My Week(s) In Music: 19-30 May
The Callous Daoboys release one of the years best, Voom enjoy a triumphant return, and Stereolab are back - plus A Perfect Circle have a birthday
A quick note:
I’ve rolled the last two weeks into one for two reasons: catching up on a missed week of reviews is hard, and there was a complete lack of great albums released last week due to America’s Memorial Day weekend.
Enjoy!
I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOU IN HEAVEN (released: 16/05/2025)
The Callous Daoboys
I’m not sure when or how I got introduced to the Callous Daoboys, a six piece metalcore and/or nu metal and/or mathcore and/or screamo and/or violin and/or comedy band out of Atlanta who became a critical darling in 2022 with their brilliant (and brilliantly heavy) second album Celebrity Therapist.
The only thing I’m sure of is that it was this year: my guess is that it was earlier this year a few weeks ahead of the release of the first video from this album, “Two Headed Trout/The Demon Of Unreality Limping Like A Dog”, which I featured in Singles In Your Area on February 25.
Either way, allow me to introduce you to my album of the year (so far).
The Daoboys are tornado-like in the way they will overwhelm your senses: the music is heavy as all fuck, but also delightfully melodic, and, despite a tendency to lean into humour and singer Carson Pace’s knack for seeming gibberish vocals, the group are incredible musicians, jumping between parts and tempos and keys at a pace that seems impossible.
I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven is their third album and it finds the band expanding their range, experimenting with the songs they are writing, and even scaling back their sound entirely. One of the highlights is “Lemon”, which is as close to a pop song as you will find on any Daoboys release, and surprisingly moving (‘I can’t recall your heartbeat ever speeding up’ is heartbreaking as a sentiment), and the keys/strings forward track “Body Horror For Birds” takes the group into ballad territory, likely thanks to violinist Amber Christian.
It is still a heavy album with elements of mathcore and screamo though: after a short intro, the album launches with three of their best songs ever in “Schizophrenia Legacy”, “Full Moon Guidance” and “Two Headed Trout” (‘I’ll swim upstream again, show you all the hooks in my mouth / look at how gullible I can be, with my fins and my gills in sync’ Pace sings in its excellent hook). But the balance of those heavy hitting moments with those quieter tracks gives the impression of a band in full control of their sound.
This won’t be an album for everyone. But I love it. And, as of right now, it’s my favourite album of 2025. The bar has been officially set.
SOMETHING GOOD IS HAPPENING (released: 16/05/2025)
Voom (NZ)
Okay, full disclosure - I wrote so much about Voom’s album, and digressed so much, that I’m spinning it off into its own post tomorrow.
Suffice to say for now that I really loved it.
Keep an eye out in the morning for it.
INSTANT HOLOGRAMS ON METAL FILM (released: 23/05/2025)
Stereolab
Both English and French in origin - thanks to Essex lad Tim Gane and Parisian singer Lætitia Sadier - Stereolab have kind of popped in and out over the years, debuting in 1990 (joined by ex-Chills bassist Martin Kean) before releasing their first album, Peng!, in 1992. The lineup has changed over the years due to creative differences and the passing of longtime member Mary Hansen. They took a break in 2009 and reformed in 2019 for some live shows and re-releases.
But in true style, when they do something, they go all in. After some rumbling about new music, the band announced Instant Holograms on April 2 - 16 years to the day since announcing their hiatus - and dropped it less than two months later. No messing around.
Instant Holograms On Metal Film is their first album of new material since 2008’s Chemical Chords (excepting 2010’s Not Music, a collection of unreleased tracks from the Chemical Chords sessions released after the hiatus; its the ‘what do we do with the junk in the garage when we move out’ of records) and it finds the group as avant garde as ever, combining disparate elements like Moog organs and acoustic guitar and looping synths and sparse vocals and spotlit horns. “Melodie Is A Wound” is an early highlight in this regard.
