The American Dollar are a post-rock duo from Queens in New York. I have no idea where I came across them but seeing as this album came out in the mid ‘00s, I’m guessing it was off The SIlent Ballet or After the Post Rock. They seem the most likely culprits.
The American Dollar play an electronic version of post rock, and a friend described them as Sigur Ros without the noisy bits. Which is pretty close to be honest.
This album is beautiful.
The delicate interplay between the keys and guitar carve a space to let you just relax into the music. It always sounds bright and warm and clear. It’s languid in the best way, like a lazy summer day, where the sun is going down and you’re exhausted yet happy and you feel that this is how life should be.
Wow, that got hyperbolic.
This isn’t gossamer ambient music though that description may lead you to think so. There are drums right up the mix, driving, almost break beats, pushing this along. The opening tracks, The Slow Wait pt1&2 pull you into this world slowly lulling you in with its gentle piano before those drums I was talking about come pulsing in. It takes my breath away every time.
Bump is a full on post rock masterpiece that just soars but not with the usual layers of distortion, TMD just have their mix so all the instruments just build on each other and it lets the music fly.
And that’s how this album works, gliding between the dazzling peaks and the chilled troughs, all while keeping me in my happy place.
And in a perfect segue, this brings me to the album highlight.
Anything you Synthesize was my go to song when I went traveling for 16 months a very long time ago. From chilling out in Vietnam, to climbing glaciers in New Zealand, to staring out a bus window in Columbia, it was a musical comforter that helped me deal with all the strangeness and loneliness that can come with long term travel. It still can act as a comfort blanket to this day, those opening piano notes still carry me away to beautiful places where I can feel the sun on my face and not have a care in the world.
Just listen to this.
Great times and a beautiful album remember them by.
I’m not sure if it was something about March, or the bands, or my own head place, but I’m fairly sure this is the nicest collection of music I’ve reviewed since I’ve started this blog. There were a few harsher albums in the short list to be reviewed but they dropped away as I started writing.
So please join me as I try not to overuse the word pretty.
One more thing. When I was doing my three year anniversary thank you speech, I forgot two very important people. First is my mate Ian, who gave me some very lovely feedback in the first year, when it felt that I was just posting this into the void. His kind works kept me going.
Most importantly though, is my wife Sarah, who without her encouragement, I would have quit this blog several times over. Thanks to both of you.
Now, the music. Let’s start with my album of the month.
Not Me But Us
Two
Two is without a doubt one of the prettiest albums I’ve heard in a very long time. Its chilled, blissed out vibe seem to be exactly what I needed as we slowly creep out of winter into these longer days.
The album starts slowly, No Words, the opener, is a slow drone that adds twinkling synths as the track builds but it’s not till the second track, Inner Space, that the album takes flight.
Inner Space is perfect clockwork song writing. All the component parts move clearly and precisely. The synth melody interlocks perfectly with the gentle percussion and it makes the song flow like a river that’s just sweeping you blissfully along. The violin (Or harmonium or synth, I can’t tell) that carries the main melody is just the icing on the cake.
Track three, Interlocking Mechanics, takes the same song construction and builds on it, still filled with twinkling synths but with louder percussion. It’s almost breathlessly pretty. Where as Buildings’ reminds me of The American Dollar with its chilled electronica meets post rock feel.
This album came out of nowhere. I know nothing about the artists but Two proves yet again what I love about writing this blog. There’s always someone waiting to surprise you, to completely knock your socks off. Not Me But Us have done just that and I am honestly amazed at how much this album has affected me.
I’ve noticed a few acts have started to post a statement of intent / vibe summation on their Bandcamp. Renewer have gone with “Spellbound lushness and beautiful heaviness”. Which may be a smidge pretentious, but it also pretty much nails their sound.
Mixing alt rock, with a dash of Slowcore and Shoegaze, Sunne really pushes a lot of my buttons. This music is like catnip to me.
The opener, July feels like a slowed down version of My Own Summer by Deftones, until the far more delicate verse starts, feeling more like a 90’s slowcore band than the opening sludge would have you expect. The falsetto harmonies were definitely a welcome surprise. When the heavy returns the song keeps its prettiness and that’s a line the band carefully walks across the entire album.
