Release Radar: August 2020
At the end of each month, Afterglow presents a staff-picked list of new albums that left an impression on our ears.
Written by Afterglow Staffers
Photos courtesy of Charley Crockett, Lindsay Elliott, and Angelina Castillo
Here are five of our favorite albums released during August 2020 (and one released July 31, shhhh). For more reviews of recent releases, check out our album review page.
Below the Salt by Haley Blais
Image courtesy of Tiny Kingdom
Haley Blais’ debut album Below the Salt has all the signatures of her 2018 EP Let Yourself Go: coming-of-age themes, soaring, airy vocals, and hazy twinges of nostalgia. However, this time around, Blais brings a lens of retrospective maturity and new-found confidence to her indie pop sound and wry lyricism. “Be Your Own Muse,” one of three tracks produced by Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, the married duo behind Tennis, follows this path — a lesson learned and a mantra earned. Endearing keys carry the track through its rise and fall, a direct connection to the pair’s in-studio motto: What would Carole King do? “Firestarter” sees Blais stray from her norm; its slow-burning romance is fit with all the flourishes required of an ‘80s middle school slow dance track. Building off initial bright synths to muddled guitars, Blais convinces herself against her natural inclination: “This is not a love song / I wrote too many love songs / I always got one part wrong.” Throughout the album, Blais dips her toe into both the darker tones of shoegaze and the confessional radiance of ‘70s singer-songwriters, all beneath her shade of bouncy indie pop. But Blais is comfortable in this space, and her content disposition is clear on Below the Salt. As often as her anxieties of lost time and missed opportunities arise (“Can I become what I think I am?”), she sits in moments of joy, best illustrated by the album’s first single “Too Good.” Even if she has to “suspend belief” to get there, she wants you to know: she’s too good.
— Laiken Neumann
SUGAREGG by Bully
Image courtesy of Sub Pop Records
Alicia Bognanno has mastered the grunge formula. Her throat-tearing roar and punk-pop guitar, at turns barreling with energy and heavy with despair, has garnered comparisons to every ‘90s alt rock icon in the book, but her band manages to sound fresh decades after the genre’s heyday. While others are all aggression, Bognanno has a sweetness to her punk rock. When she’s not howling, she reveals a voice that’s actually pretty, and her writing strikes a balance between dissonant rhythm guitar and syrupy leads. Her third record, SUGAREGG, is a feat in this juxtaposition: the singer shouts more than ever, but still makes room for melody. Standout single “Every Tradition” has a riff so candied you almost miss her indignation; “If you’re gonna shame me / Turn around, bite your tongue ‘til it bleeds,” she sings, rejecting conventional notions of womanhood like “pressure to have a baby when I don’t want one in my body.” “God has lied to you,” she repeats in “Like Fire,” but with sighing vocals and jangly guitar, she turns the track into a breezy singalong instead of a dive into the gallows. But for each burst of energy, she pauses to catch her breath. In these slower moments, harmonizing with herself and anchored in climbing bass, Bognanno’s melodies shine even brighter. “I hope you come to realize your worth,” she sings tenderly in “Come Down,” a mid-tempo sail through regret and self doubt, before releasing her anger in the slow burn “Hours and Hours.” At each speed, however, Bognanno’s music remains urgent. SUGAREGG makes the case that bitter angst is best chased with a spoonful of sugar.
— Carys Anderson
Welcome to Hard Times by Charley Crockett
Image courtesy of Sons of Davy
Modern cowboy Charley Crockett released his album Welcome To Hard Times amidst some of the truly hardest times the world has seen since the coronavirus pandemic began. The record follows his 2019 release, The Valley, a biopic album reflecting on his hometown in deep South Texas. In this new chapter, however, Crockett’s smooth, soulful vocals tell the melancholy stories of an outlaw dealing with a painfully intricate relationship, his many vices, and drifting along in a world that wants him to settle down. Keeping true to the themes of older country-western tunes, the titular track “Welcome to Hard Times” sets the tone for a collection of songs about sinning, gambling, and lies. Having originally come up in the music scene as a southern-blues artist featured on lineups with the likes of Leon Bridges, Crockett’s since dabbled in many genres. His gothic, Western influence really shines through on this somber, yet comforting record; on the single “Don’t Cry,” the Texas native pleads to his tormented love in a classic piece of country storytelling This album is a much-needed revival of the Texas country genre made famous by artists like The Highwaymen back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and is the beginning of a new era for modern country artists — an era of reclaiming roots and straying away from the polished, pop-infused country music folks hear on the radio today. As Crockett put it himself, he’s recorded “an album that would change the entire conversation about country music”.
— Micaela Garza
Show Pony by Orville Peck
Image courtesy of Columbia Records
Orville Peck spins rich tales set against desert highways and sprawling skies — but he eschews the hero riding triumphantly off into the sunset for the lonesome gay cowboy drifting in the moonlight. With his 2018 debut Pony, he blended old-school country storytelling, shoegaze aesthetics, and a full-throated, melancholic baritone into a cinematic portrayal of the outlaw West. His follow-up Show Pony EP continues in the same vein — half the tracks could pass for Pony b-sides — but it’s also transitional, much like lead single “Summertime.” Wistful and fleeting, the track sees the season slip away in a gothic country ballad. “You and I / Bide our time,” Peck mourns. “No Glory in the West” is full of typical Orvillian imagery, but without any narrative backbone, it errs into shallow pastiche. Not so with “Drive Me, Crazy” — a bittersweet tale of a gay trucker finding love that finds emotional weight in its details ("’November Rain's’ on the radio / Tall tales we make up, our eyes on the road”). The rousing “Legends Never Die” has a memorable Shania Twain feature and explores new, poppier territory, with an upbeat twang that suits Peck’s penchant for campy glamour. But Show Pony’s purest theatricality comes from a haunting five and a half minute cover of “Fancy,” the controversial 1969 Bobbie Gentry hit that Reba McEntire repopularized in 1990. The original tells a bleak, but nonjudgmental, story of a teenage girl guided by her mother into sex work to escape poverty. Peck strips things down for an intense vocal performance and plays with the lyrics’ pronouns, turning the song into a piece of drag that casts its themes of fetishization, desperation, and hope into new light.
— Annie Lyons
New Age Norms 2 by Cold War Kids
Image Courtesy of CWKTWO Corp.
Indie rock band Cold War Kids released part two of their New Age Norms trilogy on Aug. 20, 2020, prophetically creating their own “new norms” which the trio was named after. The first part of the project was a funky pop-rock album interwoven with political messages that vocalist Nathan Willett delivered wholeheartedly. The enthusiastic narrative continues on their new release, this time with more introspection. There’s an internal monologue that can be heard on songs like “Catch Me Falling,” where Willett sings, “I just really wanna be / Someone you can look up to / Someone who inspires you.” While the first part of the trilogy focused on an external relationship with the world around them, love and relationships seem to be central themes featured on this album. Tracks like “Regret, Regret” and “Who’s Gonna Love Me Now” deliver poetic love letters to their listeners, with heavy bass and piano backing up the heavy-hitting lyrics. For such despairing lyrical content, however, the band is able to create tunes that are just as catchy as some of their earlier hits off of their debut Robbers & Cowards. The upbeat “Ceiling Fan” sounds almost like a modern-day rendition of a long lost Queen song, featuring instrumentation and falsetto notes akin to a Freddie Mercury creation, just before a funky breakdown puts you on your feet and gets you grooving. While this album may lack the grit and misanthropy of their earliest work, New Age Norms 2 is nonetheless a solid album that conveys how much the band has polished their sound in the 16 years that they’ve been creating music.
— Micaela Garza