Bethlehem Steel is a force. Yes, they’re punk, and yes, they’re loud but the members of Bethlehem Steel perform with purpose and propulsion. Listen to “Fake Sweater,” a cut from the group’s split with Porky near the end of 2018, for reference. The classic alt-rock loud-soft dynamic establishes the song but it’s the howling bridge section in which the members yell at the seeming brink of desperation “will I be alright?” that earns a need for repeated listens. You can see Bethlehem Steel next at Bowery Ballroom when the band opens for Big Ups’ final show. – Cameron Carr

The music on Someday Cowboy, the debut album by Baby Jey, is catchy, familiar even, so it’s tough to explain what makes categorizing it so hard. Certainly, the Brooklyn via Edmonton group could be labelled country or Americana—take the opening lap steel guitar-driven folk of “Hannah Holliday’s Son” or the twangy ballad “Every Thing”—but there’s an almost kitsch (semi-)modern pop element, perhaps best summed up by the aptly titled “Someday My Space Cowboy Will Come” which features ‘80s synths, heavily produced drums, and lyrics about a space cowboy. The mixture is almost funny, almost overly earnest with hints of Paul Simon’s eclecticism and Father John Misty’s retro quirks. The result is charming and odd yet accessible. Take a listen to Someday Cowboy below. – Cameron Carr

Bethlehem Steel is a force. Yes, they’re punk, and yes, they’re loud but the members of Bethlehem Steel perform with purpose and propulsion. Listen to “Fake Sweater,” a cut from the group’s split with Porky near the end of 2018, for reference. The classic alt-rock loud-soft dynamic establishes the song but it’s the howling bridge section in which the members yell at the seeming brink of desperation “will I be alright?” that earns a need for repeated listens. You can see Bethlehem Steel next at Bowery Ballroom when the band opens for Big Ups’ final show. – Cameron Carr

We’ll be honest with you: these days, punk revival is not a kind of music that makes us fall over ourselves. The genre, in most cases, comes across as a stale rehashing of a rudimental style that has lost its true revolutionary meaning. But… that’s just a theoretical statement that completely falls apart the moment you stumble upon a record like Flower’s self-titled EP – because real, powerful music, is stronger than trends and abstract theories about how dead a genre is. 
Flower plays unapologetic, ultra-fast hardcore punk. And since real punk is always a political statement, their record feels like a perfectly appropriate aural retribution for the people that have given us the horrifying political spectacle the US has been witnessing. The brutally explosive songs on this record should be played live in the US Congress, to express the only possible rebuttal to the farce American politics have become, as some sort of cathartic ritual that – in the best tradition of ancient Greece – will somehow purify souls through art and partying, and prepare for a new beginning. 
What’s most impressive about this band is its incredible tightness at the basis of their relentless and furious energy, something that’s truly hard to pull off from an instrumental standpoint. But it’s the convulsive and possessed high pitch vocals (reminiscent of early Pixies and Rage Against the Machine, but even more intense) that connect directly to our inner instincts, bypassing our rational filters and triggering what rock’n’roll is supposed to trigger: an incontrollable desire for rebellion.

NYC’s indie crooner Vlad Holiday at the beginning of December released new single Artifical Paradise (streaming) and announced official participation in the SXSW 2019 festival. The track is a slow burning ballad that highlights Holiday’s expressive tenor, which in this song reaches flirtacious levels of purring that would impress even the horniest of cats. And that’s kind of appropriate, since the song is a rather explicit invitation to mind blowing sex (hence the title) based on a plodding, sparse electric arrangement accentuated by a restrained brass section. NYC fans will be able to test Vlad’s magnetism in person when he’ll perform live at Mercury Lounge on January 29th.

Psych rock is a genre that can encompass a spectrum of sounds ranging from pop-oriented songs to less-defined and at times downright chaotic jams. Risen to semi-celebrity status in NYC through busking in the subway to the tune of songs by the Beatles, Rockaway Beach, New York’s Blac Rabbit create music that falls in the former category, with precise song structures and thoughtful lyrical content. What bridges those extreme ends is a like-minded penchant for phased guitar textures and dreamy introspection. After impressing with their debut 6 track EP a year ago, the band recently released new single “Seize The Day” (streaming below) from their forthcoming record "Interstella," due out in early 2019. While their debut record made no apologies for its floating Tame Impala influences, this new track comes on with a heavier edge. An angular guitar riff drives everything forward in tandem with more forceful drumming. While vocals are bathed in effects associated with the psychedelic experience, lyrics speak to being more grounded. Rather than “living in a cloud,” instead “I’m living my life loud,” and how “once you seize the day, you’ll wonder why your feet have left the ground.” The band ring in the new year by headlining two shows at The Mercury Lounge on 12/30 and 12/31. – Dave Cromwell

Our sister blog Delicious Audio asked Blac Rabbit a few questions about their musical influences, gear and the creative process here.

