Tag Archives: trouble in mind records

Things We Liked in 2023 (Trouble In Mind Edition)

Year end lists – we here at tgh find them both potentially daunting (did we forget something?! probably…) and, also, possibly reductive.  Instead, dear reader (whomever might be left), we attempt to put a bow ‘round the latest year that just was by focusing on albums and tracks we’ve enjoyed, in no particular order or classification.  We strive for narrative structure by focusing on labels we like and some of their 2023 highlights – as we proceed, to give you what you need…

Part the first shines a light on Chicago-based Trouble In Mind, which had a superior year filled with an array of fantastic releases.  Our highlights included:

The Serfs, Half Eaten by Dogs.  Released in October, the masterful third long-player from Cincinnati-based The Serfs is a churning, heady blend of icy synths and taught rhythms.  Slate grey dance music reminiscent, in parts, of artists like Fad Gadget, Cabaret Voltaire, early New Order, and Crystal Stilts, The Serfs’ melding of post-punk and ’80s industrial, flecked with drone and dub, is exhilarating and possibly their best set to date (be sure to familiarize yourself with the band’s earlier works, as well).  Music perfect for a club night in the basement of a decommissioned rectory.  We only wished we had grabbed a tee to win friends and influence people before they sold out!  

Highlights include:  ‘Beat Me Down’; ‘Spectral Analysis’; ‘ Cheap Chrome’.

Melenas, Ahora.  From Pamplona, Spain, Melenas released Ahora in September.  We’ve been smitten since first hearing them rave like a some kind of garage-y Lush on tracks like ‘3 Segundos’ and ‘No Puedo Pensar’ from 2020’s Dias Raros.  This year’s edition relies less on jangle, plugging the band’s enervating knack for gorgeous melody into analog synth and psychpop textures – and it’s stunningly beautiful.  From the swirling hooks of ‘K2’ to more introspective, swaying in place tracks like ‘Promesas’ (which sounds like a psych Ultravox and will have you blissfully singing ‘nah/na na na na’ over and over), Ahora is truly amazing and deserving of a place with fellow travelers like Broadcast, Molly Nilsson and Fatamorgana.

Highlights include: ‘Promesas’; ‘Dos Pasajeros’; ‘K2’.

En Attendant Ana, Principia.  Paris-based En Attendant Ana remain masters of taking 60’s folk and jangle and adding Gallic elements, jazzy skronk, and beautifully serpentine rhythmic interplay.  Released in February, Principia continues to evolve the band’s sound without sacrificing what makes them so great.  The opening, title, track sets a heady, jangle-psych tone, singer/songwriter Margaux Bouchaudon singing of being stuck with others in parallel lines that suppress interconnection.  Bouchaudon’s voice is perfect throughout, conveying feels without being over-emotive, a la Trish Keenan (RIP) or even Harriet Wheeler, with the rest of the band in fine form (the bass playing a particular pleasure).  On repeat.

Highlights include: ‘Principia’; ‘Same Old Story’; ‘Fools & Kings’.

Guardian Singles, Feed Me to the Doves.  Auckland-based Guardian Singles released Feed Me to the Doves in May.  From the straight ahead, Ramones-like bludgeon of ‘Chad and Stacey’ to the Hüsker Dü meets Mission of Burma fuzzed tenacity of ‘Com Trans’, Guardian Singles brings an intensity and emotion to their music that never feels forced or mawkish.  There’s an exhilarating tension maintained across the album’s 10 tracks that forces attention, culminating in the cathartic action/time/vision of ‘Ground Swell’.  Personal bonus points to the band for leading me to rediscover their eponymous debut, which is also excellent – many thanks!

Highlights include:  ‘Ground Swell’; ‘Manic Attraction’; ‘Nightmare Town’.

FACS, Still Life in Decay.  Chicago’s FACS released Still Life in Decay in April, and we’ve made repeated trips back to the aural well since.  Somehow sounding simultaneously gigantic and intimate, the album crackles in the juxtaposition between razorwire-taut instrumentation and the often dead-eyed vocals of singer/guitarist Brian Case.  The trio are an absolute force throughout, swooping off on tangents and then rejoining like swallows in the gloaming.  Not sure how to categorize – isn’t everything ‘post-punk’ nowadays? (I keed) – but the best tracks feel both crushing and uplifting in equal measure. Given humanity’s current state, these latter moments feel especially welcome.

Highlights include:  ‘Slogan’; ‘Class Spectre’; ‘New Flag’.

Check out Trouble In Mind’s compilation featuring 2023 releases here and find your own faves!

Trouble In Mind linksbandcamp; website; fbook; twitter (yes, I know – I just don’t care); insta; youtube; tiktok.

Reviews: Salad Boys, C.A.R., Ravyn Lenae, Zed Penguin, Ten High, Smokescreens

Part the second of our ‘apology tour’, in which we continue to dig through the list of records that touched us last year and make sure that we spread the good word. 

Salad Boys, This is Glue (Trouble in Mind)


Christchurch, New Zealand’s Salad Boys returned last February with their latest album, This is Glue, and it’s a thrilling listen. Opener, “Blown Off” lifts off with a thrum like a motorik “Kids in America”, before dissolving into a blissful Buzzcocks charged guitar run, and the remaining tracks employ shades of indie disco, the purest power-pop, pearlescent strum-pop (“Exaltation”), orphic psych and early REM jangle (“Psych Slasher”). It’s lush, without being cloying; polished, but still retaining scuff and patina. Highlights include: “Psych Slasher”; “Right Time”; “Going Down Slow”.

