Chemtrails - Miss Anthropocene
A straggler of a track, soon to get a 7" release, following The Joy Of Sects and ahead of a tour is another bugged-out glam stomp that expresses a desire to turn into a whale to escape TERFs and maybe uniquely for pop namechecks the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Fruit - Racehorse Deathwatch
The north-east sextet have been called "a morose and angry John Cooper Clarke fronting Mogwai". Well, that's as maybe, but it's far more in tune with your favourite modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks. What stands the track out from the vats of modern dark sprechgesang intense post-punks is their post-Slint capture and release shifts, explosions of compressed noise dallying with sudden time signature changes and divebombing down to minimalism.
M(h)aol - Snare
Losing a charismatic frontperson would kill most bands, but M(h)aol have adapted since Róisín Nic Ghearailt left just over a year ago - they've also shed their bass player since then - with drummer Constance Keane taking over as vocalist. In fact the new single ties in with the change in that way, being about the gendering of instrument learning coupled to nervy, awkward Krautrock-adjacent off-beats and hypnotic noise.
Snõõper - Relay
Snõõper couldn't help but be one of our highlights of this year's End Of The Road Festival (a lot of fun, thanks), what with the prop-adorned, crowdsurfing, all-hyperenergy speed-punk assault like a vaguely more approachable Melt-Banana or Polysics. Ahead of a new tour they've dropped what for them counts as a ballad, merely quite fast for most of the time while still all razorblade bass and stabbing riffs.
Tunde Adebimpe - Magnetic
No sooner have TV On The Radio reformed for live dates next year - we note they're in the UK over Green Man weekend - than Adebimpe announces an as yet release date-free solo album on Sub Pop. Ironically the first single reaches back to imperial phase TVOTR in their Dancing Choose/New Health Rock/oh alright then Wolf Like Me in its buzzing, digitised insistent beat and Tunde's full commitment preacher's voice.