It feels like there’s a little Holy Fawn influence going on here, although Renewer are far more alt rock than post rock. Track two, Going Gone is a gentle indie song with some louder flourishes but it’s the keyboards and strings that come in at the songs end section that really make it shine.
Even with its louder sections the album can feel very restrained, so I absolutely love that Crossing the Void switches to bellowed vocals for its last few seconds, instantly switching the song to metal and really gives a real jolt to proceedings before the album winds down to a close.
If you are a fan of 90’s alt rock this is really an album that you will find yourself spending a lot of time with, just remember to play it loudly, cause that’s when it shines.
There should be a genre created called Lynchcore, maybe Colegaze? I don’t know, but it’s music created to soundtrack Twin Peaks. There’s a lot of people out there making music that sounds like it should be performed on stage at the Roadhouse, and it would be a handy shortcut.
As you might guess from that preamble, Pink Milk are one of these Peaks loving bands and Night on Earth makes its intentions very clear from the start. The album opens with bone dry drum machines, cavernous reverb and breathy female vocals, instantly setting the mood for the album. This is music to listen to in a room full of dry ice and slow strobe lights.
Sitting somewhere musically between Chromatics and Goth tinged shoegaze, Pink Milk are every bit as dramatic as that description sounds. Their cover of The End of the World is somehow even more fragile than the original, while Everything Reminds Me of You feels like being slowly pulled down in a whirlpool of 80’s guitar. Luckily, it’s not all ethereal songs though, the enveloping shoegaze of Andromeda and its insistent drum machine picks up the pace, saving the album from drifting away under its own weightlessness.
Night on Earth is a fragile collection of heartbreak that sometimes feels like its own ennui may overpower it, but snuggle into the empty space and the darkness and you’ll find a lot to love in here.
I’ve been in denial about post rock for a few years now. It felt that it all sounded the same so I tried to put some distance between me and the genre. Well, thanks to Goodbye Meteor, I’ve given up and will just be embracing post rock again.
We Could Have Been Radiant is very pretty post rock. The opening track, This is Not Here, practically glitters, with its slow build perfectly introducing what the band are setting up for the rest of the album.
I wasn’t expecting the vocals on No Signal, but they help add an extra dimension to the song as it slowly unfurls into something that can easily stand up against the best acts that post rock has to offer. But it’s not all about the pretty, the surprise lurch from pretty to heavy in Destructuration is world class and I’m always delighted to hear a song that is bass led.
This is one of the best traditional post rock albums that I’ve heard in a very long time and a perfect example that there’s a lot of life left in the genre. Thanks, GM, this is a welcome reminder that I still have a lot of love for this music.
To finish up the month, we may as well call this the Petite Victory Collective corner, as we have 3 releases from the label this month. Let’s start off with an old favourite.
Rupture//Rapture
Realms
Another R//R ep and yet another glowing review from me. Please save your shocked faces, this just seems to be something that just happens at this point.
Saying that, R//R has changed up his signature melodic techno style and pivoted to a slow, much more chilled out mood. However, even though the bpm has dropped but the production standard hasn’t, the bass is still as warm as ever, with the percussion remains clear and crisp.
We do seem to have gone back in time a bit though, as this ep reminds me of the post dubstep era. Burial style, cut up, pitched up vocal flourishes abound, which add a lovely extra layer that helps this ep avoid the one dimensionality that can plague some chill out music.
The direction of this ep may be a bit of a surprise, but it’s a welcome one. It’s always good to see a producer stretch their wings and get out of their comfort zone a bit.
Rebound is the kind of scuzzy dance music I love, with slightly claustrophobic synths and great fuzzy filter work. The title track is the best dance banger I’ve heard this year and I would absolutely lose it on the dancefloor if it was played anywhere near me. I know that’s big talk but there is just something about it that just hits the spot for me.
Soul Mirror is slower paced. Power of the Mind is a warm headnodder of a song, while the title track has a great slow breakdown and deep bass synths.
The closer, Darkball has a great bass heavy swagger to it, although I advise caution when listening to it while walking around town, it’s very easy to start to strut while it’s playing.
Welcome to the third birthday of The Ways of Exile!
This blog was never intended to be a long term thing. To be honest I never had any plans for it, TWoE was always just to give me something to do in lockdown to keep myself sane and to wave my hands around and bang on about the music I love in a different way.
