quintessentially American Primitive-style theme, one that blends the elevated motifs of classical music with folk elements. At times it drifts alone on the rustle of a lightly brushed snare, at times it is written in bold by layered, fuzz-out, twanging notes from a Fender Bass VI, or richly under-run by streams of mellotron strings.
Allred can do just about anything with a guitar, and they do it all in service of Old Time Fantasias. While the record demonstrates wide ranging musical virtuosity, deep knowledge of the global spectrum of vernacular music, and unbounded compositional imagination, it also lives up to its title – for all the perfection in the performances, it never comes across cold – rather it wraps the listener in a comforting envelope of explicitly non-weaponized, self-aware nostalgia, fantasy meticulously built from parts of history. Not the fever dreams of an idealized, hierarchical past that never existed; instead, the hazy sun-dappled idylls of an imaginary dream past that glowed like a painting prior to knotted, modern worry. Joseph themselves copped to the fact that had they embarked on the journey of making this record in 2025 it might not have sounded nearly as friendly, as “fantastic,” but that lag between the conception of the album and the exponentially increasing dread of our current world has provided something we might now find necessary; a brief escape that is no less grounded and present for having provided shelter.
