THE RECORD EXCHANGE REVIEW: JADE ON LAMBRINI GIRLS’ ‘WHO LET THE DOGS OUT’

Artist: Lambrini Girls
Album: Who Let the Dogs Out
Reviewer: Jade Forrest

For the last few months, I have been noticing a big decline in motivation to do anything outside of doomscrolling on social media. Nothing new from what most people my age do, and it doesn’t help being met with waves upon waves of constant bad news and freezing in fear with every passing day – like watching car accidents, unable to look away. Kinda feels like I’m not alone in this, as car-crash compilation videos get a quarter-million views in two months of posting. Easing myself away from Meta-owned/tampered-with apps, I have started to spend more time searching keywords on Spotify and looking at all the user-made playlists with a particular word in the title: playlists with 125k saves, some with 35, all made with love and time from 1 of 675 million people. Like a window into someone else’s life, and a chance to connect through the love of music.

Through the power of the interwebs, I ended up finding this album after listening to three hours of Spotify radio/recommendations. Found amongst playlists filled with pop-punk revelations and political sentiments lies this little gem, Lambrini Girls’ debut album. Keeping in line with its genre, this fork-found-in-the-kitchen project plays into the tried-and-true method of fun, energetic punk and aces it to a tee.

The title of the album, Who Let the Dogs Out, made me assume that this was going to be a cheesy dance-pop album in honor of the great Baha Men. But it actually ended up swinging for the high-rise of Riot Grrrl anthems, with discussions of gender and class inequality, the rise of militarization in the police force and the dream of self-expression. With a mixture of fun instrumental breakdowns and tongue-in-cheek lyrics, Lambrini Girls blend in with artists like Be Your Own Pet or Snooper while still keeping things fresh – though Snooper, Amyl and the Sniffers and Be Your Own Pet have been around for several years before this, so it kinda feels a bit late to the party. However, the album still deserves its flowers as being some of the earliest projects from the group, as a sign of the bright future that Lambrini Girls have ahead of them.

Being met with constant existential dread for the future has made it a bit hard to be excited about anything, but I am thankful to have a light at the end of the tunnel. This album is that: a feeling that if things won’t get better, I can channel my anger into art and protests. I can just keep saying to myself, “People ain’t shit, I’m a bad bitch and I can make things better for me and everyone around me,” or at least in the words from Who Let the Dogs Out‘s final song, “Putting yourself first is cunty, respecting others is cunty, too.”

What’s a review without some recommendations?

If you like Lambrini Girls’ Who Let the Dogs Out, you would also like:

Midoriあらためまして、はじめまして、ミドリです (Once again, nice to meet you, I’m Midori)
Rico Nasty Las Ruinas (or Lethal, which comes out in May)
The GitsFrenching the Bully

Also, if you are going to Treefort Music Fest, add these to your itinerary and do some pre-concert homework:

Amyl and the SniffersCartoon Darkness
The Linda LindasNo Obligation
Be Your Own PetMommy
Dummy Free Energy

THE RECORD EXCHANGE REVIEW: THOMAS ON SQUID’S ‘COWARDS’

Artist: Squid
Album: Cowards
Reviewer: Thomas Metzger

Squid’s music always seems to have a sense of unease, and I think that is one of their strong suits. And can you blame them? In the state of the world today, it’s no surprise that the music coming out of them is so carefully considered. On their newest album Cowards, they pull from real life feelings of anxiety and uncertainty about where our world is headed. A comparison can certainly be made to Radiohead, a band that Squid have cited as “one of the best to ever do it,” according to an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. Their new album definitely has moments akin to that of Hail to the Thief or In Rainbows, yet has a more modern feel and timeliness to it, lyrically as well as sonically.

Opener “Crispy Skin” is a tight krautrock drumbeat packed with angular and scratchy math-rock guitar sounds, combined with tinkling synth textures and driving bass lines. The rare drummer/singer Ollie Judge sings about an alternate world of normalized cannibalism, and whether one can resist to participate in a society of evil assimilated within itself. The texture within these tracks also emits a feeling of anxiety: dense, every part thoughtfully considered and well-fit that it’s easy to miss on the surface. Hints of jagged guitar throughout the album give a sort of twitchy feeling, like you feel like you’re being followed. The track “Blood on the Boulders” slowly builds from the quiet into a full-on freakout. Layered vocal lines and guitar parts toward the end of the track give it a heady, dizzying feel until it quickly cuts back to the quiet and unease, sucking you of your air supply in an instant.

