New Music Friday: Stream projects from Spirit of the Beehive, Fontaines D.C., Uniform, and more


Uniform. Photo by Josh Zucker


 

Every Friday, The FADER’s writers dive into the most exciting new projects released that week. Today, read our thoughts on Uniform’s American Standard, Fontaines D.C.’s Romance, Spirit of the Beehive’s You’ll Have To Lose Something and more.

Uniform: American Standard

New Music Friday: Stream projects from Spirit of the Beehive, Fontaines D.C., Uniform, and more

American Standard is the darkest album I’ve heard all year. The Brooklyn metal doomsayers have matched up pound for pound with some of the heaviest bands out there, splitting an album with The Body and bills with the likes of Thou and Panopticon; this record surpasses all of those band’s recent releases in heaviness by a mile. Weight is, in fact, a central topic to AS, a record that deals with Uniform frontman Mike Berdan’s struggle with bulimia. Its opening, title track is 21 minutes of direct confrontation with his disorder, delivered at first in a military call and response and then over mounting guitar, drums, and bass. The following three tracks are not nearly as long but are each titanic in their own right, building out the record’s nightmare universe. Uniform’s inclusion in this roundup conclusively marks the end of our Songs of the Summer week, and probably the summer in general. This fact holds true any way you slice it, but a more positive spin is also possible: If you live in New York, as Uniform do, August is often the hottest month of the year — the dog days, if you will. There’s a visceral catharsis in Berdan’s emotional purge that hints at a hard-won peace in the distance, peaking over the horizon line. — Raphael Helfand

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Fontaines D.C.: Romance

New Music Friday: Stream projects from Spirit of the Beehive, Fontaines D.C., Uniform, and more

Confident, playful, heartfelt, and filled with new discoveries; Fontaines D.C.’s fourth album marks a major step up for the Irish band. “Starburster” is perhaps the biggest swing, all swagger and cockiness with frontman Grian Chatten half-rapping his verses about a debilitating panic attack. The heavy riffs on “Here’s The Thing” and “Death Kink” both hit hard, too, but it’s the narcotized ballads that elevate the group’s fourth album. “Desire” sways into its dreamlike stagger, hazy but still profound. “Horseness Is The Whatness,” meanwhile, offers up tender meditation on new fatherhood and features a sample of Carlos O’Connell’s newborn baby’s heartbeat. Don’t be fooled by Fontaines D.C.’s newly fluorescent dye jobs and Korn name-dropping, Romance isn’t a Y2K reinvention as much as it is the band honing their stormy and poetic indie rock into arena-sized shapes. — David Renshaw

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Spirit of the Beehive: You’ll Have To Lose Something

New Music Friday: Stream projects from Spirit of the Beehive, Fontaines D.C., Uniform, and more

Spirit of the Beehive have a fascination with finality. Their last album, 2021’s Entertainment, Death, was a brilliant concept record imagining the collage rock band’s lives flashing before their eyes just before dying in a car accident. You’ll Have To Lose Something, the Philly trio’s follow-up, almost didn’t happen, after bandmates Rivka Ravede and Zack Schwartz ended a decade-long relationship; instead, they decided to write a breakup album. From that precipice, the band return with You’ll Have To Lose Something, a project that dives into their appreciation for pop. By amplifying the accessible sounds that were always present in their discography, Spirit of the Beehive make the surrounding disruptions feel even stranger, more unsettling. You’ll Have To Lose Something is the sound of the band unlocking a cheat code to realize its full potential, creating a playlist from the rock radio station of your last fever dream. — Jordan Darville

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Body Meat: Starchris

New Music Friday: Stream projects from Spirit of the Beehive, Fontaines D.C., Uniform, and more

On his solo debut, Starchris, Body Meat’s Chris Taylor is a chaotic and captivating storyteller, recounting the ancient lore of an RPG hero’s journey towards self-realization. Every chapter brings him one step closer to his goal: there’s “High Beams’” frenzied boss battle, fought through aggressive redlining and nü metal-trap; the brief-lived calm of “North Side,” where tsk-ing tongues and R&B-indebted crescendos suddenly explode into a dialogue between a shrill hyperpop glitch and dancehall-inflected rap; and the paranoid reckoning of “Electrische’s” dutty wine-style delivery and the percussive trot of a deconstructed Jersey club beat. Moments of catharsis and sheer clarity that cut through the hostile, head-spinning noise, like “Crystalize,” where Taylor shuffles through brief moments of clipped bass and warped IDM until, finally, there’s a sublime moment of understanding. — Sandra Song

Hear it: Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

Other projects out that you should listen to

Babyface Ray: The Kid That Did
Benny the Butcher: Buffalo Butch, Vol. 1
Body Meat: Starchris
Cash Cobain: Play Cash Cobain
Closebye: Hammer of My Own
Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd: The Moon and the Melodies (2024 Remaster)
EBK Jaaybo: The Reaper
Fake Fruit: Mucho Mistrust
Geneva Jacuzzi: Triple Fire
The Get Up Kids: Something to Write Home About (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
Gift: Illuminator
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings: Woodland
Heems: Veena
Illuminati Hotties: Power
Ivy Lab: Infinite Falling Ground Pt. 2
J. Mamana: For Every Set of Eyes
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma:A Bell That Never Stops Ringing
Joe P: Garden State Vampire
Ka: The Thief Next To Jesus
Laurie Anderson: Amelia
Lo Borges: Tobogã
Luh Tyler: Mr. Skii
Luna Li: When A Thought Grows Wings
Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Disk
Melt-Banana: 3+5
Mura Masa: Curve 1
Myke Towers: La Pantera Negra
Nicole Miglis: Myopia
rydglek: гряды тумана
Sabrina Carpenter: Short n’ Sweet
Sofi Tucker: Bread
The Softies: The Bed I Made
Susanna: Meditations On Love
Throbbing Gristle: TGCD1
Throbbing Gristle: The Third Mind Movements
Turich Benjy: Something Out the Bleu
Umberto: Black Bile
Wayne Shorter: Celebration, Volume 1