Yet they have lost none of their potency. Inasmuch as this kind of avant garde composition is a bit, Stereolab are committed to it - and the fact that they are convinced by what they are doing makes it eminently palatable. They’re having fun and you will too, whether you want to or not.
There are more mainstream tracks too; “Immortal Hands” is one example that shows the group are capable of writing brilliant mainstream songs as well. Instant Holograms is an upbeat and odd and hypnotic album. Its great to have Stereolab back in our life.
But wait, there’s more!
GOODBYE SMALL HEAD (released: 16/05/2025)
Ezra Furman
Ezra Furman is another artist I discovered through the power of visual entertainment - in this case, continually googling ‘who is this song by’ as we watched our way through the early seasons of Netflix’s Sex Education and continually getting back Furman’s name.
Her second album since coming out as a transgender woman, and her tenth overall - both with her former backing band and as a solo artist - continues to show the growth of Furman as an artist, taking new chances on the compositions (cello on “Jump Out”, digitally looped vocals on “Grand Mal”) that work exactly as intended. Goodbye Small Head is engaging both musically and vocally as Furman re-establishes how gregarious she can be. Loved this one.
A DEEPER LIFE (released: 09/05/2025)
Chaos In The CBD
The musical project of Ben and Louis Helliker-Hales has been around for a decade, and has been popping up on the charts, in my algos, on playlists I’m subscribed to for most of that time. So colour me surprised that this is the debut album from the Auckland electronic duo.
Its a really good album too. While it is electro at its core, it has a distinctly New Zealand sound, more in common with a Nathan Haines than with the kind of garage or D&B sound you’d expect from a group that have been working on and off in Europe for as long as they have. And special care is taken to ensure the album flows; A Deeper Life is cohesive in the way that it flows from track to track, creating a more enveloping listening experience. Good stuff.
IF THAT MAKES SENSE (released: 09/05/2025)
Spacey Jane
Recent visitors to our shores Spacey Jane hail from Fremantle; this is their third full length since forming in 2016. It also marked a bit of a difference for the group in how it was composed with frontman Caleb Harper commencing the writing portion in Los Angeles before rejoining with the band; If That Makes Sense took more than two years to write and has been in production for three.
The money is all on the screen, as they say in movies. The production is elevated here, the group sounding better than ever. And the songs are among the best the group have written, I reckon; “Whateverrrr” is a near perfect alt-pop track that should find the group landing on more listeners’ radar. And while I don’t necessarily go in for this kind of stuff - its not heavy or dark enough for me to fall proper in love - I did really enjoy listening to this one.
NATURAL LIGHT (released: 16/05/2025)
Dan Mangan
Canadian singer-songwriter Mangan won me over as a fan after I found him via his work on the score for 2014’s Hector and the Search for Happiness and fell in love with his song “Jude”, originally written for his son. Did my ex-wife and I also have a baby in 2014 meaning that the song hit differently? Yes.
Regardless, Mangan’s voice is beautiful and sincere and exemplifies the kind of vulnerability that any folk singer would kill for and I’ve checked out every new release since 2014 - and listen to “Jude” at least once a fortnight.
I’m not even going to review this album. I’m biased. Just know that - for me - the work of Dan Mangan is a soothing balm for my spirit, my heart expanding and exploding as I lose myself in the moment, simply be present wherever I am and absorb the sounds surrounding me, reminding me that this is why I love music.
AFTERGLOW (released: 16/05/2025)
Sleep Theory
The debut album from up-and-coming Memphis act Sleep Theory defies labelling: Revolver once labelled them an “exciting mix of metalcore, pop and R&B” which feels a bit cynical, but you can definitely hear those influences here.
The thing is that most modern metalcore bands are doing this - Sleep Theory do mix in electronic elements from pop (small parts in songs like “III” and “Hourglass”, and most prominently on closer “Words Are Worthless”) and singer Cullen Moore has a tone that makes you think he’d absolute kill a set of R&B standards (see “Stuck In My Head” for proof). But its not close to the level of recent releases from Sleep Token, Bring Me The Horizon, and continues a nu-metal tradition going back to the earliest Linkin Park records.