“Building 650” sings about being an outsider in an unknown space, undercut by eerie dual-guitar lines and brass horns.“ The character Frank is an evil guy that the protagonist can’t seem to part ways with. “Cro-Magnon Man” has an underlying anger and tenseness to it, like one wrong move and you will awaken the beast within. The title is in reference to the first early humans to settle in Europe after the Ice Age and the idea of the caves they lived in. Bassist Laurie Nankivell says, “Caves are always referred to and explored by psychologists as being representative of our mind, what we repress and what we can’t deal with.”

“Fieldworks I” and “Fieldworks II” are almost a refreshing breath of air in the middle of the bleak reality that Squid have created on this album. A light harpsichord line repeats throughout as Judge sings about being free from “twisted bones.” Once Part II kicks in, we get a taste of somewhat tribal percussion before Judge’s gentle voice serenades over a beautiful guitar melody.

The later half of the album I would describe as more dramatic than the first. “Cowards” starts off with a mesmerizing collage of airy synth tones and brass horn, very Animal Collective-esque. Once the rest of the band kicks in, the scene shifts from what feels like an open field of fresh air, to all of a sudden a sort of slow-motion-style movie death, as the group introduces a light yet dramatic touch of brass horns and strings; very beautiful, and I feel it is the climax of the album. It makes sense reading that this was the first song they wrote for this album, as not only is it the title track, but I feel like the track that best represents the album.

“Showtime!” wakes us back up from the dramatic end to the title track. Jagged slap-back guitar grooves over a hypnotic drum groove, as the band slowly crescendos to an electronic middle section, as the synth arpeggio slowly ramps up in speed, guitar patterns circling around a “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”-style drum pattern, until we eventually reach the last track “Well Met (Fingers Through the Fence).” If “Cowards” and “Showtime!” were the dramatic peaks of the album, “Well Met” is the closing act, painting an auditory collage over rattling percussion and slinky vocal melodies, almost sung with a childlike whimsy, featuring additional female vocalists. They sing about the mundane repeating cycle of housing and urban development, longing for the “grass between their toes.” It is a satisfying ending to the dramatic montage of sound that Squid delivers on this album.

Overall, Cowards paints a bleak picture of a future where morality is questioned, and we become overwhelmed to the point of hopelessness. I’m not sure if you can call Squid one of the more underrated post-punk bands out right now, but they have certainly become one of my favorites with each passing release. Through their dramatic instrumentation and lyricism, each album seems to expand further into a feeling of general restlessness and suspense, unsure of where society is headed, and Cowards seems to be a well-crafted next chapter in the story.

Favorite tracks: “Crispy Skin,” “Building 650,” “Cro-Magnon Man,” “Cowards”
RIYL: Krautrock, Radiohead, angular guitars, math rock

THE RECORD EXCHANGE REVIEW: NICK ON INHALER’S ‘OPEN WIDE’

Artist: Inhaler
Album: Open Wide
Reviewer: Nick Whitley

Inhaler’s newest album Open Wide is an earnest exploration of love, loss and looking back at your life as if to ask, “How did I get here?”

First coming onto the scene in the mid 2010s, Inhaler’s first few releases seem to be weighed down with a sort of nervous apprehension, as though they themselves are unsure about what it is they are trying to say with their music. While trying to shake the legacy of frontman Elijah Hewson’s father Bono, the band simultaneously attempt to carve their own name into the annals of pop rock however they can.

The sweet and polished vocals of Hewson guide you from bright introductions (“Eddie in the Darkness”) to glam-rock-infused gospel choirs (“Your House”) to punchy pop-rock angst (“X-Ray”). You can almost find yourself getting lost in the world that’s crafted within each word. If every song is a story, even the silence between each verse seems to hold a thousand things left unsaid.

