Spring has sprung, as has a new edition of Stop, Rock, & Roll! There was a shower of new tunes in April and March; here are five you should give a listen!
The Keegan Turner Band – “Out of Luck”
The newest single from indie rock combo The Keegan Turner Band finds the group at their most energetic and self-assured to date. A driving beat sends the listener careening through a modern take on The Rolling Stones with a touch of Eagles thrown in. Featuring tight production, spacious vocal harmonies, and a blistering guitar solo, the band’s first song in over a year shows that they haven’t missed a beat.
Survivors of the Kraken – “Second Time Around”
Groovy funk meets space-age psychedelia on this song, a choice cut off SOTK’s debut album Amid Life Crises. While some funk tends to feel a bit languid, this song gives it some speed and danceability. The guitars move from staccato stabs to crunchy waves with ease as synths drip in the background, giving the song a cosmic air. Towards the end, the skies open and a majestic guitar howls at the moon before the repeated title brings the song to a close.
Vertigo – “Own Your Shame”
Vertigo continues to defy any semblance of convention by doubling down on their heady mixture of metal, grunge, and alternative rock. This song, however, finds the band not-so-subtly courting the former, with the murkiest riffs and loudest screams they’ve showcased thus far. However, the verses continue to evoke the spacious, ominous psychedelia of their previous singles, as swampy bass and thundering drums support spooky vocal harmonies and guitar that sounds straight out of a Cure song from your nightmares.
Aloe – “Never Understanding”
Pop duo Aloe have emerged onto the scene with their debut single, and it immediately stuck out as something unique in Rhode Island music. Too polished to be lo-fi but too sparse to be full blown pop, “Never Understanding” finds a perfect spot somewhere in the middle. Synth pads buoy a mixture of movie samples and luscious vocals with a distant, reverb-soaked trumpet line acting as the cherry on top of this thoroughly enjoyable song.
The McAdams Brothers – “Is This Everything?”
With acoustic guitars and hand percussion, the new single by The McAdams Brothers immediately brings a rustic feel to the table. Things slowly build as bass and minimalist drumming are brought into the fold, and the picture takes its full shape as multiple ethereal vocal harmonies bleed into multiple repetitions of the title, adding a greater sense of weight to the question posed. If the band America was caught in the middle of both a fixation on the Beach Boys and an existential crisis, this would undoubtedly be the result.
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