{"id":10944,"date":"2025-09-05T14:24:30","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T18:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10944"},"modified":"2025-09-05T14:24:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T18:24:30","slug":"music-update-august-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/05\/music-update-august-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Music update, August 2025."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Solid month for new music, but there\u2019s a lot more coming now that we\u2019re into fall, with Suede\u2019s latest dropping today to kick things off. As always, if you can\u2019t see the widget below, you can access the playlist here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolf Alice \u2013 White Horses.<\/strong> It\u2019s crazy that my favorite track from Wolf Alice\u2019s latest album, The Clearing, doesn\u2019t feature Ellie Rowsell on lead vocals. She\u2019s on the chorus, but that\u2019s one of the boys doing the verses, and my god does this thing hum<\/em>. I have such mixed feelings on the record; they\u2019re one of the most interesting bands going now, so the album is all over the place, and I respect the ambition and daring. I just wish there were more bangers here. This song is awesome, so are \u201cBloom Baby Bloom\u201d and \u201cBread Butter Tea Sugar.\u201d There are some other highlights. I think closer \u201cThe Sofa\u201d \u2013 not a tribute to JD Vance \u2013 is kind of a snoozer. I\u2019m going to wrestle with this one through the end of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coroner \u2013 Renewal. <\/strong>I don\u2019t usually push metal tracks to the start of the playlist, since I know some of you are here for pretty much everything but the metal stuff, but this is Coroner\u2019s first new song in over 30 years. They never got their due while they were active, commercially at least, but their last two albums were landmarks in the thrash genre, sliding towards progressive thrash and also heralding some of what was about to come on the death metal side of things. It\u2019s incredible that they sound almost exactly as they did on Grin<\/em>, their final release before their breakup in 1993, which saw them shift hard towards proggier stuff. Their sixth album and first in 32 years, Dissonance Theory<\/em>, is due out on October 17th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IDLES \u2013 Rabbit Run.<\/strong> IDLES did the soundtrack to the new Darren Aronovsky movie Caught Stealing<\/em>, and to their credit they mixed things up a bit rather than just writing a bunch of new IDLES tracks. This sounds like a song from a tense, violent action film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geese \u2013 100 Horses.<\/strong> I had both this and \u201cTrinidad\u201d on the original playlist, settling on this one because it\u2019s a little more of a conventional rock track, while \u201cTrinidad\u201d sounds almost like a meteor hit the studio mid-song.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wisp \u2013 Serpentine.<\/strong> Wisp is Natalie Liu, a 20- or 21-year-old singer\/songwriter who sounds a lot like beabadoobee but with a harder guitar sound. This track, which combines breathy vocals with some crunchy hard-rock music behind it, is from her debut album If Not Winter<\/em>, which came out last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pynch \u2013 Post-Punk\/New-Wave.<\/strong> I feel like this song\u2019s title is making fun of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard Ashcroft \u2013 Lovin\u2019 You. <\/strong>Yes, that\u2019s the intro to \u201cClassical Gas,\u201d which is one of the two songs I typically use to warm up when I practice guitar. I can\u2019t decide if I think this track from the former lead singer of The Verve is a clever interpolation of a classic guitar line or just weird derivative stuff from a guy who\u2019s done this to better effect on other tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Automatic \u2013 Mercury.<\/strong> The third album, Is It Now?<\/em>, from this American synth-rock trio is due out on September 26th<\/sup>. Their dark, almost gothic sound definitely hits the nostalgia vibe for me, but it\u2019s more a hint of that early \u201880s sound I love rather than a complete throwback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creeper \u2013 Blood Magick (It\u2019s a Ritual). <\/strong>I\u2019ve loved most of Creeper\u2019s work since their acclaimed 2020 album Sex, Death & the Infinite Void<\/em>, but this track, from the forthcoming Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death<\/em>, might be the campiest thing they\u2019ve done yet. It\u2019s giving hair metal in the wrong way. It\u2019s still catchy, but I\u2019m not sure this is the direction I want them to go in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courting \u2013 the twins (1969).<\/strong> These prolific British art-punks just put out their second album in fourteen months back in March, and they\u2019re back again with a brand-new single, a very pre-Arctic Monkeys-sounding hard-edged bit of controlled chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HAERTS \u2013 The Lie. <\/strong>This is the second single from HAERTS this year after they went dark in the wake of 2021\u2019s Dream Nation<\/em>; both are slow, piano-driven tunes that highlight Nini Fabi\u2019s vocals, but neither has the incredible energy of their first album, 2014\u2019s HAERTS<\/em>. I don\u2019t know if that sound just isn\u2019t coming back, but I refuse to give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Color Green \u2013 Ball and Key (Free). <\/strong>This California quartet sounds like the next descendant in the line that runs from the Grateful Dead through Phish, and while I know there are a lot of pretenders to that throne, at least Color Green sounds great on record, which is more than I can say for a lot of so-called jam bands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just Mustard \u2013 We Were Just Here.<\/strong> Everyone is shoegaze now. Just Mustard actually does shoegaze, though, at least in terms of the musical style, with waves of sound that create as much of a sensation as they impart any sort of melody. It\u2019s harsh and sometimes dissonant, but that\u2019s what shoegaze originally entailed. This Irish band is more true to the subgenre than some of the original artists still going, like Slowdive and Ride, are in their contemporary music (which, to be clear, I\u2019ve liked very much).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Honey \u2013 Soak.