My Week In Music: 23-27 June

New releases from Hotline TNT, Yungblud, Haim, Ratso and (ugh) Benson Boone, plus a look back at White Zombie's Astro-Creep 2000.

A side note: given how high profile it is, you might be asking yourself ‘where is the Lorde review?!’ - and the answer is that I prefer to give myself a bit of time to check the records I review out a few times before putting pen to paper (or cursor to screen). Lorde will be here as part of next week’s My Week In Music.

---

IDOLS (released: 20/06/2025)
Yungblud

I first became aware of Yungblud after an appearance on the relaunched Never Mind The Buzzcocks; I was surprised by how personable he was and assumed (wrongly) based on his look and his name that he was some kind of hip-hop artist. And then I never thought of him again.

Well, until a couple of years ago when I heard a song of his and was pleasantly surprised; the song was the anthemic dance-rock track “The Funeral”, the opening track from 2022’s self-titled record.

Fast forward to this week and now I’m listening to his fourth album Idols, and doing a double take when I realise the opener is another anthemic rock-pop epic that clocks in at over 9 minutes, somehow working in the sound of everything from Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath to latter day Paramore, and ends with an extended acoustic guitar outro that brings to mind Oasis.

This, it turns out, is intentional. Yungblud - real name Dominic Harrison - is making a shift in style, focusing on cohesion, and taking influence from the Britpop scene of the 1990s and 2000s. Idols is the first of two planned albums.

And so the record continues; “Lovesick Lullaby” is a little bit funky and a little bit Blur, single “Zombie” is a solid track that brings to mind Hoobastank’s “The Reason” (or maybe that’s just on my mind because of Rob Harvilla’s 60 Songs That Explain The 90s Colon The 2000s). It’s all pretty good, to be honest, as Yungblud jumps from ballad to pop to rock and back again.

But it is also a little bit derivative, like Yungblud has thrown a bunch of his favourite artists - Oasis, Primal Scream, Kasabian, Blur - in a blender and wrote down what ever came out.

And nothing else on the album is as unhinged and as interesting as that opening track, “Hello Heaven, Hello”. Yungblud has a helluva voice and he clearly aspires to the Freddie Mercury tier of musician. He also seems to be willing to change and grow. Now is the time to take a few chances, insert your own style, and see what comes out when you’re in the blender too. It might just be great.

---

RASPBERRY MOON (released: 20/06/2025)
Hotline TNT

The opening chords of “Was I Wrong?” immediately had me smiling: it opens with a few stray notes on the guitar, before they come together into tune like the start of an orchestral performance, a nod to the fact that Raspberry Moon is their most collaborative album to date, before Will Anderson’s voice breaks through over an acoustic guitar, singing ‘was I wrong / or did you sing my song?’.

Based in New York City, Hotline TNT started as a passion project for Anderson, who recorded their first few EPs at home using GarageBand and without any guitar amps or live drums, before endeavouring to record their debut, Nineteen In Love, during the pandemic, eventually releasing it as one long video on YouTube in late 2021. A second album, Cartwheel, followed in 2023.

Anderson toured the songs with a rotating lineup of musicians to replicate the large wall-of-sound approach of his work. However, while touring for Cartwheel, Anderson decided to expand the band out to four members and have them prominently involved as permanent members and song writers. As a result, two thirds of the album are credited to all four members.

After opener “Was I Wrong?”, the album flows through a couple of big sounding transitions, including the dense “The Scene”, before heading in to first single “Julia’s War”, a track which boasts a really heavy mix but has the musical tenor of a much more optimistic track than it eventually turns out to be.

Hotline TNT are shoegazey for the most part, lots of layered guitars and a thrumming bassline underlining everything. The tracks also benefit from a live drummer, Mike Ralston, who has been with Anderson since touring began for Cartwheel. That experience means he has a handle on the work, turning in some great performances on “Letter To Heaven” and “Candle”, and sitting right in the pocket for the entirety of the album.

As a whole, I think Raspberry Moon is Hotline TNT’s best album to date, like its a realisation of Anderson’s vision writ large - the playing is more varied, it feels more organic, and the songs are great throughout behind highlights like “Julia’s War” and “Dance The Night Away”. I’m looking forward to the next one now.

---

But wait, there’s more!

I QUIT (released: 20/06/2025)
Haim

This is a weird thing to say about an album that is following up one that was nominated for a Grammy, but I Quit is a better album overall than Women In Music Pt III. There, I’ve said it now.

Or maybe its just more in my wheelhouse than their earlier effort. I found I Quit a thoroughly enjoyable rock/pop record that is consistently entertaining, and remarkably cohesive in sound - even as it works in George Michael’s “Freedom” to the opening track (“Gone) and U2’s “Numb” to the closer (“Now It’s Time”).

In between, we find the members of Haim in fine form. “All Over Me” rocks hard in the bridge, “Down To Be Wrong” is a stadium ready anthem, “The Farm” slows down and features some of best vocals here. Vampire Weekend member and regular Haim collaborator Rostam Batmanglij is also heavily involved, serving as producer and contributing instrumentals to most tracks. I really liked this album, my favourite from Haim since their debut Days Are Gone.