Even as a fan of Inhaler’s early work, I can admit that at times it can feel a little unpolished and overambitious. Yet, slowly but surely through each release, the band seems to shed some of that nervous weight they have been carrying on their shoulders. With their signature guitar anthems sounding smoother, and their writing coming into its own, it feels like now with Open Wide the band are finally where they ought to be: confident and strong, with a finely honed sense of identity.

With this evolution of the band in mind, I want to say how in many ways this album seems to be haunted by its past. With lyrics consistently drawing back to childhood and vocals that seem almost yearning for something simpler, it almost begs the question: What does it mean to grow and change? It’s often painful and messy and embarrassing, especially from a perspective where your past is readily available to the masses, warts and all.

Yet it pushes through. It utilizes that feeling and engulfs the record in a warm haze of synth and fond nostalgia. Maybe in a few years this album will be in itself a messier version of what was to come – a well-intentioned blip on their discography –yet it seems comfortable with that, at peace with the knowledge that this is who they are. Songs like “Still Young” and “Little Things” seem to consolidate this idea, with lyrics that ask for little but reassurance, and patience as they come into their own.

At face value, Open Wide is another pop-rock installment from Inhaler’s growing discography. With songs about broken hearts and long nights, hazy guitars and the faintest hints of an Irish accent poking through carefully clear vocals. But at its core, it marks the start of a new beginning for the band: a final look back at their past, before marching into what lies ahead.

Favorite songs: “Eddie in the Darkness,” “Your House,” “X-Ray”

THE RECORD EXCHANGE REVIEW: CHAD ON THE MURDER CAPITAL’S ‘BLINDNESS’

Artist: The Murder Capital
Album: Blindness
Reviewer: Chad Dryden

On The Murder Capital’s 2023 breakthrough Gigi’s Recovery, the Irish quartet came on like The Strokes if Julian and Co. weren’t C+ language arts students who spent less time with their noses in books than they did Bolivian marching powder. Gigi’s is the sort of cerebral, substance-over-style post-punk record that resonates with me here as an aging human in a full-tilt midlife crisis, and I willingly put myself in the hands of quarter-lifers wrestling with their own existential quandaries to show me the way through the bog. Cue Gigi’s Recovery’s “Return My Head” and “I had to realign to begin to survive.” I know that feeling well.

Gigi’s Recovery is richly layered, dense and nuanced like blood-red wine, yet wholly approachable and palatable – the beat of the human-vampire heart of darkness with rare glimpses of light, something not always found within the self-flagellating murk of a post-punk record. Which explains why it reached a wider audience than the band’s previous album, 2019’s When I Have Fears, a solid (and critically acclaimed) debut that for all its high marks too often recalled contemporaries like Idles and too heavily relied on genre tropes past and present.

Gigi’s announced a young group coming into it own with a seismic leap not unlike that seen between Pablo Honey and The Bends: an enthralling modern guitar-rock band forging a singular identity, exuding ambition minus the opportunism, all the while making it all sound effortless – which spiritually if not sonically, to continue the through line, recalls Radiohead on approach to the new millennium.

As artistically and commercially successful as Gigi’s Recovery was, Blindness bursts out of the gate announcing a band eschewing victory laps and formulas. Awash in distortion and aggression, “Moonshot” makes Gigi Recovery’s somber opening track “Existence” sound like a lullaby by comparison. Much like Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground and pre-Kid A Radiohead employed electric guitars to artfully (and noisily) convey the emotional dissonance of the human experience, the dynamics on Blindness, in contrast to Gigi’s Recovery, rely less on lush undertones and airy sublimity and more on piercing squalls and feedback swirls.

Vocally, singer James McGovern splits the difference between his bark-and-bite attack on When I Have Fears and his gloomy lounge crooning on Gigi’s Recovery, often rasping his way through lyrics that suggest his attempts to see the world through rose-colored glasses were quickly shattered by the disillusions of that very same world. On “The Fall,” perhaps the song of the album – the CliffsNotes version of The Murder Capital’s intent here – McGovern hoarsely intones “the fall is coming” over and over again. It could be a personal omen or, early on here in a strange and disturbing 2025, a widescreen one for us all to heed.

