Through all of 2024, here at WXOU we will have a new album spotlight-of-the-week. Be prepared for everything ranging from jazz fusion to black metal, indie rock to jazz rap. I hope you'll join me in indulging each album, whether it’s something you’ve never heard, or a genre classic.
Next week: Black Focus by Yussef Kamaal
For me one of the absolute standout new releases of 2021 was this very record, the third from Canada’s Fleece. Stunning & Atrocious took a bit to grow on me, it for what ever reason is an album I expect to be disappointed by. Yet its bubblegum-brightness, fierce non-conformity, and bleeding heart consistently delivers on all fronts. Blending indie rock, pop, and Fleece’s former washy psychedelia, S&A contains multitudes. The band’s signature sound built off both hollering and falsetto vocals, wild rhythms and jazz drumming, and key-bass certainly hold force all throughout the album. In particular “Something Real” slowly grows from an atmospheric and almost bluesy dream pop song into a blistering guitar solo. "Bodies Lie" starts similarly slow and devolves into coarse synths and delicate guitar.
Fleece are a bit like an auditory representation of that cliché where characters in a musical are ready to jump into song at all times. From first-hand experience seeing the band live, that is a fair judgement. Everything they perform (even their more somber songs) is done with jubilance and joyfulness, and I think this comes through in their recordings, with passion and pride.
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