Hello fellow Sputters, we are back with another edition of our contributor’s favorite songs of the month (plus yours truly lmao). Let’s see what JoyfulPlatypus, Shamus and Futures have to say about their favorites from October!
JoyfulPlatypus’ SOTM: Artificial Angels by Grimes
“Grimes has always been a very (for lack of a better word) interesting figure in the music industry. I could write an entire essay on why that is, but we’re here to discuss her new single, not her controversial public image. Outside of Art Angels, Grimes has never been what I would describe as a “pop artist.” She has always leaned more into the atmospheric side of things, and typically forgoes the big, catchy hooks typical of pop songs in favor of layered, complex synth melodies. “Artificial Angels” takes all the best elements of Grimes’ musical prowess and throws them into a blender. The result is a near-perfect three minutes that combines Grimes’ trademarked zaniness (after all, the song is written from the perspective of a rogue A.I. who is trying to hunt humans) with a sugary sweet earworm chorus. Some may hear this track and think of it as a bit of a clusterf**k, especially with the hyper-pop-esque glitchy vocals in the verses. To me, however, it clicks in a way that only Grimes could pull off. And, thankfully, the song is a perfect length. It’s just short enough not to overstay its welcome, yet just long enough…
The legendary pop-punkers have released another song in advance of their upcoming October 10th release, Better Days. It’s a nostalgic, chorus-driven banger reminiscent of the band’s Ocean Avenue prime.
Other Tracks to Highlight:
Black Honey – “Vampire in the Kitchen”
“If No Doubt went indie rock. –Tundra” –Sowing. All jokes aside, this just about sums up my thoughts…but also check the sick guitar riffs/solo here.
Pile – “A Loosened Knot”
“Equal parts serene and brutal – often all at once. Pile not only return to their post-hardcore roots but they return with what they’ve learned in their more linear and experimental detours from the past couple releases. Lush strings, beautiful duets clash with harsh scramz, filthy guitar licks, and angular melodies.” –baseddook
ivri – “erosion”
Beautiful, shoegazey indie-rock from a no-name artist will always pique my interest, and this song/album was no different!
Rise Against – “Black Crown” (ft. Manchester Orchestra)
The album’s average rating/score isn’t sitting too pretty thus far, but any song with Andy Hull writing credits and vocal contributions will be a cut above the rest.
It’s that time of the month again. No, I’m not talking about the single sunny day in London or the sleep-depriving full moon. What? No, no, no—this isn’t about the eleventh Hawks list written in all caps. It’s time to measure extremely! We’ve hastily installed whatever patches we could dig up from our dusty 8-inch floppies in a desperate attempt to translate the transmissions below for you, our valued readers. Let’s hope it worked.
In the Sput corner:
CottonSalad, skronk birb
normaloctagon, clearly a circle
Yours truly, dripping host
You’re so not ready for our special guests this month! It’s…
Sam and Alex (Artificial Brain, third from right and second from right)
In Dub — 05.02.2025 — At War With False Noise — Spotify
I admit that I don’t often care for new music that falls under the umbrella of OSDM. For one, I’m still discovering such surprising, inspired records from the early years of the genre. Perhaps more importantly, early death metal…
A Greek, an Aussie, a German and a Briton walked into a bar. Said the German, “LFG!”. Voilà, this month’s edition of Extreme Measures was born — this time with more Sput guests, more “makes you scream at your screen” bad takes, more words, more… everything. What will be Night’s final jams before he goes on intermittent hiatus? Who is the handsome fella photobombing our special guest? Will Tool superfan JotW be able to endure the pedestrian guitar music perfidiously thrown at him in an act of backstabbery by people he once considered decent chaps? Who is going to taste the forbidden angular-aural-abrasive-aesthetic fruits first? (Spoiler: It’s gonna be May.) Questions upon questions — let’s get digging for some home truths.