I’m pretty sure that without the Drowned in Sound forum I wouldn’t have lasted more than a few months, at thanks to everyone on there who look in every month and show interest.
I’m also delighted over the years just how many acts have read the blog as well. I’ve never been the kind of person who hangs around at gigs and talks to the bands so it’s nice to be able to tell people that their music is having an impact on me and that I think their work is great.
It always reads a bit hollow when someone says thanks for reading but I really mean it. The numbers for my end of year write up were more than double my normal readership and I’m still a little in shock about it.
But thank you, I really love getting feedback people’s feedback and obviously I enjoy trying to signal boost the music I love further out into the world.
Anyway, let’s talk about 2024. And a few albums I missed from 2023.
The Songwhip links will bring you to a page with a link for the song featured on all the streaming platforms.
Guhts
Regeneration
Opening your debut album with an eight minute epic called White Noise is a hell of a statement for a band to make. The fact that the song is sludgy, uncompromising and a little disorientating makes it an even bigger ask of the listener, but you know what? That’s fine. Consider it a litmus test. If you’re in on this, then Regeneration is an album you’re going to love.
Guhts (Guts) aren’t really in the game to pander to the listener. Amber Gardner’s vocal style is very unusual and the way it writhes and contorts along to the music rather than sticking to the song’s melody is almost unique. I think Julie Christmas is the only person who would be anything similar.
However, she does dial the strangeness back when needed. During Til’ Death, the riffs drop out and she almost coos “Dance with me”. It’s alluring but also feels like something very bad is going to happen, as the band’s slow dissonant vibe isn’t what most would consider come hither music.
Regeneration should be more a challenge to listen to than it actually is. This is a great heavy album and interesting take on post metal, with its use of electronics for texture helping it stand out from the crowd. Gardner’s vocals are going to be marmite for people but hopefully people are up for something a bit unusual these days.
Sometimes I find it very difficult to write about electronica. There’s a few touchstones like genre and acts the artist in question sounds like, but that’s leaving me very little to go on here. What I can tell you is that this is a lush album of slow, warm techno. At 35 minutes seems very short for a dance album but not a second is wasted, Resound gets in and gets out leaving you wanting more.
I may not have a lot that’s in depth to say, but this album has been helping me through winter. Its warm club vibes keeping the cold out and reminding me of brighter days to come.
It feels that in the last few years, a lot of bands have been hiding behind the Post Punk label while being obviously influenced by the classic Goth bands. However, Cold in Berlin have always been refreshingly up front about being Goth as fuck and this ep isn’t any different.
The Body is the Wound is their first release since 2019 and the band come storming out the gate with Dream One. It kicks this ep off with a deliciously heavy, doomy goth headbanger and the mix of stabbing synth lines and Maya’s soaring vocal provide more drama and atmosphere than I’ve heard in a long time.
The rest of the ep lives up to the promise of the opener, the moody plaintive cries of Spotlight, the filthy low end of When Did You See Her Last and the vocal pyrotechnics of Found Out make this a very welcome return for the band.
I was a big fan of Volkor X’s album, The Loop. It’s an epic story of an exploratory space mission that mixes narration with music and feels like a cross between an audiobook and soundtrack. Unfortunately, there are only so many times you’re going to go back and listen to the same story, and while I enjoyed the album, it was always going to have a limited shelf life.
With the release of the instrumental version of The Loop, the album has none of these drawbacks. While most of the dialogue tracks were quite short, songs like Float really come into their own as an instrumental track, all the warmth and wonder comes through without someone speaking over it.
Previously, the long run time was a bit of a effort, now the album flies by, starry eyed and full of synths. Volkor X’s mix of post rock and the wide eyed electronica of the early M83 albums lands perfectly here, allowing you to feel the wonder of the soundtrack they’ve made.
I do think it’s funny that without the narration, you would never realise that The Loop is a horror story. For a self styled intergalactic despot, Volkor X makes some very pretty music.
Post metal is one of those genres that people just can’t help but cross pollinate with other sounds and Bipolar Architecture have thrown Slow Death, and Blackened Prog into the mix. Metaphysicize is the unholy result and is a must for fans of slow and heavy music.
