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Review: Thunder Follows The Light by Mutual Benefit

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Label: Mutual Benefit Words by Luke Janke Thunder Follows The Light by mutual benefit Jordan Lee of Mutual Benefit has been making strikingly calm and cerebral soundscapes for nearly a decade now and his latest delves into topics of the environment, collective pain and how the ongoing destruction of the outer world shapes the storms of our inner ones. Thunder Follows The Light is a light, plucky journey down a bayou of dreams. The banjo work in songs like “Written in Lightning” carries you away on a cloud of enlightenment. On first listen, I got a “Rainbow Connection” vibe, just without the singing frog and more intention and contemplation. the winds have been rising /torrid and frightening /clouds have been gathering /On our way home Distant feedback-laden guitar drenches the background of “Waves, Breaking” as wailing saxaphones build, escalating into a cacophony of tremendous void. Many of the songs have water and rain themes in the lyricism, a rallyi
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Review: I Don't Have A Bib by Half-Handed Cloud

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Label: Self-Released/ Asthmatic Kitty Records Words by Amanda Clevinger I Don't Have A Bib by Half-handed Cloud Adorable is a word I often use to describe both Half-Handed Cloud’s music and the man behind it, John Ringhofer, but to say his latest release is adorable is both an understatement and not enough. I Don’t Have a Bib is a collection of Ringhofer family songs, short little ditties about washing up, having pizza, a new baby sister, and daily life. The songs are truly on brand adorable, but they are more than that. There’s so much intimacy in hearing John and his children sing, even sharing “Lullaby” (my favorite track, hands-down), which I can imagine being sung multiple times every night with the softest love. Having a peek into the life of Ringhofer as a father is fun, sweet, and something I didn’t even know I needed. I was washed with nostalgia for my own dad’s songs for me, for dancing in the living room to the Beatles, for singing a Talking Heads song
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Music Video: Heart Eyes - Colorful Paper

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Catch the latest goopy, cereal-soaked video for Colorful Paper by Heart Eyes' EP Whatever it is, Whenever you feel like it   out now via Community Radio Tapes
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Review: Thumper by Molly Drag

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Label: Forged Artifacts Words by Ryan Underwood & Luke Janke Thumper by Molly Drag Molly Drag's Thumper bursts to life with compellingly   driven plucky guitar, piano and bass during opening track Last Words ; a soaring melodies are distant enough yet with an earnest closeness, building the song into a cacophony of noise and yearning. The project's heart and soul, Michael Hansford uses his calculated and melancholic voice to deliver damning words of both pain and empathy. His imagery and lyricism in what it's like to suffer shines particularly in a small line from the track Falling Back: " You swallow the light/ I am vomiting the dark " This has a sense of familiarity, evoking overlooked but very human emotions and giving us a comforting reminder that we all live and die, with the same impact of a similar Sufjan lyric in "Fourth of July" from 2015's Carrie & Lowell. It draws acute awareness that our own lives are just as weird a
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Review: The Wig by Andrew Fogarty/ David Lacey

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Label: Fort Evil Fruit 'The Wig' is a labyrinthine concept piece exploring the concept "le perruque" - doing one's work on company time. Described as a "collage of workplace field recordings," it is a strange concept album and modern pastiche to gothic noise. Each track expands into what is essentially a caffeinated department meeting with the voices on mute. Irish experimentalists David Lacey [Rainfear, Irish improve scene] and Andrew Fogarty [Toymonger, Boys of Summer] here seem to organize the often monotonous and disheveled shuffling of daily office routine into clicking plastic landscapes littered with creaky doors and a mild cough. The Wig by Andrew Fogarty / David Lacey ‘The Wig’ is a scarce blending of human ambience and found sound set in drab grey spaces most musicians are keen on escaping. What Fogarty and Lacey do is embrace the limited instrumentation and often-abysmal acoustics of office spaces and turn it into a
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