Representing Sput this month are two staffers and a fool:
NightOnDrunkMountain, lo-fi glutton
JohnnyoftheWell, Thesaurus rex
Yours truly, naked host
Oh, you’re here for our surprise guests, aren’t you? That would be…
Brendan Sloan (Convulsing) and some bearded bloke (back to front)
Welcome, metal afficionados, inquisitive readers and everyone in between, to the premiere of Extreme Measures, a new monthly format where Sputnik users and artists come together to take a long, hard lo-, ahem, briefly check overlooked (and some overly looked at) extreme metal and adjacent releases that came out in the previous month and offer their thoughts on select songs. This has been a long time in the making, and we’re excited to finally share our findings with you. For this first edition, some very, very special guests did themselves the honor of joining in. We hope you’ll have as much fun jamming and reading as we did crafting this. Let’s dive in.
Sput jammers (spammers?) this month:
evilford, DM hypeman extraordinaire
Yours truly, humble host
And our surprise guests for this episode are:
Vaughn, Jacob, Josh and Lille (Defeated Sanity, left to right)
– Calendar week 10 –
Innermost Intestinal Exposure by Chordoma — Josh’s pick
Just in time (-ish) for the start of spooky season, welcome to the third installment for our 2024 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam while reading what participating staffers had to say about their picks. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, any new artists you may have discovered here, or let us know what should have been included (just remember this when it’s time for the end-of-year festivities)!
Tracklist:
The Airborne Toxic Event – “Our Own Thunder Road” Glory
Building a song upon references to Springsteen’s classic of classics is a dangerous choice, but in this case, The Airborne Toxic Event pull it off: the delivery is slow-burning, dramatic, and ultimately captivating. –Sunnyvale
And So I Watch You From Afar – “Do Mór” Megafauna
I adore “Mór”‘s pensive, contemplative start before ASIWYFA’s trademark cacophonous cymbals and fun guitar noodling wrap envelop you like your favorite hoodie on a blustery day. Plus, there’s cowbell (could I have used more throughout Megafauna? Who wouldn’t?). I really enjoyed how well-balanced Chris Wee’s toms and snare were mixed, especially as the song teeters on going off the rails towards its end. See also: lively opener “North Coast Megafauna” and delightfully bombastic “Mother Belfast (Part 2)”. –Jom
Anthony Green – “Last Summer in America” Last Summer in America…
Welcome to the second installment for our 2024 quarterly playlist! Having Canada D’eh and Independence Day during the same week had some of us partying hard. Feel free to jam while reading what participating staffers had to say about their picks. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, any new artists you may have discovered here, or let us know what we missed!
Tracklist:
Arooj Aftab – “Aey Nehin” Night Reign
Perhaps the most heatproof antidote I’ve heard this year to everything sweaty and inconvenient about summer, Arooj Aftab’s stellar new record opens in a revelation of cleansing harp tones and dusky croons. Her hazy weave of textures effortlessly trots out everything palatable you could ask of a current-year chamber jazz, earning a rare for all music fans badge of approval from practically anyone whose opinion you should care to ask. Literally better than sunscreen. –JohnnyoftheWell
ARTMS – “Virtual Angel” <DALL>
Charli XCX might be sitting on pop’s most obvious AOTY ticket, but this right here is the flyaway headrush single of (maybe) the year, affirming everything gauzy and effortless about pop, living and dying on the sheer gratification of breezy production and the featherweight delivery of knockout hooks. If that’s not enough (and your Korean is up to it), ARTMS’ lyrics offer a wholesome take on…
If there has ever been an, uh-huh, point to the KILL or KEEP series, odds are it’s been to dip into controversies still simmering, tracklists still disorganised, arguments still raging, and offer some passing aggregated opinionated stab at a Decisive Verdict – and if not a firm verdict on this/that/the other should-should-not be here, then at least a decisive snapshot of an argument still ongoing elsewhere in the world and (one hopes) interesting enough to be worth snapping to begin with.
This band/album/songwriter package has absolutely none of those. Nobody argues about Steven Wilson and the Porcupine Trees anymore. Everyone has chosen sides. The received wisdom of how much to listen to it if inclined (sparingly but intently) or if not (not at all, or else psychedelic ’90s years only!) is very received. The man’s music does not have the charm to sway indecisives – you either take it on his terms, or not at all. We all know what this means with prog rock. In Absentia was Wilson’s first metal album and has one of his stupidest concepts (I think we can all rejoice that auteurs tend no longer to mistake serial killer narratives as a cheap supplement for artistic clout). Here are thoughts.