Brooklyn’s The Sharp Shadows play a rare blend of pop-punk mixed with post-punk, two genres that are propelled by anthitetical forces (speed+melody and tension+experimentation) but that have cohabitated some records of the late ’70s – the first two XTC records and the punkier tunes by early The Police come to mind. In tracks like "Why Don’t You Do It?" and "Push Push Push" edgy and tense backing tracks are charged with the speed and energy typical of punk and resolved following pop canons, in part reminiscent of the elegant melodies of Elvis Costello. The power trio has been active since 2013 and released their latest album "Lessons" in August 2018; they will perform live at Alphaville on December 30th.

Hip hop collective Poetic Thrust, recent winner of our NYC Artist of the Month Poll, will be celebrating the release of their new EP at Elsewhere’s Zone One on 01.12. This group is among the few hip hop acts that play fully live, a genre normally relying on beats played through a turntable or an electronic device. You can listen to their 2018 single "Salty" below.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Allston, and 23 of the area’s best bands have joined together to celebrate with a compilation. Now in its fourth run, A Very Allston Christmas is a perfect blend of classic and cool. Magic Magic, who have participated in every installment of the series, kick off volume four with a warm, lo-fi cover of "It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas." What they take away from the classic version in their stripped-down vocals and harmonies, they add in new 8-bit-adjacent sounds. Other highlights from the compilation include Holiday Music‘s "Family Tree," School Shoes‘ "In The Bleak Midwinter," and Eggy Benedict‘s "Christmas Always Makes Me Cry." The compilation is available for purchase on Bandcamp, and all of the proceeds will go towards Bridge Over Troubled Waters — a Boston-based organization devoted to providing necessary services to at-risk, homeless, and runaway youth. – Lilly Milman

Shake the rust off some tired old tracks and discover some new ones with A Very Allston Christmas Vol. 4 below. 

The Clouds, the newest single by New York’s Wooing, is a release that feels not of this time. Through frontwoman and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Trachtenburg’s haunting vocals, softly commanded against echoing pedal-laden guitar lines, the band crafts a soundscape that feels both vintage and otherworldly, as if Motown existed in a universe of David Lynch’s making. Even the opening lyrics on “Could Have Been” implore feelings of a disconnect, as Trachtenburg (previously in Supercute! and Prettiots) paints surrealist landscapes wherein she “went to the moon, [and] saw your head up in the clouds” as an eerie, theremin-like sound wanders behind her. Between “Could Have Been” and b-side “In Her Head,” Wooing have stumbled upon visions of the subconscious that could be either dreams or nightmares, but they are captivatingly engrossing nonetheless. – Connor Beckett McInerney (@b_ck_tt)

If you are stuck with the notion that emo has become the unbearably whiny expression of spoiled suburban kids, enter Boston’s Bay Faction (who recently relocated to the NYC area) and  think again. Their 2015 three-track debut EP clearly carries the genre’s DNA, but slows down its BPM by a lot, makes a discreet if not spare use of distorted guitars, and puts a lot of sincere heart in it. Those early tracks resonated with a lot of kids and gathered over a million plays on Spotify, and so did following single Pendulum, dropped in 2017. After a dragged out recording process, the band is now ready to release their debut LP Florida Guilt, a record that expands the group’s sonic palette with a more varied production, without betraying the core qualities of their music. The first single It’s Perfect, streaming below, is to date their fastest and most driven track, but still stylistically hybrid, with the inwardly tortured voice of singer James McDermott adding oozes of character to vague lyrics related to the struggles of dating. The record is already available on Spotify, and fans of Pingrove and Forth Wanderers (two other bands that are taking emo in new directions) should definitely check it out.
Don’t miss the band’s release show at Elsewhere on December 21st. – Photo by Sam Colby

Earlier this year, Queue released “Float Away,” a single that accurately sums up the band both in sound and name. The melody seems to glimmer through a mist with reverberant guitar echoing alongside airy vocal harmonies. “Float Away” was the first track the band released after finding a united home in New York, members previously spread out across Philadelphia and D.C. It’s safe to expect a fair bit more from Queue in 2019 with the group currently spending time recording at Brooklyn’s Degraw Studios. But you can catch the band early in the year opening for CUTTS at Mercury Lounge on January 3. – Cameron Carr