Quick Hits: the records of February 2024

Rock news is in the spotlight in this end-of-year 2023 Quick Hits selection, with Ty Segall, Sleater-Kinney and many others.

Also find our previous Quick Hits selections.

Sleater-Kinney – Little Rope

★★★½

Produced by Jon Congleton, this twelfth album balances the impetuous emotions of the pair of Riot Grrrls officiating for now 30 years, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein. Angry and enthusiastic.

Helado Negro – Phasor

★★★

For his eighth studio album, the New York songwriter born to Ecuadorian parents still cultivates his folk and synthetic romanticism at the same time, contemplative, shared between English and Spanish.

Ty Segall – Three Bells

★★★

We can no longer count the records of Ty Segall, always thirsty to create and deconstruct, including his own psychedelic songs which he (stretches) here in all directions, with this very singular sense of groove.

Maxwell Farrington & The SuperLobster – Please, Wait…

★★½

The alliance between the Australian Maxwell Farrington and the Frenchman Christophe Vaillant is as fruitful as ever, this time giving rise to a record of hybrid pop, set with classical orchestration.

Todd Snider – Crank It, We’re Doomed

★★½

The country troubadour takes out from his wooden drawers a record recorded in 2007, then left aside due to lack of confidence… wrongly, given his ultra-contagious energy. Things are rocking in Nashville!

Any Other – stillness, stop: you have a right to remember

★★★

Wind, strings, a grainy timbre, an indie-rock identity and assertive songwriting: the Italian multi-instrumentalist reaches a climax on this third album which is at once intimate, DIY and ambitious.

Loving – Any Light

★★★½

Canada has many folk treasures in its heart, Loving proves it to us with this new setting concocted on Vancouver Island, sumptuously orchestrated and arranged, dominated by ultra-harmonious strings.

Yin Yin – Mount Matsu

★★★

This excellent third album from the Maastricht group explores the traditional sounds of South-East Asia as well as the psychedelic-funky flights of the seventies or the surf rock of the 50s. Disorienting!

Molly Lewis – On the Lips

★★½

This American musician does not sing, she whistles (wonderfully) on pieces of very beautiful vintage quality, influenced by exotica, soul, Italian songs such as Ennio Morricone.

JB Dunckel – Paranormal Musicality

★★★

In eighteen instrumental pieces, under the influence of masters of repetitive music such as Ravel, half of AIR explores the emotional and surreal palette of the piano dear to his heart. Stunning.

Find this Quick Hits selection in our issue 159, available on newsstands and via our online store, with the cover of your choice. Choose between Bob Marley or Green Day.