THE RECORD EXCHANGE REVIEW: REM ON SWEET TRIP’S ‘VELOCITY: DESIGN: COMFORT’

Artist: Sweet Trip
Album: Velocity: Design: Comfort
Reviewer: Rem Jensen

Somewhere between the buttery sweet noise-pop ballads of Swirlies and the dense, digital abstractions of Autechre lay “Velocity: Design: Comfort.” the sophomore effort from San Fran cyber-slacker pop duo Sweet Trip. Unbridled by an expectation of predictability, the group found a sound that few have truly blissed out in such originality; an act like Seefeel – and their record Quique from 1993 – were functionally the touchstone group that veered in the direction of such a combination, until the late-90s where acts like Scala and Polykroma began to take note of the concoction of techno and shoegaze, only to meander a bit more into ambient territory rather than take it full hooky pop.

In 2003, however, VDC threw this concept of dipping their toes out the window and into an intimate and frenetic wastebasket that seeped from atop the architectural limits of variegated dumpsters; or rather, they embraced such priorly disparallel genres and fused said blend together in a harmonious conjoined-twin potion of illustrious fuzz and meltingly plotted glitch.

The juxtaposition of the first two tracks, “Tekka” and “Dsco,” jump immediately into this hodgepodge of styles, if not separate from each other here at the start of the record: the former track barraging the listener with splayed out breakbeaty sparkling mishmashes that bring to mind predecessors of this IDM shrapnel sound, like some of the more energetic tracks from Mouse on Mars, or a vision from Jega’s Geometry, which predates VDC by just three years; the latter song snapping us back from chaos and steeping us sugarly into a bath of pert, floaty, catchy-chockful jams, not without that disco (ergo the name of the track) hi-hat backbeat driving the course as the groop’s dream-pop vocals swell around the upbeat, single-begging appeal of just the second song on this 73-minute album.

Yet, the tracks that make that length necessitating the CD’s durational ability are some of the strongest cuts on the album: despite half of these 12 songs being over six minutes, the heavy hitters like “International,” “Sept” and “Velocity” absolutely deserve their runtime, filled to the brim with creative flourishes in the rhythms, tone and progressions that are rarely found as consistent on an album that is trying “new” things. Combining the general languid sprawls of electronic tracks – particularly during the prime CD era – I’m looking at you again, drukqs – with that always sweet under-four-minute-radio-ready hit, would frankly beckon a struggle uphill against the differences in pace and implied generical conventions, yet by virtue of depth and gall, this concept gets annihilatingly smashed out of the park. 

One of the lengthier cuts – and a long-time favorite of mine – “Fruitcake and Cookies,” sees itself oscillate in theme between Fennesz-level microglitchiness, mid-career Animal Collective strummed, fragmented pop softness, and a bold, turbulent foray into crayon-etched drill-and-bass balladry, all combining before the track’s true explosion in the second half. At 4:25 we suddenly predate the DIY indiegaze scene by a decade and a half; I hear so much of the future in these next minutes, where the limiter-smashed mixed walls of earwormable psychy-noise from artists like Parannoul, Weatherday or Spirit of the Beehive are captured through an oblique, crystalline fisheye lens, picking up the wicked tracers of the bright, fluttery synthesizers, ascensionous group oohs and ahhs and the wetly chorused mixing of all of these elements, mellifluously pouncing out from the speakers and into an amalgamation much unkin to the music before it – and I’d reckon, most of the music that succeeded it – save for thee Fishmans.

To pivot from the extra, the more subdued cuts on VDC flow like the sun-reflected dripping floe of heated sliding glaciers; smooth, resilient to obtuseness and rich with chilled-out nuance. The most obvious example being another monolith “International”: an exceptionally glitchy, busy, yet completely entrancing stroll down a much-needed relaxing pathway. Behind the sweet, Flaming Lips-esque beginning to the track and the Slowdivean dream-pop westernish twang that ends it, the middle bulk contains Valerie’s philtering vocals syncopating in and out, cut and clicked apart as blippy lackadaisical synths fill the world, all the while the beat behind flashes with IDM downtempo programming, giving sight to a snow-trodden bubblegum meadow, with sweet tulips and stem-fast dandelions that totter gracefully in the fantastical gusts that breeze through the track’s plains of beauty and palatable coziness. 

