By: Kayleigh Drake  At this point, it should be absolutely no secret that I’m a shoegaze fan. (Please see exhibits A, B, C and D.) So, when I hear about a brand-new shoegaze album being released, I’m drawn to it like a moth to a flame.  Enter Glidewinder, the second full-length album from San Diego’s self-billed “truegaze” band Sparkler. It just dropped on Friday, April 10, and when I say […]

By: Kayleigh Drake  Joder Juan is a band that brings back a really nice memory for me. I first heard them during one of my very first radio shifts at Substrate, back in January of 2025. I was queuing up my playlist for the evening, and in the moments before my show started, their song “Analisis del Desgaste” played in our station rotation. I had never heard of either the […]

By: Jackie Lo I’ve long admired Kim Gordon, from her days of Sonic Youth to Free Kitten, X-Girl, Body/Head, to showing me how you can successfully have a long career of playing music in a band with your partner, to doing your own things without them after they are gone even while your heart is broken and I’ve loved watching her solo career with these last three albums. We share […]

By: Kayleigh Drake Y’all know I love to see a fellow Southern band kicking ass. And that’s one of many reasons why I’m digging the heck out of this new Cashier EP. Cashier being the four-piece band from Lafayette, Louisiana, who just released a six-songer, “The Weight,” on Julia’s War Recordings last week. (As in, the iconic Philly-based label founded by Doug Dulgarian from TAGABOW.) And it has been in […]

By: Kayleigh Drake I’m a simple girl. I like sunsets, long walks and bands with wall-of-sound guitars. So it only makes sense that I’m a Nothing fan.  Nothing, as in the five-piece shoegaze band with a self-professed “un-Googleable name,” based out of Philadelphia, but which features our very own local Birmingham musician, Cam Smith (also of Ladder to God and Cloakroom), on guitar.  They just dropped their fifth studio album, […]

By: Kayleigh Drake  If there’s one thing I love in the vast world of music, it’s shoegaze. Even more so if it’s loud. And that’s exactly why I’m a big fan of Trauma Ray.  Trauma Ray is a five-piece shoegaze band based in Fort Worth, Texas. (Come through, fellow Southerners!) But I wouldn’t say they’re the “ethereal,” UK-in-the-early-90s brand of shoegaze. Rather, they remind me of a cross between Hum […]

By: Jackie Lo   If you like: Glixen, Land of Talk, Chelsea Wolfe, A Perfect Circle Farmer’s Wife, formerly known as “Sludge”, a “dream grunge band” from Austin, Texas, released their Faint Illusions EP today with 5 new songs of swirly guitars, sludge-y sounds, and whimsical lyrics. Their first EP There’s a Monster released in the fall of 2023 and this sophomore EP is grittier and full of darker fantasies. […]

By: Kayleigh Drake I’ve been a Mclusky fan ever since I first heard them on Sirius 26 Left of Center (R.I.P.) way back in high school. For years, their iconic 2002 album “Mclusky Do Dallas” has been one of my go-tos for when I’m craving some Loud Shit™. And in fact, I almost named my Substrate radio show “Collagen Rock” in honor of track three on that very album. (I […]

By: Paul Cordes Wilm Down the Sparrow Hole Holy shit! I just don’t know what to make of the new Deerhoof album I admit, this was my initial reaction to Noble And Godlike In Ruin, Deerhoof’s brilliant brand new record. However, anyone who might be exclaiming the above sentiment may as well be also reacting to any one of Deerhoof’s 21 previous releases! But that’s what’s so incredibly fun about […]

By: Kayleigh Drake  After breadcrumbing us with increasingly catchy singles for the past several months, Wishy has at long last released their latest EP, “Planet Popstar.” As the name indicates, this is a step in a poppier direction than their earlier work, but it still retains the infectious hooks and sugar-sweet vocal harmonies that are characteristic to the rest of their repertoire. Wishy is a band that I’ve been HEAVILY […]