Brooklyn post-punk/goth band pay tribute to SF authors Le Guin, Clark, Butler and others on their brilliant second album.
Through my summer reading binge, I cracked open short story collections by Philip K. Dick, Ted Chiang, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in between novels, and thought about how more post-punk bands should take inspirations from speculative fiction (SF). It’s as if my subconscious manifested this album by Lathe of Heaven, named after Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 novel where dreams affect reality. On their second album, this Brooklyn post-punk band went all in with conceptualizing Aurora as one of those timeless SF short story anthologies, complete with references to Arthur C. Clark’s 1951 short story “If I Forget Thee, O Earth,” Octavia Butler’s anti-colonialism themes, Peter Watts (final track “Rorsachach” is named after the ship in 2006’s Blindsight) and Greg Egan, inspiring the hard sci fi ideas in “Infinity’s Kiss” (1992’s Permutation City is on my TBR list).
Filmmaker Devan Davies sticks with the theme on his video for the title track, which invokes Blade Runner, THX-1138, Chris Marker’s La Jetée and Tarkovsky’s visual space poetry in which singer Gage Allison experiences visions mixing memories and technological fabrication under surveillance from the rest of the band.
Songs like the title track and “Kaleidoscope” feature strong vocal melodies that like Chicago’s Brigitte Calls Me Baby, inhabit that blink-and-you-miss-it moment in 1986 where there was a juxtaposition of dark, gothy post-punk with chart pop, at least in the UK. “Portrait of a Scorched Earth” shares the breathless propulsion of prime Chameleons, while the thundering “Matrix of Control” and “Catatonia” harness the apocalytpic power and beauty of mid-80s Killing Joke.
Of course the band clearly didn’t set out to sound like a time capsule, and they most certainly include elements from the 90s and beyond like dream pop and jangle pop as well as more obscure Finnish bands like Musta Paraati. They’ve expanded the start deathrock/coldwave palate of their first album Bound by Naked Skies (2023) into something more multifaceted and alluring.
Other late summer highlights:
Bask – The Turning (Season of Mist) | Aug 22
Bask’s third album III (2019) perked my ears with their potent mix of prog metal, heavy psych and Americana. I circled back to their first two albums and was so impressed by their progression, I was expecting them to keep the momentum up and do great things. Then six years of silence followed. So it goes. Not quite a leap forward, their fourth reprises the band’s strengths, the Western psych flavored lonesome wail vocal melodies bringing to mind Isaiah Mitchell’s short-lived project Golden Void. With only just a tiny taste of Appalacian folk, as well as contemporaries All Them Witches, My Morning Jacket and King Buffalo, the Asheville band’s influences stray out west, and they strike gold with the highlight “Dig My Heels,” driven by melodic guitar hook and potent vocals that could just break the band’s popularity through to a new level.
Phantom Spell – Heather & Hearth (Wizard Tower) | Jul 18
This Spanish band’s second album fulfilled the potential hinted at their mix of prog and heavy metal on Immortal’s Requiem (2022), surpassed it and then some. Consider contemporaries Wytch Hazel were they to dig deeper than the Thin Lizzy/Ashbury guitar influences into Wishbone Ash, and even the early prog-era Styx, keyboards and all. One would think that would smell moldy, but in Phantom Spell’s bony hands it’s fresh as a daisy.
The New Eves – The New Eve is Rising (Transgressive) | Aug 1
This new band from East Sussex draws from sources comfortably familiar to me, but are far from fashionable, which is always a plus. Post-punk and avant-folk infused with slightly amateurish, atonal violins bring to mind The Raincoats, The Ex and Dog Faced Hermans. The songs constantly threaten to veer off the rails, but totter back on track to keep this delightful album thoroughly engaging.
Wucan – Axioms (Long Branch) | Aug 29
Fourth album from German hard rock/psych proggers can’t outdo their stellar first three albums (last one was 2022’s Heretic Tongues) but a welcome return nevertheless.
