Is this the only music newsletter on Beehiiv? (Purple Vu excluded.) All the cool newsletters are feeding off each other and I’m here with all the AI boosters. If you’re writing, let me know and I’ll check it out and hype you up here, and maybe you do the same. I got here before Ghost or Buttondown really took off (I followed Garbage Day over) and writing these two + listening to all this music takes up the bulk of my free time. You’ll have to show me where to go.

I’ll show you where to go with these five wholly brilliant new releases. You’ll love where these take you.

If you have music you want me to cover, don’t guess that I’ll find it. Send it in: PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA // [email protected]. If you ask me where to send it I know you’re not reading and will be predisposed to IGNORE YOU. And that’s cool because there’s a lot going on here (and Purple Vu’s reissue roundup is around the corner, just waiting for a few deliveries to seal it).

And tell your friends. Nobody’s got this lift. I’m your guy.

This new Gun Outfit is remarkable. Out this Friday, get it how u live.

GUN OUTFIT Process and Reality 2xLP (Upset the Rhythm)

Cooked up in the desert as the forests burned, Gun Outfit – a fantastic band in every iteration since their mid-‘00s starts up in Olympia – continues walking through the valley across a double album as ranging as their vision. If this truly was sitting in the can since 2020, the world and its outlets, including every US label that passed on this for overseas champs UTR to handle – are more fucked than we may know, especially since the core trio lineup has grown to accommodate equal talents in their own light (Kayla Cohen of/as Itasca on bass, and Amps for Christ/(Man Is The) Bastard (Noise) (Collective)/Charred Remains circuit bender Henry Barnes), with guest contributions from The Curtains/Cryptacize/solo artist Chris Cohen and Danny Sasaki who I once saw retrieve and re-apply a contact lens from the Mercury Lounge stage during an Enemymine set, and you can divine every level this unit is playing on: brutally alone bad-ass lonelies (“Lifelong Sellout,” growing from Dylan Sharp’s placid baritone to a 20-foot-tall roar across ten minutes), Great Society-esque Haight candle dippers (“Cherry Blossoms in Leschi”), lithe folk-psych toetappers (“Don’t Remind Me”), Barnes’ crustified solo signal shred (“Season of the Wish”) and elsewhere all those longhair nuggets and stray beams of sunlight bustin’ through the windows, a housecat basking in its warmth no matter what it’s like outside. Throughout these 19 tracks we get this incredible map that we can follow as listeners in any number of directions while still staying whisper-close to the unit, unhurried and proud, a story that never seems to end. Truly a new level of engagement going on here, distant but by no means a memory. They’ve been here powering stray hopes for 20 years or so and deserve your attention and respect.

Attack the zone below with a paid subscription. This music isn’t discovering itself!