Rules
The starting team was johnnyoftheWell, Koris and TVC.
Gatecrashers were welcome to this KILL or KEEP and we…
Welcome to the first installment for our 2024 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam while reading what some of our newest staff writers as well as other longtime Sputstaffers had to say about their picks. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, any new artists you may have discovered here, or let us know what we missed!
Tracklist:
Allie X – “Girl With No Face” Girl With No Face
On an album loaded with mid-tempo mad-bops, “Girl with No Face” truly takes the cake. A new-wave beat and sassy bass lines revel in the humid dark before venomous guitars crash through the bridge and fully kick shit into gear. The resulting finale is a noiry powertrip with surprising muscle and a killerrr groove. –neekafat
Anatole Muster – “blip blop” blip blop
The alliterative onomatopoeia “blip blop” seems to cleave a space between the digital and the natural — the ‘blip’ indicating an ontology rooted in electronic music, the ‘blop’ indexing the kind of reverberation brought forth by the movement of an object in real space. Anyways, this vaguely hyperpop-ish song by very promising German accordion prodigy Anatole Muster (“Layers”, “auntie mabel”) and pretty-damn-good South African cornball M Field (“Andrew”, “Block Universe”) is…
Welcome to the fourth and final installment of our 2023 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, any new artists you may have discovered here, or let us know what we missed!
Next week: stay tuned for the Sputnikmusic community’s Top 50 LPs (and Top 10 EPs, Live Albums, and Compilations) of 2023 — cheers!
Tracklist:
Beastwars – “Waves” Tyranny of Distance
Beastwars rightfully turned a folk song about murder and suicide into their own sludgy brand of metal. This scorching affair hits as hard as the lyrics, easily becoming a highlight in their catalog. –Raul
Casey – “How to Disappear” How to Disappear
Casey’s reunion and subsequent slow-dripping of singles have been a pleasant surprise, with the title track (and album closer) being my favorite of the bunch. The Welsh quintet’s sonic palette brings to mind Keep You-era Pianos Become the Teeth with some of Moving Mountains’ most meditative moments, and the slow-burning crescendo into the song’s cathartic final chorus is refreshing despite the somber lyrical backdrop. –Jom
‘Sufjan Stevens is the Picasso of indie folk. He takes the soothing NPR/car commercial sounds we know and love for their warmth and familiarity and says “Nope” and farts in our faces.’ – V. Dreth
Sufjan Stevens is indeed the most ubiquitous, evasive, phlegmatic chameleon of our times (the indie ones), and represents many a thing to many a chum. To Pangea, he represents comfort and joy. To Pheromone, he represents balance and gay. To johnnyoftheWell and MarsKid, he represents being sick to death of the press circuit around which his latest effort Javelin is still running many a lap in this limpest of years. Now, KILL or KEEP has always been about pluralism (usually in the form of severe fucking death), and as a result we are going in! Into Illinois! Everyone has something to say about this one: the songs are endless, the possibilities are infinitesimal and the classic status is, yes sure okay you get it. What will our takeaways be? Will we sync or swim (in the Maynardian sense) as a team? Only Sufjan has the answers…
Rules
The team is johnnyoftheWell and MarsKid and Pangea and Pheromone.
Every song must either be KILLed or KEEPed.
There is no minimum KILL threshold.
Every time a song is KILLed, the KILLer must name a location that Sufjan Stevens should have…
Welcome to the third installment for our 2023 quarterly playlist! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, any new artists you may have discovered here, or let us know what we missed!