Afterglow doesn’t redefine metalcore in 2025 or anything. But it is a really good mainstream metal album, if that’s your thing. I really liked it.
Also released this week(s):
Libertines frontman Peter Doherty's Felt Better Alive was pretty good, but adding the R to his first name didn’t as much credibility as you’d think
I actually enjoyed tUnE-yArDs' Better Dreaming, but I think I’m starting to feel a little burnt out by alternative hyperpop.
The third album from the English singer, Billy Nomates' Metalhorse is another solid album - but it sounds like a lot of stuff I’ve heard already.
I mean Matt Maltese's Hers is pretty good … as far as baroque chamber pop goes. It didn’t do it for me though. Too downbeat.
Procol Harum guitarist Robin Trower's Come And Find Me is exactly the kind of album you’d expect an 80 year old blues guitarist to make.
Honestly, I’m starting to get pretty tired of the move toward country pop exemplified by Morgan Wallen's I'm the Problem. Good voice though.
Wellington singer Arjuna Oakes' While I'm Distracted has some high points but I couldn’t get into the overall jazz pop vibe.
It’s clear on Greta O'Leary's River Dark that she wears her 90s alternative and folk influences (think Radiohead x Jewel) on her sleeve.
If Wallen’s country pop is a thing now, Shaboozey's Where I've Been Isn't Where I'm Going leans more into hip-hop and trap. It doesn’t work for me.
A remarkable lack of drums and a plethora of space makes These New Puritans's Crooked Wing almost an ambient record. Its really good though!
Continuing their renewed fandom after that doco, Sparks' MAD! is their 28th album overall and does nothing new to win me over to the duo’s sound.
More pop in the alt-pop formula this time around, Sports Team's Boys These Days is actually really enjoyable - the best album I didn’t review this week.
Their 11th album overall, Morcheeba's Escape the Chaos is sufficiently Morcheeba-ish to satisfy fans, but I didn’t get a lot out of it.
Back after a nine year recess, Skunk Anansie's The Painful Truth does very little to justify its tepid alternative funk existence.
Happy Birthday!
MER DE NOMS (released: 2000)
A Perfect Circle
I would hate to try and quantify how much time I’ve spent trying to hold the long note at the end of “Judith”, the first single from this album.
For around 18 seconds, starting at the 3:13 mark of the song, singer Maynard James Keenan let’s rip with an extended “YOOOOOOOOUUUUUU” that changes pitch and tone several times. As a covers band bass player and aspiring singer, I decided I needed to do it too. So I practised. And practised. And practised. I’d sing it in the car home from work. I’d sing it in my room while I was gaming. My friend Jamie and I both tried to sing it multiple times one night.
A Perfect Circle was formed by Billy Howerdel, a former guitar tech for Tool, who showed Tool front-man Keenan some demos he had created. Keenan liked what he heard and they went about creating a band and playing a few shows to attract label interest, recruiting bassist Paz Lenchantin, Queens Of The Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, and Primus drummer Tim Alexander, later replaced by recent Foo Fighters firee Josh Freese.
Mer De Noms answers the question ‘what if Tool but normal’; the music is more straight-forward, but Keenan’s voice has always made the two groups somewhat inseparable, at least to me. A Perfect Circle branched out more on subsequent releases, but this debut is more raw, closer in tone to Tool at times, but its best songs are the most different - the gorgeous “3 Libras”, opener “The Hollow” (the only track with Alexander on drums) and “Orestes”.
Also, I ended up nailing that long note. A proud day, that one.
Mer De Noms turned 25 years old on May 23.
Thanks for reading this week, e te whanau.
Have a great (and kingly?!) long weekend,
Chris xo