Another terrific, slower breath of fresh air – more in a sense of tempo and assiduousness, rather than compositionally same-y, which this record lacks none of – is the effervescent gazey head nodder “To All The Dancers of the World, A Round Form of Fantasy,” whose swayable lull captures the taste of a hypnotically emblazoned pop cocktail. Its propulsive back half of near-cloying fuzz, swinging from side to side – literally with strong textures panning across the spectrum as the song ends – is not without the warm programmed opulence that occurs in its first half; some parts Stereloab fed through a microsound transmitter, some parts nearly emo in its bittersweet keys, with some tasteful flourishes of drum-break spatters and Casino Versus Japan-quality bitcrushing to boot.

Speaking of programmed drum breaks, this Darla Records behemoth fails not at sketching some wonderfully interesting rhythms, and rather congruent to this record’s ability in balance, both devastate the listener – like on “Dedicated” with its flashcore scattershot goodness – and console the vibe from its hectic moments with gentle yet captivating grooves – like on “Dedicated” again, whose opening and closing moments – relative to the voltaic two-minute middle section of the track – synthesize an alluring atmosphere with still secundum intricate and engaging beats, kept afloat by the rubbery, almost nursery rhyme level vocals here from Valerie.

It’s peculiar, however, because despite my focus on the electronic aspects on VDC, this is still quite an indie record; it’s a reason why this album stands out so much among its – if comparable even exist – contemporaries, because despite the Postal Service-praising indietronica craze in the mid-00s, Sweet Trip here bridged some sort of gap between those shoegaze ambient techno roots of the 90s and the maximum loud, poppy, digitized mastering jobs of the late-10s to now. Although the beats and production scream Warp, and the timbre weeping to be acknowledged by Topshelf, it again falls with incredibly firm alacrity in the middle, not without its impact – at least to this one reviewer. 

An overt aspect of this record I’ve yet to mention – and perchance why the record has boatloads of staying power, relistenability-wise and approachability – are the lyrics; complementing the bright and upbeat guitars surrounding it, tracks like “Dsco” are undeniable love songs, charming and uplifting in nature and arguably cordial at times, and other cuts such as the shorter “Chocolate Matter” are downright inspirational in message and cathartically convincing of such a mood, much to be credited its pairing with the sheer Shieldean sonance and fantastic Mascisian use of the tremolo arm that guide one section to another. Looping back to “International,” this track’s gutturally self-destructible phrasing implies a breakup of intercontinental magnitudes – least to thee singer – and my previously defined bright melodic harvest of its instruments gain a much different sensation when coinciding with lyrics that elicit an image much like gnawing through your cheek at the thought of separation, and the apathetic acceptance and crusade of having hope in the presence of an undisputable end result. Simply: electronic + indie + happy + sad + lyrics that don’t feel haphazardly heavy-handed in their elucidation become a mighty combo when done with such intention here on VDC.

The final missing piece of that equation could be the undeniably fun distraction that it is: “Pro: Love: Ad” is pure dance fuel; “Dedicated” scratches all the itches that your brain may have and lets you bask in its fulfilling nature; “Velocity” is a pure illumine, summertime, shirt-over-your-shoulder-no-looking-back soundtrack, and the healthy, bright, prismatic, cartoon-heyday, shimmeringly carefree but cereal-full nostalgia factor hits like a screaming electric turbocharged bulldozer on songs like “Sept,” “International” or “Tekka.”

It’s almost as if this glinting rainbow monolith, somehow casting no penumbra across the glowing, mind-numbing x-y chart of the ground, nor under the static, screensaver wallpaper sky, sits in this perfect little space in our plane, inscrutable in its concept, stymie in its intention, floating in a brutalist bubble, with windows in every direction so that you could see thee ever-never-changing environment from a different direction than the day before. In the face of the bombastic Americanized technocracy, I’d err in the direction of the massive chromatic wall of striped candy chunks, but here’s to times future, able to present themselves as need be, with some needed steroids at standby in the form of the virtuosity-laden, taffy stretched and blindingly glucotoxic project Velocity: Comfort: Design.