Web: label bcamp site

C.A.R., Pinned(Ransom Note)


Also released last February, Pinned, the latest from C.A.R. (the recording project of London-based Franco-Canadian Chloé Raunet) features elements of icy, Yaz(oo)-like new wave sensuality, post-punk empty spaces, and dubby trip-hop – all blended into transportive art-pop. There’s a Nina Hagen art-bounce meets Grace Jones cool on tracks like “Heat”, “Growing Pains” gradually adding gorgeous layers of glacial synths and ethereal background vocals to a stark bass/drum combo. C.A.R. has since released several remixes (I particularly enjoyed Peaking Lights’ remix of ‘Daughters’), one of which included a new song, “All But…”, as a b-side. Highlights include: “Growing Pains”; “Heat”; “Cholera”.

Web: label bcamp fbook insta site

Ravyn Lenae, Crush EP (Atlantic/Three Twenty Three Music)


Ravyn Lenae hails from Chicago, and released a smoke bomb of an EP last February called Crush. Lifting off even higher than her dizzying 2016 debut, Moon Shoes, the EP provides an intoxicating cache of silky smooth, new-old school r&b tracks. Lenae’s effortless voice balances featherweight highs and funky gnarl, moving stealthily through hazy grooves that evoke everything from Funkadelic, the Isleys, Erykah Badu, and Prince. Steve Lacey’s head-swimming production provides highlights as well (see the introduction of the bass in “Computer Luv”, on which he also provides vocal accompaniment). More of this, soon, please and thank you. Highlights include: “Closer (Ode 2U)”; “Computer Luv”.

Web: site twitt insta youtube fbook 

Zed Penguin, A Ghost, A Beast (Song, by Toad)


Sometimes, an album comes along whose constituent parts may seem familiar, but taking a step back to view the entire picture reveals something new and difficult to describe. A Ghost, A Beast, the debut full-length from Zed Penguin – the musical project of Edinburgh-based Australian, Matthew Winter – is such an album. The shapeshifting arrangements meld psych, chamber-pop, the wry, arty-rock of Zevon, and tensile post-punk, Winter’s tremulous tone recalling a mix of Joe Jackson and Ian McCullough. Some moments transcend – to wit, the glorious ‘End of Time’, with it’s shimmery jangle. Highlights include: “End of Time”; “Wandering”; “Violent Night”.

Web: label bcamp fbook twitt

Ten High, Autobondage EP (Hexbeat) 


Our Arkansas pals in Ten High released the Autobondage EP this past October, and it slays. Five fuzzed-out, gonzo tracks held together by a steady, powerful bass/drum battery. The roiling opener, ‘Dr. Choice’ (featuring vocals by drummer Devan Theos) couldn’t possibly be a more apt, ‘in the red’ introduction to the splendor on show here. Trading in the same gloriously trashy garage/blues/punk sleaze as debut, Self-Entitled, these tracks manage to tighten things up a notch, without losing any of their edge. Highlights include: “Dr. Choice”; “You Want It”.

Web: fbook bcamp

Smokescreens, Used to Yesterday (Slumberland)


L.A.-based quartet Smokescreens released their latest, Used to Yesterday, last summer. Appropriate to that season, the album is jam-packed with absolutely gorgeous power-(psych)pop and Paisley Underground-style hooks. The band’s online bio mentions a mutual admiration for Dunedin sound between founders Chris Rosi and Corey Cunningham, and you can hear it loud and clear on tracks like ‘Buddy’. But there’s also a US spin on things, with ‘Steel Blue Skies’ adding a slacker-y take, and the band channeling the Velvets on ‘Fool Me’. Highlights include: “Steel Blue Skies”; “Jolly Jane”; “Used to Yesterday”.

Web: label bcamp fbook twitt

Check the Snide Jangle of “Around the House”, by Chook Race

Members of Melbourne, Australia's Chook Race, at rest.

Members of Melbourne, Australia’s Chook Race, at rest.

Chook Race, Around the House (Tenth Court/Trouble In Mind, 9/2/2016)

Chook Race are a three-piece hailing from Melbourne, Australia (fun fact: “chook” is, according to my online sources, an Aussie slang term for a hen, a woman or the sound made to call the former).  Around the House is the band’s latest long-player, and it’s a fantastically catchy collection of sharp, lo-fi pop.

On Around the House, Chook Race channel the energies of 80s and early 90s purveyors of jangle pop, caustic lines delivered by vocalist/guitarist Matt Liveriadis – at times in ‘boy/girl’ harmony with drummer Carolyn Hawkins (who takes on lead vocal duties on several tracks) – ‘neath the glint of ringing guitar tones and vibrant drum and bass.  Liveriadis has the kind of deadpan voice which recalls folks like David Gedge and Eugene Kelly, perfect for withering lines like “sometimes, I get tired/oh and sometimes, I get sick/…of you” (“Sometimes”).  The tossed-off, charmingly ramshackle sonic touchstones are warmly familiar, and include bands like The Vaselines, The Clean, The Pastels.  Album highlight, “Lost the Ghost”, has a riff that kept pinging around in my brain until I decided it sounded like early REM – or maybe something by The Only Ones – I couldn’t decide; but I was too busy bopping along to care.  Standing on (sloped) shoulders they may be, but the tunes Chook Race create are undeniable and worthy of repeated listen.

Around the House is out now, courtesy of Tenth Court (in Australia, New Zealand and Japan) and Trouble In Mind (everywhere else) – or straight from the band on their Bandcamp page. Catch up with Chook Race (sorry) on fbook, on tour, and peep the indie pop aerobicise on disply in the video for lead track, “Hard to Clean”, (below).

Highlights include:  “Lost the Ghost”, “Sometimes”, “At Your Door”, “Hard to Clean”