AMERICAN HEART (released: 20/06/2025)
Benson Boone

I’m not going to say much about this one. I don’t want to add to the pile-on, honestly, because everything bad has already been said.

Instead, I’ll just say that I was disappointed. After hearing Boone over the last year and a half, and seeing his headlining performance at Coachella this year, I thought maybe his second album would find him taking a bit of a leap. Instead, American Heart is something of a step backward. Maybe two. It’s bland, it doesn’t have the same heart about it as a song like “In The Stars”, and I think it suffers from a fairly shoddy mix, which makes sense in the context of a rushed sophomore record. I think Boone is capable of better. If he survives this cycle.

CURSE EP (released: 20/06/2025)
Unknown Mortal Orchestra

I am Chris’ broken heart.

I got really excited when I heard the single “Boys With The Characteristics Of Wolves” because I thought maybe UMO were moving a bit closer to my own tastes; they’ve always been a band that I thought were good, but always a few degrees off my own musical compass. That new single is probably my favourite song they’ve released since “So Good At Being In Trouble”.

It dismays me then to report that the rest of the Curse EP doesn’t capture whatever it was on that first single. The songs here are pretty good but any nuance gets lost behind a lo-fi mix that kind of just muddies everything. “Death Comes From The Sky” is as close as the EP gets to another great song. Sigh.

(Note for songwriters: if your album is lo-fi because that is as good as you can make it sound, great. But if you can afford to make your album sound better, and you’re an established band who has always sounded better, maybe think about doing that instead. Scaling down to a lo-fi sound is like taking a 320p Youtube video and blowing it up to 8K resolution.)

FUCK.RATSO (released: 13/06/2025)
Ratso

With an experienced line-up featuring Jake “English Jake” Harding, formerly of The D4, and Kiwi luminary John Baker, its no surprised that Ratso play themselves as cynics, releasing an album named (and handing out placards at gigs that read) Fuck Ratso, and that they specialise in a high speed form of post-punk rock music that is fun and entertaining and energetic.

FUCK.Ratso is a scant 43 minutes, but it flies by in a moment or two after opener “Like Caine” and its call-and-response hook (‘c’mon everybody / everybody lets go’), through the AC/DC evoking “Kill The King”, through to blistering closer “Hurricane”. There are moments of genuine musical brilliance here too; “Loose End” features an extended guitar harmonic period, while tracks like “Gimme A Smile” and “Space” show the band for the tight and dynamic musicians they are.

I really enjoyed this album; now keeping an eye out for live dates in my town.

---

Also released this week:

• Given its title, Jazmine Mary's I Want To Rock And Roll is surprisingly lacking in rock and/or roll - but it is fairly good for what it is.

• I got a huge case of uncanny valley just from the accents on Onefour's Look At Me Now, but it is a really well made album.

• British hip-hop auteur Loyle Carner's hopefully ! is really well made, but I couldn’t get too excited about it sadly.

• Matmos's Metallic Life Review is made entirely from sounds made from metallic objects, making it a curious but ultimately unsatisfying listen.

• I enjoyed Yaya Bey's Do It Afraid in a ‘play it while I work’ kind of way, but found myself less interested whenever I focused on it.

• S.G. Goodman's Planting By The Signs is solid, but I found it too much like other artists whose work I’ve enjoyed more (Wednesday, for example).

---

Happy Birthday!

ASTRO-CREEP: 2000 (released: 1995)
White Zombie

The full title of White Zombie’s magnum opus is actually Astro-Creep: 2000 – Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head and that about sums up the confusing nature of White Zombie’s career.

I found White Zombie based on this album, an industrial groove metal album that featured the hit single “More Human Than Human”, a song that I now know is completely unremarkable except for the female orgasm at the beginning.

Snark aside, the album is actually pretty good: “Super Charger Heaven” is catchy as hell, the two part “Electric Head” gets your head banging, and closer “Blood, Milk And Sky” is the kind of epic any metal band would hope for. Bassist Sean Yseult and guitarist Jay Yuenger wrote all of the music, mostly assisted by new drummer John Tempesta, who only appeared on this album.

And yet Rob Zombie is the biggest name to come out of the band, enjoying a successful solo career and directing a a string of grindhouse horror movies. And it was that desire to pursue his own interests that led to the end of White Zombie in 1998, making Astro-Creep 2000 their last album. Zombie has refused to consider reforming the band since it split, despite a seeming lack of animosity between any of the former members.

As a result, Astro-Creep 2000 exists now as a strong sign-off for a band that (judging from the success of Zombie’s first solo album, which heavily apes the groups’ sound) probably had more life in them, if only they weren’t abruptly euthanized by a singer who was really only thinking about himself.

Astro-Creep 2000 turned 30 years old back on April 11.

---

---

Thanks for reading this week, e te whanau!
Chris xo