<\/strong> I\u2019d call this song mid as Black Honey goes; they\u2019ve had better, but I\u2019m grading them against their own previous output there. It\u2019s the title track from their fourth album, which came out while I was on vacation, so I still haven\u2019t listened to it beyond the singles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cast feat. P.P. Arnold \u2013 Way It\u2019s Gotta Be (Oh Yeah). <\/strong>That is indeed the Britpop band Cast, founded by The La\u2019s bassist John Power, who racked up ten straight top 20 hits in the UK in the 1990s, including the bangers \u201cSandstorm,\u201d \u201cAlright,\u201d and \u201cBeat Mama.\u201d They put out an album last year that didn\u2019t have the same kind of edge or funk to this track, one of two singles featuring former Ikette (as in Turner) P.P. Arnold. Cast\u2019s next album Yeah Yeah Yeah<\/em> is due out in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hives \u2013 The Hives Forever Forever the Hives.<\/strong> Never let it be said that Howlin\u2019 Pelle lacked for confidence. This is the title track from the band\u2019s seventh album and second since they re-formed, coming out just a week ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

clipping. \u2013 Forever War.<\/strong> This new track appears on Dead Channel Sky Plus<\/em>, an expanded version of the trio\u2019s second album that rearranges the existing songs and includes four new ones. \u201cIf you ain\u2019t dead yet\/you gon be there soon\u201d should a rallying cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bleak Squad \u2013 Strange Love.<\/strong> This is the title track from the debut album by this Australian supergroup, which includes Mick Harvey, who played in the Birthday Party, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and PJ Harvey\u2019s band, as well as three musicians from groups I don\u2019t know. Their sound is atmospheric and dark \u2013 I saw one review call them \u201cnoir,\u201d and that fits \u2013 but I\u2019d best describe it as what I think or hope the upcoming Blondie album would sound like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drink the Sea \u2013 Rose Crested Sky.<\/strong> Speaking of supergroups, this one has Peter Buck (REM), Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees), Alain Johannes (Eleven, Them Crooked Vultures), and solo artist Duke Garwood. The band plans to release two albums this fall and to tour to support them. A post on REM\u2019s Instagram<\/a> quoted Martin as saying that this band\u2019s sound will incorporate a lot of world music sounds; I hear some of that here, but this track is more dominated by the off-beat rhythm and what I think are varied time signatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silver Gore \u2013 All the Good Men.<\/strong> This British duo formed in 2021 but just released their first music this year with three songs, including this jagged alt-pop number that got stuck in my head for days after I first heard it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No Joy \u2013 Garbage Dream House.<\/strong> No Joy is now a solo project by Canadian guitarist\/songwriter Jasamine White-Gluz, whose younger sister Alicia is now the lead singer of Swedish melodic death metal icons Arch Enemy. It\u2019s shoegazey, but with ethereal vocals that push it towards dreampop. Apparently No Joy is playing tonight in Philly at a place I don\u2019t know called Kung Fu Necktie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arcadea \u2013 Exodus of Gravity. <\/strong>Arcadea is a synth-metal side project of Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor, and far more accessible than almost all of his main act\u2019s output (which I tend to like quite a bit). I had this on the playlist before the news about former Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds\u2019s sudden death,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deftones \u2013 milk of the Madonna.<\/strong> I\u2019ve never been a huge Deftones fan, although I\u2019m sure I\u2019m also biased by their first few albums as a nu-metal band, including that horrible \u201cShove It\u201d song that was inescapable when it came out. With the caveat that I haven\u2019t heard a ton of their stuff, this is the catchiest song of theirs I\u2019ve heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cloudkicker \u2013 Things You Can\u2019t Change.<\/strong> Cloudkicker is the side project of Ben Sharp, a commercial airline pilot (according to Wikipedia) who releases music on Bandcamp etc. for fun; I\u2019d never heard of him\/them until Riley from Thrice posted about the new stuff on Bluesky. This track is instrumental, very post-hardcore (like Thrice) but a little heavier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asymmetric Universe \u2013 Feather on a Glass. <\/strong>This is some seriously progressive metal, like Animals as Leaders type stuff, from a pair of Italian brothers who handle guitar and bass, combining some very heavy djent-ish metal grooves with melody lines from \u2013 I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m saying this \u2013 smooth jazz. It\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crypt Sermon \u2013 Only Ash and Dust. <\/strong>This Philly-based doom metal band returns with a four-song EP that they describe as an extension of last year\u2019s album The Stygian Rose<\/em>, with three new tracks and a cover of the title from black metal pioneers Mayhem\u2019s first album, retitled to change the word \u201cDom\u201d to \u201cDoom.\u201d (Mayhem sucks, as a band and especially as people, to be clear, but they were highly influential on their genre.) The EP\u2019s overall sound is more doom-plus, with some more energy and passages with quicker tempos compared to the LP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solid month for new music, but there\u2019s a lot more coming now that we\u2019re into fall, with Suede\u2019s latest dropping today to kick things off. As always, if you can\u2019t see the widget below, you can access the playlist here. Wolf Alice \u2013 White Horses. It\u2019s crazy that my favorite track from Wolf Alice\u2019s latest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1433,359,1191,167,757,852,1114],"class_list":["post-10944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2025-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-hip-hop-2","tag-indie","tag-metal","tag-music","tag-thrash","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10945,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10944\/revisions\/10945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}