Tracklist:
Angelo De Augustine – “Memory Palace” Toil and Trouble
Proving himself as more than just the best Sufjan knockoff ever, De Augustine has now successfully built the cutest little unique kingdom all to himself, perfected on his 4th LP, and you should visit. The melancholic ivy spiraling around “Memory Palace”, in particular, is surprisingly warm. More than that: it’s the slow-burning summer HIT that never was. –Asleep
Bearings – “Howie, You’re a Freak” The Best Part About Being Human
Every once in a while I delude myself into thinking that I have outgrown pop punk. Next thing you know, “Howie, You’re a Freak” deploys its incredibly infectious chorus to work its way into my head and overtake my summer. Dammit. At least pop punk will never outgrow me, either. –jesper
someone walks into a bar. It’s someone. I am johnnyoftheWell. It was a slow afternoon, and there we were. KILL or KEEP? Aye, why not – which record? Several meaningful opuses were teased, all of them beyond the space of our timeslot. Where does gravity default to on a slow afternoon? Well… has anyone ever listened to Phoebe Bridgers on a fast afternoon? Is such a thing even possible? Please do contact us immediately if you have pulled this off. We signed our rights away. It was time: time to get punished! Has her downer norm-magnet SowingSeason “5.0 Classic” passport to all of social media all the bloody time throughout the whole pandemic aged well? Time to find out…
Rules
The team is johnnyoftheWell, and someone.
Every song must either be KILLed or KEEPed.
There is no minimum KILL threshold.
Every time a song is KILLed, the KILLer must name a vaguely Boygenius-adjacent artist whomst’ve the youthes should be consuming instead.
Okay.
Starting Impressions
jotW: Um, I expect little from this album and am ready for anything? It has disappointed me many times and probably aged more than anyone including me is/was prepared to admit. This is very exciting boy I can’t wait to see what someone does to it.
someone: I remember listening to the record a bunch back in the…
I had benefitted greatly from her care and yet I had always kept my heart hard to her, believing that if Weezer did make it, I would want to be free for the many superior options I imagined would be available to me.
– Rivers Cuomo on his on-off relationship with Jennifer Chiba (later Elliott Smith’s girlfriend)
No further preamble on this one (here it is): KILL or KEEP is back in full swing, and to celebrate our return with maximum hubris, we decided to sidestep our usual brief for bloated opuses in need of a butcher’s trim. Instead, we tumble headlong into one of the worst records ever made.
At a poxy 35 minutes, Weezer’s cursed flagship record Pinkerton might as well be a doe in the headlights here – can KILL or KEEP do justice to such a fragile ego death album with such, uh, vast horsepower behind it and Pheromone’s egregiously powerful foot at the wheel? What kind of justice can we do for a man like Rivers Cuomo, whose entire existence is itself above justice, logic and humanity? Let’s see…
Rules
The team is jesperL,johnnyoftheWell, and Pheromone.
Every song must either be KILLed or KEEPed.
There is no minimum KILL threshold. There was no need for a maximum KEEP threshold.
Okay.
Starting Impressions
Phero: This is a sexy album. It is an album about sex. It…
At the start of KILL or KEEP Vol.9 (Taylor Swift – Red), we promised we were getting back together.
But then, at the end of that KILL or KEEP, we broke up again.
It took some time, but an elite KILL or KEEP hitsquad eventually assembled for a champion assignment album party. It was time to do the inevitable: to look back in time, to a time before 100 gecs, before Whorecore-gate, before nu-gaze,, before retroism decided Linkin Park were good actually, and to start directly into the face of the modern music landscaping capitalism egotism vortexes. That’s right. We were to examine a record that changed the shape of commercial hip-hop and wiped its arse across the whole consenting pop landscape including, as of now the good pages of KILL or KEEP. It was a proper comeback and we took the elevator up to the top. Can we get much higher? Is he too high? Too big for his boots? If so, just you watch as we KILL him down to size.
Without further ado, I give you: Kanye West…what do you even say about the man?
Rules
The team isjohnnyoftheWell, normaloctagon, Pheromoneand Windowpain.
Every song must either be KILLed or KEEPed.
We played with a specialrule:Every song KILLed must be accompanied by a cancellable take that Kanye himself has not yet said.
I admit that I don’t often care for new music that falls under the umbrella of OSDM. For one, I’m still discovering such surprising, inspired records from the early years of the genre. Perhaps more importantly, early death metal…
I hadn’t heard of this band until now, but definitely a strong relative new-comer to the brutal death metal…
