Quivers – Oyster Cuts: The Merge debut of the Australian band that I’ve been loving (still) their great cover album of Out of Time. I’ve been a bit split on this album. The first half is great: ‘Pink Smoke’ and ‘Apparition’ the two singles as well as ‘More Lost’ are very catchy, fun, end of summer songs. They’re all deceptively simple sounding songs at first that then surprise with catchy full band harmonies on the chorus, or switch the lead singer part way through, or sneak a fuzzy guitar solo into the sound. But they’re all kind of sad. The whole album is kind of sad and that’s been what’s a little hard to completely love it completely. On their own every song on this album may be great, but by the second half the tone get’s a bit hard to sit in the whole time.

Kississippi – Damned if I do it for you (EP): A check-in EP from a long time favorite indie-pop artist. Kississippi jumps further into the brighter, more focused pop of her last album Mood Ring. She’s really committing herself to this Lover-era Taylor Swift style songs, for both good and bad. The best song is the first, ‘Smaller Half’, which has a vocal melody that could be easily mistaken for probably a dozen different Swift bridges. The bad is that since Mood Ring came out there’s been roughly one hundred new (and old) Taylor Swift albums released and these songs that would have been just a fun alternative now end up sounding just a bit… inessential, and too polished to even feel scrappy. But Kississippi is a band I’ll (probably) always root for, so it’s good to have her back.

Live Performance of Interest