The (Extended) Spins

Hello all, and welcome back again for another edition of The Spins. As I noted at the end of the previous long post, this is the only dispatch that you are getting from me this week. I have to travel out of state, and I will not have time to write something about a music or music-adjacent topic. This dispatch might be kind of long as a result. Everyone decided to get their shit together and actually release some very good music. Alright, let’s begin.

Tyler, the Creator - Don’t Tap The Glass

Whether the title is a reference on online haters or actual animals, Tyler dropped this album on us all with little warning. Once we all got our hands on it, we realized that he dropped an album that goes in the opposite direction from last year’s Chromakopia—it’s a dance rap album that goes extremely hard. The beats pull from various traditions like L.A. electro and old-school bass music, and Tyler is rapping his ass off. He sounds like he’s having fun, and we should want that from all of our overly serious rappers. We’ll check back in a couple of months to see how it holds, but you’ll probably be reading about this album in my year-end rundown.

Open Mike Eagle - Neighborhood Gods Unlimited

Underground stalwart and affable gentleman Open Mike Eagle hits us with another album of extremely well-crafted wordplay and relatable storytelling over stellar production. Because he is so good at rapping, he can write a song about Mephisto shoes and it not be pretentious. In addition, he includes references to both RZA and I Think You Should Leave. A true renaissance man if there ever was one.

Jim Legxacy - black british music

This mixtape is a bit chaotic, as it has DJ callouts and rather hectic editing. The beats are really good, but it’s busy. I don’t mind this, but I know some people do. Sitting in the center of the maelstrom is Jim Legxacy. His flows are crisp and his storytelling is strong. Does he have everything figured out? No, not really. Does he know that? Yes, he does. I went into this kind of skeptical, especially as I have no prior history with him, and left very much impressed.

Salami Rose Joe Louis - Lorings

Lindsay Olson records under the name Salami Rose Joe Louis. If there is an explanation for that name, I haven’t seen one. Regardless, her music is a surrealist synthesizer-driven trip through art-pop. I put this album on one day and was just transported into a weird, strange world of Olson’s making. It made me nod, it made me smile. Did I fully understand it? Not really, but I was having fun, and that was what really mattered.

Natalie Bergman - My Home Is Not In This World

Honestly, when I see things released on Third Man Records, I’ll usually take a flier on them. Regardless of my personal feelings towards label boss Jack White’s music, he has excellent taste, and many of the people on the label are doing something a bit weirder than their generic labels suggest (see Sheer Mag’s 2024 album Playing Favorites for reference). To this point, I could call this Natalie Bergman album an Americana album and be completely accurate. However, I would miss out on the blues elements that shine through as well as the soul and gospel flourishes and AM Pop/Laurel Canyon stylings. This is also not to mention Bergman’s excellent voice, which takes the listener on a journey through various stages of life. I was very impressed by the whole.

DJ Haram - Beside Myself

DJ Haram’s debut album is a collision of murky club beats, Middle Eastern percussion, drones, and rhymes that speak to the tenuous nature of our current reality. While the mood is not necessarily the most upbeat, the trip is chaotic and excellent. I found myself seeing her vision and absolutely grooving on it. While listening to this album, I couldn’t help but think about Armand Hammer, contemporaries of DJ Haram and merchants in experimental and political music, and this is a very good thing. Armand Hammer also appear on one of the tracks on the album, so they would agree with me thinking about them here.

Forth Wanderers - The Longer This Goes On

Forth Wanderers are a band I previously knew as an emo outfit. The songs were good, but if you know me well, I don’t really have emo energy. On this album, the band strips back the emo influences and gets weirder. The songs play with psychedelic sounds, a little country, and a little surf rock while still keeping their previous angular indie style in the mix. They play slightly slower and explore a bit more. Although the album runs a crisp 27 minutes, the band will take you on quite a trip.

Sports Team - Boys These Days

When a band starts an album with a sophisti-pop ode to a red Subaru Impreza, knowing that this concept is silly but singing it with full sincerity, you already have me on board. The band, abandoning some of their more arty post-punk leanings (which made their earlier stuff a little unmemorable to me), make a weird, funny album about our current times. Do they sound like Pulp at times? Yes, they very much do. Are there hints of Iceage’s Plowing Into the Field of Love, particularly “The Lord’s Favorite”? Of course. What about Prefab Sprout? Sure, why not. If this isn’t enough—and it is already quite a bit—you should listen to this album for these lines in the last song: “Maybe when we’re thirty, baby, we can get a dog/ And once a year, we’ll go out and we’ll watch the War on Drugs.” Savage burn, kids. Well played.

Billie Martin - Dog Eared

Billie Marten has been releasing albums since she was a young woman. At the ripe age of 26, she has released a mature, confident work that shows her at an inflection point. The folkiness of her earlier work is still present in the lyrics and her voice, but the grand change here is the instrumentation. The studio band adds a mellow, dynamic groove to her songs, adding a beautiful depth to her music. Even though it never really gets above a simmer, the album never falls into the background. While I have found her other albums to be good, this was the first one that I was impressed by. I think she still has plenty of space to grow from here, and I’ll be excited to see what she does going forward.

Hieroglyphic Being - Dance Music 4 Bad People

I found myself feeling fatigued the other day, so I wanted a pick-me-up. I put this album and it did its job perfectly. Jamal Moss, the producer behind Hieroglyphic Being, knows how to craft a fantastic house track. He can hit the smoothness of an old school NY track and blend it with the sizzle of Chicago acid. His programming is impeccable. If you are into electronic music but aren’t familiar with Hieroglyphic Being, this is a perfect entry point to his rather large discography.

Because this last one is a single, I’m just going to shout it out: Theo Parrish’s “Orange Barrel Action” b/w “Pianamonn.” These are two just masterful tracks that show how soulful Parrish can get. Absolutely entrancing. Find it on your local streaming service.

That’s it for me this week. Enjoy your weekends, and I will see you again next week, probably only with a long dispatch, but a short Spins might be possible. The likely reality is that I merge both of them together into one post with a shorter dive and some spins at the end. It’s the summer, so stay hydrated. Stay very, very hydrated.