Back on the normal, first Tuesday of the month schedule for /Tracks of the Month.

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We’re now likely to get buried under the deluge of new releases that usually come around now, as the autumn release schedules kick into gear – and there’s a whole lot of live shows coming up too.

The musical world – at least in the UK – has been consumed with nineties nostalgia this past week or two, as a good proportion of the country tried to get Oasis tickets (and in many cases, got fleeced by Ticketmaster and the band, never mind touts). I have more thoughts on this and a general thing with musical nostalgia, but that can wait for another day – and a post of it’s own.

In the meantime, here’s ten new tracks to get your ears around.

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A quick explanation for new readers (hi there!): my Tuesday Ten series has been running since March 2007, and each month features at least ten new songs you should hear – and in between those monthly posts, I feature songs on a variety of subjects, with some of the songs featured coming from suggestion threads on Facebook.

Feel free to get involved with these – the more the merrier, and the breadth of suggestions that I get continues to astound me. Otherwise, as usual, if you’ve got something you want me to hear, something I should be writing about, or even a gig I should be attending, e-mail me or drop me a line on Facebook (details below).

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/Track of the Month

/Pixel Grip
/Stamina

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Chicago club-industrial fiends Pixel Grip return with a ripping, upfront single that is explicit, groovy as shit and to my ears their best song yet. Rita Lukea is all about sex here: no requirements for dancefloor stamina, they want the object of their desires to keep going all night and likely all the following day too. The groove is as filthy and dirty as what is being suggested in the lyrics, all thundering, tumbling drums and bassy synths: one of those songs where less is absolutely more. I suspect this song will have a lasting power…

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/Kim Deal
/Crystal Breath
/Nobody Loves You More

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The first solo album from alt-rock legend Kim Deal – founding member of Pixies and her own band The Breeders, of course – has been some time coming, with two of the songs originally released in 2011. But Deal has never been one to rush, having been part of a wildly successful Breeders reunion in the meantime, as well as all manner of family tragedy to deal with in recent years, and there’s a distinct feeling here of Deal wanting to do things differently. So, it goes in a number of unexpected directions just from the first two singles. Coast is a lovely, laid-back track that features horns and a summery, countrified feel that isn’t a million miles from some of the later tracks on Last Splash – those that had some distance from the best-known singles, and where the band loosened up a bit. But even better is the wild Crystal Breath, where Deal turns her hand to loose-limbed dance-punk, with grimy programmed drums, terse guitars and her trademark, cryptic melodies. It simultaneously sounds like nothing she’s ever done, but somehow sounds just like you might expect it to. It’s bloody marvellous, and I can’t wait for the album in November.

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/Godspeed You! Black Emperor
/GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS
/“NO​ ​TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28​,​340 DEAD”

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The Montreal post-rock titans – although post-rock perhaps, to this day, does them a disservice to the sheer scope of their music – announced, as is their want, a new album out of nowhere again this week, the fifth since they resumed operations after a near-decade hiatus. The title refers to the death toll in Palestine at that point after the Israel invasion, and the song titles also suggest nods to the same events, with a distinct feeling that the triumphalism and hope of the last album – their best in many, many years – has been extinguished already.

Unusually, too, there are six distinct tracks listed for the new album, rather than the usual four, and it coming on 2xLP suggests a longform album. But the lead track – and is this a first, the band actually releasing a track ahead of the album? I cannot remember the last time they did – the stately GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS is “just” seven minutes of ebb and flow, an orchestra of drums, guitars and violins, particularly during the stark, beatless latter half, it is the sound of despair and bitter defeat, as if nothing they could do could make anything better. Twenty-seven years since they first came to popular attention, they remain a band that is inscrutable, and makes the most beautiful, thought-provoking noise.

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/Sacred Skin
/Call It Off
/Born In Fire

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One of the seemingly endless run of sleek, alternative/goth bands from the fertile Los Angeles scene, Sacred Skin’s new album is a great listen, with a glistening production doing justice to their eighties-leaning synthpop/darkwave and impressive songcraft. For the most part, it’s trying to do something new with a well-trodden path. But coupled with a gloriously camp video, latest single Call It Off gives you the full-on eighties experience: a dramatic key change, guitar solos, dual male/female vocals and slick synth hooks.

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/Sleek Teeth
/Endless

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Also from LA, as it happens, are Sleek Teeth, whose sound leans more into the EBM end of things (just listen to those synths). Recent single Endless has a relentless momentum, with vocals that are very much slave to the rhythm and erupt into an excellent, memorable chorus too. But like many of their peers in LA, they are not simply copy-pasting from the past: there’s a distinct now-ness to this, with the big, melodic chorus and those wailing synths later in the track planting it as 2024 rather than 1984.

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/INVA//ID
/Thorn
/Thorn EP

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The second coming of industrial metal didn’t really seem to coalesce in the wake of 3TEETH’s success as we might have expected, but maybe it was a bit too early. Anyway, here’s the new INVA//ID, a slice of jagged savagery that has two drummers for added rhythmic power (at least in the video), superpowered riffage, and a grimy, threatening feel that takes us back maybe 30 years (as the vocalist’s TDS-era NIN shirt and the band-in-white-studio video helps ram home). Somehow I’d missed this band up to now, time to correct that.

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/Cardinal Noire
/Killshelter

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Finnish industrialists Cardinal Noire have never been shy about their love of Skinny Puppy – and they are far from the only artist who has done so in recent years – and after all, they are very good at taking a similar approach and creating anew. And if you want more straight-up, aggressive industrial, their excellent Protectorate side-project is the one for you.

This is the first new CN release in some years, and their first for their new label Artoffact, and not a great deal has changed. Slower-paced, super-dense production is the order of the day still, with rolling rhythms and barely identifiable vocals deep in the mix. Oh yes, this definitely adhering to the ways of the Brap, but it’s done so well that it is difficult to complain. Apparently album number three is in the works.

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/IAmImperfect
/Old Wounds

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A second appearance by this new Sheffield duo, and only their third single. This one appears to be a near a cappella ballad to begin with, with Paul Jackson’s frail, elegant vocals front and centre, but really shifts gear once the electronics kick in, and Kelly Dorset’s guitars add a texture that helps transform the song into a dramatic, loud epic, complete with a wild guitar solo that closes out the song. There’s some fascinating stuff going on here, and they are moving forward in leaps and bounds.

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/Fightmilk
/Summer Bodies
/No Souvenirs

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The spiky indie-rock of Fightmilk has long been on playlists in this house, and three years on from second album Contender, they are back at last. Lily’s way with catty, funny observations in her lyrics are still in place, particularly on single Summer Bodies, as she snarls at the titular concept. She hates the idea – and details exactly why – but then nervously asks for a bit of validation just in case, as if they’ve been conditioned to do so. The kiss-off, though (“Nothing tastes as good as skinny fries and a huge burger“) is hilarious, twisting an infamous Kate Moss quote if I recall correctly. Musically this is taut indie-rock, unmistakably Fightmilk, and I do love those “ba ba ba” backing vocals…

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/Overhead, The Albatross
/Your Last Breath

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Another recommendation from Kenneth over at The Ways of Exile and yes, I know I’m a few months late with it. But it’s such an elegant, beautiful piece that I couldn’t not feature it. It’s a dramatic, lengthy post-rock piece that, in the words of the band, “both mourns death, loss, and grief, and celebrates the awe and beauty of this life we all share with one another.” It swells and rocks like a boat moving from calm to rough seas, before giving way to a spoken word-led coda that bursts with emotion and love. Another reminder that post-rock can be anything but distant, instead often some of the most emotionally wracked music you’ll hear.