Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0116 (August 8, 2025)

I started this week driving out of Asheville, NC through a mountain overpass and am ending it with being let go from my day job. Made it 9 years and 11 months, which by modern standards is a long time to be gainfully employed anywhere. Quite a journey, certainly not one for cowards. My badge gave up long before I could, and that header photo was taken from within the trash, where it belongs.

I’ll be alright for now. I guess I have a lot of free time as well, but I’m actively pursuing new opportunities (the jacuzzi isn’t going to fill itself … I hope not, at least). In any event, Heathen D rolls on, and I could use your support more than ever, so please do subscribe if you want to read me writing about new music and exhuming my body of critical works twice a week. I’m just that good. And I suppose I can use your $3 a month more than ever

Anxiety can be crippling, but it also makes one prepared for the worst, and as much as it wore on me I don’t feel all that bad about it. Still, if you have any suggestions on what I should do next in the app dev/product management space, get at me. A reader has already suggested Meals on Wheels, so pick something else.

Heathen Disco responds to submissions, so send in your music for evaluation: PO Box 25717, Chicago, IL 60625 USA // [email protected].

This week’s gratis review comes from a new Cleveland band. More after the jump.

APPLEJUICE We All Dissolve DL (self-released)

Another finger on the hand of Steven Peffer, the bard of Detroit Avenue, here configured with Cloud Nothings drummer Jayson Gerycz and guitarist Kevin Roche, who if it’s who I’m thinking of was Steve Roche’s brother in the band Off Minor, an ex-Saetia project around in the narrow window of my frequenting ABC No Rio, or this guy, seen brandishing a quantity of ganja big enough that I’d want to be in a band with him as well. It’s somewhat of a more measured, tangentially New Romantic take on what Peffer’s done recently in Peer Pressure Zombies (or way back in Razak Solar System), with a synth sweep to it and big cannon drums that resemble The Psychedelic Furs if “Dumb Waiters” or “Mr. Jones” were their most famous songs instead of “Pretty in Pink” or “Love My Way,” and Richard Butler’s vocals told you things instead of sang in the abstract. They even get the sax right (c/o Gerycz’s bandmate Dylan Baldi). The sound of wanting to be understood and seen, alive in Cleveland, for now. Very impressive work that’s of the same high quality as everything Peffer’s put his stamp on, and the most mid-‘80s outfit of his since Pleasure Leftists.