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4.
Melt-Banana: 3+5
Over 30 years into their career, Melt-Banana still love pushing Japanese noise rock off a cliff. On 3+5, their ninth album and first in more than a decade, Yasuko Onuki and Ichiro Agata inject pure adrenaline into their shrill guitar slides, maniacal drumming, and pitch-shifted vocals so piercing that they verge on inhuman. It’s hard to fathom that just two people fire out this many notes at the speed they do, but Melt-Banana thrive on this type of hyperactive flurry. From the cheeky anticipation bubbling over in “Code” to the headbang-worthy punk of “Hex,” 3+5 is a testament to the duo’s infectious creativity and refusal to cede to time as they enter middle age. –Nina Corcoran
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
3.
Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven
Following the unhinged heartbreak of their 2019 album Patience, Mannequin Pussy came back this year with a primal, downright horny record that mimics the rapture and anguish of desire. The range of emotions on I Got Heaven emerge as alternating blows of punishing hardcore, dream-pop hooks, and scuzzed-out stadium guitar riffs—but their style never sounds incongruous. The richness of this album is partially indebted to producer John Congleton, who encouraged the quartet to record several parts live, while capturing studio banter and sticking it around the perimeter of cuts like “Sometimes” and the title track. Rattling with energy, I Got Heaven finds Mannequin Pussy mastering modern punk and penning sticky pop licks with equal fluency. It’s also the sound of a band reaching into their guts and laying it all on the mixing table. —Madison Bloom
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
2.
Dame Area: Toda la verdad sobre Dame Area
Dame Area, the synth-punk duo of vocalist Silvia Konstance and producer Viktor Lux Crux, have been smashing and rebuilding their sound since they formed in Barcelona’s underground scene over seven years ago. After experimenting with EBM beats and glossy electro-pop, the pair took a sharp turn, burning rubber on their way to the junk yard. Their latest album, Toda la verdad sobre Dame Area, sounds welded together from sharp remnants of the scrap heap; it hints at the industrial hellscapes of Throbbing Gristle, and the punk nihilism of Suicide. But among the gnawing synths and blast-beats, Dame Area splice in a digitized string swell here, a bracing Flamenco rhythm there. For Konstance and Lux Crux, any genre or motif can be retooled into a jagged new shape. –Madison Bloom
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1.
Ekko Astral: pink balloons
With their debut full-length, Ekko Astral carry on the legacy of D.C. punk bands past like Fugazi and Black Eyes like a torch flickering with the collective struggles of those around them. Written with intent and momentum, both musical and liberatory, pink balloons rips through snarling punk and eerie experimentalism to forge a better world. While Ekko Astral are deadly serious about the life-threatening realities that trans people experience and how capitalism still manipulates those very people railing against it, they’re also really funny, whether quoting School of Rock and Kreayshawn or blasting people who raise hell to get their seven dollar coffee drinks refunded. It’s a radically fun combination. From start to end, Pink Balloons is so textured, audacious, and fully realized that you’d be forgiven for forgetting it’s their first album. –Nina Corcoran
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