The title track starts with some moody post metal driven by the bass and drums, almost reminiscent of Tool, before the kick drums rush in and give us our first taste of the death metal that lurks around this album.
The third track, Death of the Architect is the album highlight for me and again it’s all about the drums. Huge sounding toms slowly batter into the song before the double kicks assault your ears. It’s a heaviness that kind of reminds me of Bolt Thrower, but more in spirit than sound.
As I always say on this blog, it takes a lot to stand out in these oversaturated genres. It’s very easy to sound like just another copy, but Bipolar Architecture do more than enough to stand out from the crowd with this entertaining and really satisfying slice of heavy music.
The Fauns have been on hiatus for a long time now, their last album was released in 2013. And while the world may have moved on a lot musically, shoegaze has never been as popular as it is today. So this is obviously the best time for a shoegaze band to start up again.
However, The Fawns have moved on as well. Instead of jumping onto the current wave guitar fuzz that’s out there, How Lost embraces dance music to wonderful effect.
The opener, Mixtape Days combines chiming guitars, dance beats and breathy vocals to create a sound far more like the lush synths of Ladytron than any shoegaze band. The second track, Shake Your Hair somehow manages to up the bliss levels from the opener and will be a showstopper live.
It took me a while to realise that Doot Doot is a Freur cover, which to be fair, is pretty obscure track selection for anyone. Freur were the band that went on to become Underworld so The Fauns have obviously been digging into the roots of dance music. Thankfully, they manage to improve on the admittedly dodgy original.
Now, all this talk of dance music doesn’t mean that the band have put their guitars away, there’s a few songs here that remind me of Curve and the closer, Spacewreck is a beautiful, languid slice of blissful shoegaze.
As comebacks go, How Lost is an incredible reintroduction to a band who will hopefully make a much bigger name for themselves on their second go round.
The first I heard of Shipwreck Karpathos was a review that said that the album sounded like Midwestern Emo mixed with post rock. Now, I had no idea what the hell that would sound like so checked it out and, well, here we are.
The album starts with an energetic bang as Don’t Panic comes crashing out with some high speed, riffy indie rock, but it quickly slows down and takes on a more thoughtful pace. What I wasn’t expecting was the trumpet to kick in, and there’s very little I like more in my guitar music that a trumpet.
So, what you get on Being Human is some very pretty thoughtful, instrumental indie, interspersed with some breakneck, heavy riffing. And sometimes it’s adorned with strings and brass. It really doesn’t sound quite like anything else I listen to, but it does sound amazing.
The title track reminds me a bit of Broken Social Scene at their most joyful, jamming with And So I Watch You From Afar, while the trumpeter really brings the song to life.
This is an incredibly uplifting album and there’s just something about the arrangements that puts a huge smile on my face. Don’t sleep on this record and let it bring some sun into your life.
If I’d managed to see Heathyliving live a few weeks before I started to write up my albums of the year, Songs of Abundance would have easily made its way into the top 10. Over the last two months I’ve fallen head over heels for this album, so I’m going to add this review here.
The band cover a lot of ground on this album, from racing alt rock to post metal riffs, to the more atmospheric passages, but manage to assemble it in a way that sounds unique.
While the songs are great, the band’s not so secret weapon is Amaya López-Carromero. Whereas a lot of female singers in metal use an operatic style, the way Amaya hits the high notes feels far closer to a soul singer.
As amazing as this album is, Healthyliving are somehow even better live. This is a band that could be huge if the music god’s smile on them. With bands like Sleep Token proving there is an appetite for melodic mixed with the Heavy, hopefully Healthyliving can catch this rising tide because god knows the world needs more bands like this to break out.
I’d like to apologise to Final Coil, who’s album The World We Inherited is a fantastic post prog metal album. It’s really interesting, has rich electronic textures, great riffs and, for some reason, I’ve been completely unable to put together a coherent thought to explain why you should check them out.
Seriously, The World We Inherited is the first album on my best of the year list and I still can’t explain why.
As a reviewer this is more than a little embarrassing. Normally when this happens I just sack off the review and pretend it never happened, but I like this album too much not to recommend it. Sorry Lads.
But! If any of this sounds like your thing, run for this album.
The ways of exile 