Heather

5. Fly By Midnight – Fastest Times of Our Lives



From the very first few seconds of Fly By Midnight’s Fastest Times of Our Lives, it’s obvious what the duo excels at. With a glittering synthesizer riff, an explosive simultaneous rush of vocals and percussion and acoustic guitar, Justin Bryte and Slavo quickly establish that they’re masters of a good pop song. Fastest Times is a bulletproof collection of eleven straight-up bangers.

Each song is immaculately crafted, with hooks building on top of and between each other; there’s not a second of dead space on the album. Every opportunity to add interest into a song was taken, with percussive flourishes, ad-libbed backing vocals, vocal processing and guitar solos creating a cascade of catchy moments that would be overwhelming if not for the fact that they’re perfectly crafted and cohesive. Bryte and Slavo have perfectly complementary instincts as vocalists, passing hook duties between each other seamlessly and girding each melody with airy double-tracked vocals.


Tracks to Try: “The Weather”, “Superfine”, “Loveland”

4. Ethel Cain - Perverts

What would you give up to feel good? Your health, your sanity, your loved ones, your relationship with God? Ethel Cain’s early 2025 release makes a haunted house of pleasure, filling each room with unease, horror and alienation. Cain leans away from the synthpop of “American Teenager”, which introduced her to the majority of her audience and from the dense mythology of her runaway human sacrifice story that anchored her first album; instead, Cain leaned into her Grouper, Edward Gorey and Chelsea Wolfe influences, putting together a dense, experimental ambient album that indulges in the dark side of self-satisfaction, pleasure by way of corruption.

Perverts is intentionally off-putting and challenging, as oppressive as it is melancholy, stewing with malevolence. Drones distort and grind; vocal samples stubbornly refuse to become intelligible; a hurdy-gurdy whines for almost fifteen minutes straight. The soundscapes are simultaneously dense and claustrophobic, like marinating in anxiety. Aside from a distorted sample of “Nearer My God to Thee” at the beginning of the album, it’s almost fifteen minutes before there’s any singing, and what melodies do exist are impressionistic, simple and repetitive.

Thematically, Cain’s compositions are vignettes tied together by the idea of corrosive self-indulgence. “Punish”, the lead single, comes from the perspective of a pedophile who sees their abusive desires as a form of being “punished by love.” “Onanist” and the title track linger in the sense of isolation and shame that masturbation in a stifling religious community engenders. Closing track “Amber Waves” is a devastating slowcore ballad about choosing drugs over loved ones. There’s no transcendence in love, but instead, suffocation; the repeated “I love you”s on “Housofpsychoticwomn” sound less like promises and more like a threat to consume and possess.

And yet, for as smothering as the music is, the actual experience of listening to Perverts isn’t brutal. There are enough moments of warmth or release to keep the project from being a miserable slog. “Vacillator” is warm and tender with a swaying melody, one of the most meditative and lovely tracks of the year. “Etienne” includes a spoken vignette about feeling so good that one can escape suicide. “Amber Waves” aches and groans with stately elegance. Even in the murkier instrumental tracks, there are moments where notes clarify themselves or leitmotifs become hymnal. For fans of ambient, drone or slowcore, Perverts is a rewarding project to spend time with. Enter if you dare.

Tracks to Try: “Housofpsychoticwomn”, “Vacillator”, “Amber Waves”

3. JADE - THAT’S SHOWBIZ, BABY!

Tracks to Try: “Angel of My Dreams”, “Plastic Box”, “FUFN (Fuck You For Now)”

2. The Antlers - Blight

After over a decade of crafting

The Antlers have always honeyed their medicine, and Blight is no exception. It’s a lovely album, hushed and gentle and internal, held together with simple melodies and motifs. The percussion in particular has the delicate Antlers sensibility, all shimmery cymbals and drum brushes. The tenderness of the music is critical, because anything harsher would turn Silberman’s take-no-prisoners introspection into castigation. The few moments on the album where the prettiness gives way to a wall of sound are already difficult enough to bear.

Plenty of music rages about taking paradise and turning it into parking lots. It’s much rarer to find music that asks what we’re doing to make those parking lots so profitable.

Tracks to Try: “Carnage”, “Deactivate”, “A Great Flood”

1. Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You

Tracks to Try: “Nettles”, “Fuck Me Eyes”, “Dust Bowl”