Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin
Read this month’s album reviews here and here.
Fontaines D.C.
Dopamine Chamber
XL
After exhaustively touring the last Fontaines D.C. record, frontman Grian Chatten spent the springtime Europemaxxing. For most of us, this means you wake up without an alarm; meet friends for coffee; have lunch with the same friends; start day drinking; and do nothing else. Yet in his case, these travels on the continent resulted in lyrics for Dopamine Chamber, one of the most evocative, astute records of our new present. I mean, honestly, please take a break, mate—you’re making the rest of us look lazy and ignorant.
Across 11 tracks, we’re treated to a selection of audio selfies from his trip through the “world of old European beauty and terrible opulence”: a Viennese homage to Eyes Wide Shut—the paintings of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Story, Freud’s old home, and its prophetic vision of the perverted elite (now, don’t mind me, but I’ve deleted this next joke because I don’t want to be found dead in mysterious circumstances); Venice: transient, commodified, sinking—the only way to better reflect the city than through this album would be to place a naked woman in a glass tank filled with tourists’ urine; and Palermo, which I have absolutely nothing to say about, funny or otherwise, as, uncoincidentally, it’s the one destination which, to Grian, “felt like a place where people actually lived.” One can only imagine what that would be like.
Jaded, hungover, and—ironically—in dire need of a holiday (I know the feeling), this is the morning after 2024’s Romance, which captured these hungry, cultured young men as they left behind their home city of Dublin in pursuit of, err, romance. Fontaines D.C. are looking for an escape which might not even exist, but must be chased nonetheless, because what else is there? This will be in my headphones throughout the fall as I sit out on the café terrace with a black coffee, a ham baguette, and a pack of Marlboro Reds, waiting for the riot to begin.
10/10
ANTHONY BOREDAGAIN
The Avalanches
No Bad Memories
Modular
This is tech people’s gospel music, and The Avalanches are the high priests of sampling. When I caught them live, there was a beardy guy in the front row (who looked like he definitely prayed in C++) doing the “we’re not worthy” gesture from Wayne’s World throughout the whole show. There’s a disposable euphoria to this new 31-track record, with nostalgia revealed as a religious experience, the humble floppy disk transformed into a kind of eternal reliquary. “Party on,” I whisper to myself as I enter the confession booth to confess all the ways I’ve sinned on this miracle device without ever leaving the comfort of my own home. “Excellent.”
9/10
STEVE JOBSEEKER
@
Autosmile
4AD
In the age of search engine optimization, there is undoubtedly nothing cooler than an indecipherable band name. This Philadelphia duo, who are impossible to find on Google, make cryptic folk music that’s too poignant for you, a foolish appreciator of letters and words, to actually listen to. If you’re brave enough to try to hear these pristine songs, you’ll have to hunt for a series of mysterious symbols scribbled in water-damaged notebooks hidden in abandoned suburban basements (or, you know, just go straight to Spotify instead). This one is perfect for fans of hieroglyphics, Unicode character sets, and penis-shaped ASCII art.
7/10
(.)(.)
World Peace DMT
Stick Around for Tea
WPDMT
There’s no amount of drugs in the world that can make me understand how the “South London Music Scene” has become a global brand. It would be the perfect cosmic joke if Worldpeace DMT ended up as Brixton’s own version of The Beatles. And listening to this skewed London duo’s spirited pop is like being sucked into a timeless realm, where you can imagine tourists visiting the Windmill as if it were Abbey Road or the Cavern Club, throwing tennis balls for an animatronic Roof Dog and searching the floor for fossilized mystery pills lost at the height of the roaring 2020s. So if any tech billionaire psychedelic enthusiasts are reading this, I’ve got a great business idea.
8/10
PAUL MCCARTNEY’S BIRTH TRAUMA
The Afters
New Day New Life
Fair Trade Services
My mate told everyone I was “sound,” so I turned up to The Afters, which unexpectedly turned out to be a Christian rock band, and they really weren’t feeling it when I started racking up lines on their copy of the Bible, but then they started chatting about how “God Is with Us”—which I really felt in that moment, at least after a couple of bags. These guys might think that Jesus coming back from the dead after three days was impressive, well, just wait until you see me show up for work on Monday after this 72-hour session.
1/10
JUDAS ISCHEMIA
Two Shell
Infinite Now
Young
Do you even know what music is if you didn’t grow up with the Now compilations? Either you jolted your parents out of their boomer complacency by administering a dose of 90s chart-hit shock therapy, or you have no aesthetic sensibility whatsoever. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules; I leave that to Two Shell, who have just released their own rogue Now That’s What I Call… compilation. I locked my parents in a Zafira people carrier and kicked their chairs nonstop while blasting this lurid and delinquent record, for old time’s sake. By the time it was finished, they were begging me for the sweet relief of “Tequila” by Terrorvision.
7/10
GERI HALITOSIS
They Are Gutting a Body of Water
KOOL FAITH / LOOSIES II
ATO Records and Julia’s War
If you’re between 20 and 30 and your main circle doesn’t include RKX Nephew, Hotline TNT, feeble little horse, Tony Bontana, Cooper B Handy, and DJ Manny, then what’s your excuse? It can’t be that you’ve spent all your time in your bedroom listening to shoegaze, weeping over the transcendent sadness of tape delay. As even with bleeding ears and a face full of tears, Douglas Dulgarian and his band have managed to put together a mixtape filled with their many, many talented friends. I don’t care how many homemade guitar pedals you have, at the end of the day, your network really is your net worth.
7/10
MARY BLOCKCHAIN
Max Richter
While the Flood Rages
Decca Records
When it comes to video montages documenting our seemingly unfathomable inhumanity toward one another, there is now, thankfully, an official ban on the use of “This Bitter Earth / On the Nature of Daylight”. Enough is enough; we may never run out of enthusiasm for killing and torturing, but we’re tired of this song. Have no fear though, as Max Richter is back with fresh stock music for scoring the crimes of the future. If you’re not already feeling maudlin enough about the future of our species, maybe we should fire up AI Dinah Washington to lay down some fresh vocal takes?
6/10
RICHTER SCALE MIDNESS
Djrum
DJ-Kicks: Djrum
!K7 Records
This pleasingly ballsy new addition to the long-running mix series, which finds the intense British electronic artist making good on his threat to keep things a “bit bumpy,” performing one of his famously unpredictable all-vinyl sets, and throwing in plenty of “ups and downs,” while using three decks, which is really one more than you actually need, as, like most of us, he only has two hands, that is unless, of course, you’re going to really “fuck with expectations” and pull out your… Oh God, no Djrum, not like that, please put it away, this is a family-friendly nightclub.
8/10
INSPECTAH DICK
Rick Wakeman and The English Rock Ensemble
Return to the Red Planet
Madfish Music
If you look at photographs captured by NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter in 1976, you can clearly see the face of one of our gigantic humanoid ancestors who once inhabited Mars and the thing that’s immediately apparent is that he’s screaming in eternal agony, presumably because he’s having to endure the vast emptiness of prog titan Rick Wakeman’s sci-fi record inspired by the discoveries on the Red Planet. I never thought I’d say this, but Elon Musk really needs to hurry up and get out into deep space as soon as possible to put a stop to this sort of thing.
2/10
INTERSTELLA ARTOIS
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The post VICE Album Reviews, October 16: Fontaines D.C., The Avalanches, World Peace DMT, and More appeared first on VICE.
