Melody on Music: Bandmates

Melody on Music is Pop Heist's regular roundup of new releases from across the spectrum of recorded sound. Here, music critic Melody Esme singles out the most noteworthy drops, from major releases to hidden gems. Consider adding these to your rotation — and if you give them a spin, let us know what you think on Bluesky.

Lucy Dacus: Forever is a Feeling [Geffen]

Before Boygenius knocked my socks off, I fell in love with Dacus through her cover of "Lips of an Angel," in which she turned one of the worst songs ever made into a great one just by being herself (and, crucially, sapphic — what cheatin' song wouldn't be improved by throwing some wlw into the mix?). So, already sold on her ability to translate schmaltz into something palpable, I was able to brush past my initial reservations with the orchestration that threatens to swallow some of these songs and arrive at the romantic truths throughout. Most strikingly: "If the Devil's in the details/Then God is in the gap in your teeth/You are doing the Lord's work/Every time you smile at me." She asks "Do I make you nervous?," as breathy and flirtatious as Jennifer Tilly when she asks Gina Gershon the same question in Bound, then arrives at, "If you come reapin', I'll come runnin', I still know what you like." "Take me like you do in your dreams" is fantasy, "This is bliss/This is Hell/Forever is a feeling/And I know it well" is reality, and "Best Guess" is what happens when the two converge: "I don't wanna be fine/I want you." A beautiful, achingly sexy tribute to roads traversed, leading to (one can hope) everlasting love. It helps that the rhythm section is killing it every step of the way, the drum sound punchy without getting in the way of the feathery tone Dacus carefully maintains — a tone even Hozier can't fully hinder, despite his efforts. A-

Julien Baker & TORRES: Send a Prayer My Way [Matador]

Smaller in scale than Dacus' album, as well as in form and text, this low-key collab centers on the lingering religious trauma of two queer people raised in the Bible Belt. A little funny that the album dealing with romantic anxieties giving way to euphoria is more heightened than the album about fearing the eternal, but suffering quietly — usually with a bottle — is how it ordinarily goes with demons of this nature. When Baker and TORRES sing "I lost my faith" several times before closing the same song with "Oh God, don't let me die here/At the bottom of a bottle," I can't help but raise my glass, as an atheist and occasional problem drinker who's sobbed to her therapist about her lifelong fear of Hell. On the best track, "Tuesday," TORRES gets detailed, telling of their teenage crush on the title character that, by way of typical Christian shame, leads them to self-harm. If nothing else, they know that whatever created them made them far stronger than any bigot justifying mindless hatred through God. A-

Ex-Vöid: In Love Again [Tapete]

Joanna Gruesome were a noisy band from Wales who formed in 2010, released two albums, had to replace lead singer Lan McArdle after they left for mental health reasons, and then split in 2017. They had a great name and records that lived up to it, producing some of the best lo-fi power-pop-punk the mid-2010s had to offer. Ex-Vöid is one of two groups formed by members after the disbanding, with JG's dual vocalists McArdle and Owen Williams continuing on, likely knowing they're each other's secret weapon (so long as Williams is backgrounded; I'll get to that). Here, they follow their songful instincts wherever they lead and wind up with the true power pop album they've always had in them — so confidently crafted you hardly notice that McArdle and Williams never stopped being lo-fi. The guitars shimmer, the harmonies ascend, and they keep the basslines as present as you'd hope. McArdle frequently reminds me of Katie Crutchfield and they sing Lucinda Williams as beautifully as she does. True, they may not have a "Starry Eyes" in them. But The Records only had one, and this band comes close more often than The Records ever did. A-

The Tubs: Cotton Crown [Trouble in Mind]

This group was formed a year after Joanna Gruesome disbanded by two of its former members (Owen Williams, again, and George Nicholls), with JG bassist Max Warren joining them and McArdle often providing backing vocals. So it would seem that the split was about as non-relationship-destroying as band breakups get, and you can hear this in the harmonic way the playing comes together. On both 2023's Dead Meat and this sophomore outing, the band jangles as hard as The Chills and The Housemartins. But with Williams front and center, some of the most convincing Rickenbacker twang in years can only do so much to salvage a singing voice that sounds like a European Michael Stipe with extra vocal quiver (when it doesn't sound like Fred Schneider if he had crippling stage fright). Maybe the Welsh should let Athens be. B

Jason Isbell: Foxes in the Snow [Southeastern]

No more a straight divorce album than Blood on the Tracks, unless you're really inclined to stretch "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" and "Wind Behind the Rain" into shapes that suit your thesis. But that's the more engaging narrative, and Isbell's one-man acoustic-strummin' approach here has the feel of an exorcism, even when he's singing about his current relationship instead of the one that fell apart. And anyway, the divorce songs are the meatiest, so let's go with that. "I'm sorry the love songs all mean different things today" seems pretty crushing, before the dual climaxes — the bittersweet "Good While It Lasted" and the anguished "True Believer" — show you what pain really sounds like. The love songs offer some breathing room, but when he uses the word "disassemble" to describe what she does to him at night, I'm reminded of the earlier "I was a gravelweed and I needed you to raise me" and I start to wince. A-

Patterson Hood: Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams [ATO]

Hood's best batch of songs in over a decade coalesce into a sort of Southern Gothic short story collection, with arrangements to match (eerie horns and strings are aplenty). It opens with a natural disaster, described in biblical proportions, and then things start getting serious. "The Forks of Cypress" may be a murder ballad in disguise, but seeing how it takes place near an old plantation, the rot is already rooted underneath whatever events transpire. Everything here is haunted, from a pool house where a man hung himself to a place called Last Hope, which may be a literal town or merely a state of being — easier to get into than to get out of. Hood mourns the blissful ignorance his closed eyes granted him, but embraces the knowing, unable to look away from either the history or the present state of cruelty it's brought us to — elders abused, disabled children unsupported, and systems of brutal oppression maintained. "Sometimes there's no coming back from your fears realized" is a truth we all have to reckon with eventually. A-

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