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3 weeks ago | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
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(Self-released, digital) Don't be fooled by the cheeky title. Anyone expecting a playful, sexually titillating romp as they listen to Klovis Gaynor & the Urinal Cakes' debut record, SAVE ME 4 THE SPANK BANK, needs to curb their expectations. Nothing can prepare the world for the depths of depravity to which this New York City experimental quartet sinks.
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Dec 11, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
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(Cheesehead Records, digital) What a difference eight years makes. In 2016, Benjamin Burr was a teenage jam-band kid making sweet, teenage jam-band-kid music with some pals from central Vermont under the name Peace in the Valley. Though solid, the music was safe, largely sticking to the genre's tropes (i.e., love and togetherness plus noodling guitars).
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Nov 20, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
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(Self-released, digital) In a recent Instagram video, Luminous Crush band members Bay Campbell and Laura Molinelli have a cute disagreement: Is their new studio album, Bury the Rock, their seventh or eighth? (It depends on whether you count their currently unavailable LP Live From Lonely Highway Studio.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
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(Winedark Sound, digital) Guthrie Galileo has always been a little bit witchy, and not just in his music. Now based in New York City, the former Burlingtonian singer-songwriter used to organize and host a shadowy community dinner/concert series from his Old North End apartment called the Nightshade Kitchen.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
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(Lazy Susan Records, digital) Mystic sigils flash on-screen during the grainy music video for northern Vermont alt-folk outfit Sheepskin's song "Devil Owns My Eyes." Superimposed between fleeting shots of band members Sam Tiesworth, Molly Meehan, Derrick Burt and Finn Lester-Niles, the inscrutable lettering lends the song an occult sensibility. Despite the demonic title, there's no outward menace.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
click to enlarge Hello, Vermont music fans! It's been more than three years since my last Soundbites column, and I'm happy to be back. Current music editor Chris Farnsworth asked me to fill in this week while he delved into the comics world, his unofficial other beat (see "Treasures Told"). I thought it sounded like fun — especially when he told me that Portland, Ore., "little orchestra" Pink Martini were headed toward Vermont this week.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
click to enlarge (Captured Tracks, CD, vinyl, digital)Big feelings don't always translate into big music. Some of the most intensely moving songs, like many by Joanna Newsom and Elliott Smith, are quiet, subdued or otherwise small in sonic scope, despite the major feels roiling underneath. Brooklyn quintet GIFT go the other way, making music as huge and powerful as those overwhelming emotions. The group's second album, Illuminator, is a powerful collection of synthed-out, guitar-soaked bangers.
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Sep 4, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
click to enlarge (Feeding Tube Records, cassette, digital)In March, Burlington musician Wren Kitz released the second volume of Natural History, a two-album study in field recordings and nature's inherent music he started in 2022. Now, the singer-songwriter returns with a traditional, song-based record, The Thinker. But "traditional" is a relative term, because Kitz's music is always boundary-pushing, disorienting and a little weird.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
click to enlarge (Self-released, digital)Burlington six-piece rock band Kitbash titled their recently released debut album, Anything At All, with an implicit sense of permission.
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Aug 21, 2024 | 
sevendaysvt.com | Jordan Adams
click to enlarge (Self-released, digital)Describing music can be the most fun part of a reviewer's job, but some words have been used and abused to the point that they've become no-nos. One is "lush," deployed when a finely appointed song exhibits a majestic, almost sensual quality, usually through layers of complex instrumentation. Even though it's overused, "lush" is the first word that came to mind while listening to Sulk Fangs' latest EP, Where the River Goes.
