Steve Forstneger

1 month ago | beatsperminute.com | Steve Forstneger

[Southeastern; 2025]One wonders who will discover Jason Isbell via Foxes In The Snow or if the fans he has are more-or-less the ones he’ll ever have. How many people will get to hear this music without all the accompanying noise? To how many “listeners” is the music the actual sideshow? There ought to be jealousy of those of us stood in small clubs on the Decoration Day tour, marveling that among all those hardened road dogs on stage it was instead a cherubic kid who wrote the title song.

1 month ago | beatsperminute.com | Rob Hakimian |Steve Forstneger |Joshua Pickard |Kyle Kohner

Welcome to the February edition of Beats Per Minute’s monthly playlist BPM Curates. The year’s second month is home to Valentine’s Day, which is supposed to be a day of love – but the feelings that arise around it can be far more complex. And as for the rest of the month, well, let’s say there hasn’t always been a lot of bonhomie going around.

2 months ago | beatsperminute.com | Steve Forstneger

[RCA; 2025]Inspired by a restaurant menu item, Jess Smyth’s Biig Piig tag became a retroactive nickname for the artist and her messy life. She has changed cities as readily as lovers and employers, while a trail of singles and EPs since 2017 didn’t truly show an attention span until 2023’s Bubblegum mixtape. A Cork native who left aged four, the most Irish thing about her is that she’s an emigrant: a member of the diaspora, perpetually unmoored.

2 months ago | beatsperminute.com | Rob Hakimian |Steve Forstneger |Joshua Pickard |Kyle Kohner

Welcome to the January edition of Beats Per Minute’s monthly playlist BPM Curates. It’s been a, well, turbulent start to 2025 to say the least – interesting, you might say if you were being diplomatic. One thing that’s certainly been interesting – and has aided in distracting from all of that other stuff – is the amount of amazing new music we’ve already been gifted. If it were piled together, it could probably be seen from space.

2 months ago | beatsperminute.com | Steve Forstneger

[The Flenser; 2025]Waiting Room sounds every bit like a barebones album that was recorded in an abandoned warehouse on a remote, Icelandic coast. It shows its fondness for 90s lo-fi homerecording, but embellishes that with bloodless digital sounds and mixing-desk manipulation. But more than that, Kathryn Mohr’s album sits alongside a world on the brink, cradling her broken heart. Though picturesque and breathtaking, Iceland is an appropriate end-of-times setting.