Press play and feel that warm bristling sensation flood your brain and body. Music that's both familiar and foreign. Fleeting feelings and memories flash in your mind, half-appearing and not, quantum-level shithousery. A new type of feathered guitar, that evolved, bird-from-dinosaur style, from the old guitars. Echoes and allusions, you think Real Estate, Beach House. A sighing sort of supplication. Old houses' window seats blasted with sun. A whole album of bright melodies and sweet and easy tunes.[BUY Simpatico]Unbeatable. "Hug of Thunder" was one of my favorites of 2017, and this EP is a worthy follow-up to that album. It starts, like a lot of their records, with a mostly instrumental track as an intro, then launches into "Remember Me Young," another instrumental song driven by tremolo-picked guitars, slabs of piano, synthesized bass, and ooh-and-ah vocals. The other three songs on the EP, "Boyfriends," "1972," and "All I Want" could sit comfortably on any of their albums, though I will say I keep coming back to "1972," which has the same kind of right-here energy as something like "Shampoo Suicide" or "All to All." This is an awesome EP and it's always good to have more music from this band.[BUY Let's Try the After Vol. 1]Caustic and imperious guitars, jumpy post-punk rhythms, lyrics delivered blankly in short declaratives. NOV3L have released their very good debut EP, "NOVEL," on Flemish Eye, and it's full of twitchy, high-energy songs. More than stuff like Gang of Four or the much beloved (by me at least) Women, NOV3L seem to be drawing some inspiration from the harsher aspects of bands like Orange Juice, or maybe Josef K (NOV3L show that same kind of stumbling momentum of songs like Josef K's "Sorry for Laughing"). "To Whom It May Concern" is a staggeringly good song, and the rest of the EP shows the same kind of willingness to inhabit, modify, and bewilder familiar post-punk forms.[BUY NOVEL]