We’re only in February and I already know this new album by Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory will be high on my 2025 year-end list. The album, the first of Van Etten’s to be credited as a full band effort, is bookended by two five minute-plus songs (“Live Forever” and “I Want You Here”) that build slow and finish big. In between are a set songs that draw influences as wide as the post punk of early New Order/Joy Division (“Somethin’ Ain’t Right), to the pulsing neo-rock-disco of Masseduction era St. Vincent (“I Can’t Imagine”). And they pull these influences together in a way that makes it their own. Even with 10.5 months to go this year, this will no doubt be a top album on my 2025 Spotify Wrapped!
There are so many talented bands in San Diego playing original music and Imagery Machine has been a favorite of mine for a long time now. While their lineup has changed since the first time I saw the band back at the Art on Adams Street Fair back in 2016 (only singer/songwriter/guitarist Jennie Shimkus and her husband, Tyler on drums, remain) they still play a captivating blend of indie rock combined with a host of other influences. They are now joined by Adam Schumann on lead guitar and Victoria Argimon on bass.
Here’s the track “Time Traveler” off of their excellent 2021 album, Reflections of Reality. This “indie-prog-rock” song starts softly and then builds gradually as new instruments and musical ideas are introduced. The song keeps evolving and growing in intensity until finally the guitars take over with big riffs supporting an electrifying, melodic guitar solo. The song then transitions back down into a dreamy haze until it eventually fades away.
Imagery Machine also released two singles in 2024, “My Energy” and “Zombies”. Give them a spin!
Birdy Bardot – The Casbah, San Diego – Feb. 24, 2016
I won’t pretend to know how all the members of local super-group, Birdy Bardot, are interrelated. It seems that every San Diego musician of note is in at least 3 bands and this group has collected many of them together. I do know that the creative duo in the group are Birdy Bardot, who also sings for the New Kinetics, and the indefatigable Al Howard, who must be in at least 27 bands including: The Heavy Guilt, Midnight Pine and Black Sands, and more…
I have wanted to catch Birdy Bardot ever since I read a great feature on them late last year in CityBeat magazine. It was only after reading that article that I went to my first New Kinetics shows and I was curious to know how the same singer would front both the frenetic garage rock of The New Kinetics and the retro/psychedelic influence promised in the CityBeat piece.
It turns out that Ms. Bardot handles both styles with ease and though there is not a lot of overlap in sound, she does seem to lose herself in the songs in both configurations. Where the New Kinetics are all about raw, relentless energy, Birdy Bardot is a much more restrained affair. Though the group does let go and rock out, like on the track “Hearts and Smoke”, it’s really just enough to provide a contrast to the soulful, torchy atmosphere created throughout the rest of the set.
The 7 pc band (which is a lot of players on a pretty small stage) creates a sound and mood on stage that mixes a lot of influences without ever camping out in any one style. There are touches of the blues, hazy psychedelia, retro-60′s pop and even some alt-country. Mixed together, Birdy Bardot – both the band and the singer – put on a fantastic show and will clearly be a mainstay of the resurgent San Diego music scene, and hopefully can find a way to break out and receive more national, and even international, attention.
English Teacher, a 4-piece indie rock band from Leeds, England, was one of my favorite discoveries of 2024. (more on them on my 2024 Top-20 page). I remember discovering this band quite by chance as I was going down yet another YouTube rabbit hole. I found myself watching a few bands on Later… with Jools Holland when this performance of English Teacher’s latest single, “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab”, started playing. That was it; that day’s search for new sounds was over as I had found what I didn’t even know I was looking for…
Of course when the video ended I clicked on another link for English Teacher and was taken to a live in the studio version of “Mastermind Specialism” off of the same album. While the first song was full of energy and momentum, this next number was much more of a slow burn that builds intensity as it goes along. Both songs are fantastic and display English Teacher’s musical agility and singer Lily Fontaine’s wide ranging vocals and clever, evocative lyrics.
I won’t recreate the entire 90 minute English Teacher binge I then went on but I will share this imaginative video created for “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab”
Here’s Ekko Astral, a punk/indie band from Washington DC that has a lot to say if you’re ready to listen. Also, they seriously rock the fuck out!
Here’s “baethoven” off their 2024 debut album, pink balloons…
This band goes well with Amyl and the Sniffers and Mannequin Pussy, though if they ever shared a bill I’m not sure the audience would survive, or at the least have any hearing left!
Here’s the same song played live in Austin for a Stereogum showcase event. This simultaneously snarling, defiant, noisy and incredibly catchy song becomes a different animal when played on stage.
This is part 2 in my new series titled “why do I look for new bands on the last day of the year after I’ve already finished my list”?! Behold, Personal Trainer….
So what do you do when you’ve spent a couple of weeks reviewing and listening to all the records you’ve heard during the year to come up with a nice list, and then you publish that list – basically putting the year to bed – and then on the last fucking day of the year you discover a band that would have easily been a contender for the list? Seriously, someone please send me an answer.
I just discovered this band, Porridge Radio, about two hours ago and I like everything about their sound, the lyrics and the intensity of their performances. I’m just going to count Porridge Radio’s latest, Clouds In the Sky Will Always Be There For Me, as the first record as 2025 (even though it was released in October of 2024). Here’s another song from my first favorite album of 2025 “Sick of the Blues”
MaxSoundsMusic 