Brian Shultz

The Twilight Sad Nobody Wants To Be Here And Nobody Wants To Leave The Twilight Sad have been plugging away for more than a decade, amassing a sizable catalog that's progressed from the sort of autumnal, patient anguish practiced by their Scottish contemporaries Frightened Rabbit, forth towards darker, drawn-out and noise-ratcheted shoegazey catharsis, and then […]

Somos/Sorority Noise Split EP Both bands on this split EP released full-lengths earlier this year, and while one regresses ever-so-slightly from their album and the other improves, they may not meet in the middle anytime soon. Somos start it with a pair of tracks that may not be quite as good as the material from […]

Pianos Become The Teeth Keep You It's well-documented how Pianos Become The Teeth frontman Kyle Durfey has grappled with the loss of his father over the course of several albums. Even if the band weren't releasing records in the internet age where this information is freely disseminated among fans, it wouldn't take a crack reporter […]

Iceage Plowing Into The Field Of Love Copenhagen's Iceage gained a certain reputation and divided reaction with the reckless, snotty abandon they approached their first two albums with, 2011's New Brigade and last year's You're Nothing. In truth, though, it sounded like they were merely slurring their way through abstract, noisy compositions that skirted newly […]

The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die Between Bodies EP This nearly half-hour-long EP starts out incredibly promising. Experimental, atmospheric emo ensemble the World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die open “blank#8” (the title hinting it might be a prelude to the […]

Henrietta The Trick Is Not Minding It took six years for Orlando, Florida, act Henrietta to cobble enough songs together to comprise a proper full-length, but you can hear why they waited. The Trick Is Not Minding definitely sounds like an easy record to file with emo revival at times, but the band often sound […]

Holy Tongues Weak People The title of Holy Tongues' Weak People tells no lie: On the trio's first full-length, there are a host of characters all dealing very poorly with various issues. On opener “Pale Light,” it's proclaimed, “There's no hope at the end of the days.” If someone's not succumbing to desolation, they might be self-deprecating, […]

Punch They Don’t Have To Believe They Don't Have To Believe is the best tightly wound ball of rage and righteous indignation Bay Area hardcore act Punch have produced yet, following two searingly intense full-lengths and a 2011 EP that raised the stakes on the band's catch-all approach to the style. After meshing together youth […]

Chris Staples American Soft American Soft's title could very well be a self-effacing shot at Chris Staples' own musical history of heartbroken indie/emo-rock (twothirtyeight, Discover America), especially given the stripped-down, largely acoustic nature of this, his first bona fide solo venture on Barsuk Records. But even if American Soft wasn't charismatic and sly enough to […]