Nothing else sounds like Drag Talk. On debut album Drink The Ocean (MNRK Heavy), the L.A. band finds gauzy beauty in the fathomless chaos that surrounds us, their exquisite shoegaze guitars and Britpop melodicism skewed with Jutty Taylor’s genre-fluid vocals.  Harnessing ‘90s indie nostalgia to here-and-now emotional responses, Drag Talk’s lush atmospherics, spacious beats, and hugely emotive hooks create something singular yet accessible and authentic. “I feel like we’re hardcore punk dudes who love Oasis,” offered guitarist Ross O’Carroll, whose pandemic home demos were the germ of the band in 2021. Drag Talk is a coming-together of like-minded friends with long, intertwined histories. O’Carroll, Taylor, and drummer Hayden Scott were former bandmates, while the latter pair also played together in Grammy-winning Swedish rock band Ghost. O’Carroll and fellow guitarist Matt Ripp Bennett were schoolmates in Hawaii but had somehow never been in the same band, and third guitarist (yes, there are three) Neil Popkin played alongside Ripp Bennett in War Tapes. Even the band’s producer, Tom Syrowski (The Killers, Mastodon), has been in their circle since the aughts. Drag Talk released their debut single, “Egyptian Flesh” in 2022 and the Dogs EP the following year. By the time they dropped follow-up EP Rosy Crown in 2024, they’d earned a cult following evidenced by sell-out shows on both coasts and a deal with MNRK Music Group. “The silver lining with any kind of personal tragedies that we go through, if you’re an artist, is turning it into something,” mulled the effervescent, mustachioed Taylor of Drink The Ocean, which is set for a September 2026 release. “There were just some things that I felt compelled to say, so there’s a definite color to the record.” Drink The Ocean is a lovingly layered creation that connects on multiple levels, its recurring themes of injustice and femininity flavored with Taylor’s spiritual and esoteric interests. Even the album’s title is open to interpretation: a dismissive kiss-off; an ode to one-life-to-live experimentation and excess; or an allusion to the struggles that beset the album’s creation. “It’s an impossible task but you can spend your life trying – it might be fun!” grinned Taylor, whose wry curiosity and irrepressible charisma permeate Drag Talk’s majestic music. “Maybe that’s what the record felt like for some of us – drowning in liberation!” Once again working with Syrowski, their sole producer to date, Drag Talk tracked Drink The Ocean at his L.A. home and at Hollywood’s storied Henson Studios. Rooted in heady, shimmering shoegaze evoking Swervedriver, The Verve, and Jesus and Mary Chain, the album also flirts with dream pop, psych, and classic rock. Its defining trait is mating all this to the single-minded cadence and mischievous vaudevillian instincts of Taylor, an inimitable force-of-nature fusion of David Berman and Elliot Smith. “Whereas my bandmates are definitely more schooled in the encyclopedic aesthetic of just beautiful ‘90s guitar rock, I kind of rely on my own ignorance when it comes to putting my own voice on it,” Taylor continued. “This fucking guy who’s never heard a shoegaze record!” Drink The Ocean opens with narcotically escapist single “Pony Up,” its burbling bass, gossamer guitars, and intriguingly irreverent lyrics setting the tone for the album. “There’s also a theme to the record of gambling – certain phrases and things that I allude to,” Taylor explained. “So, yeah, ‘pony up’ – cough up; it’s time to pay.” Driving yet dreamy second single “Kingdoms” is simultaneously visceral, vengeful, and ecstatic, its message rich in ostensibly mysterious metaphor. “The lyrics of the chorus were going to be something different that would have put us in hot water. I was feeling pretty angry, so this is the radio edit!” Taylor recalled. “All the modalities of existence that I’m naming in the song – severity, splendor, victory – are specific spheres in the Tree of Life.” “Would It Kill You” channels Nirvana’s potent simplicity and Smashing Pumpkins’ heart-stopping dynamics juxtaposed with Taylor’s swooning, face-to-the-sun topline, while “Mr. High Life” takes Catherine Wheel sensibilities somewhere intoxicatingly new.  Guest appearances on Drink The Ocean include uber-producer Brendan O’Brien (RATM, AC/DC) playing Hammond organ on the album’s brooding title track, and Ghost’s Olivia Morreale singing backups on the stomping “Welcome to the Aeon.” Equally entrancing on late night home-alone headphones or at packed, immersive shows, Drag Talk has conjured a sonic and emotional niche just when none seemed left to discover. A rare creative brotherhood steeped in personal and musical chemistry, they’re a band for alt-rock fans who want to nudge the familiar forward, refract the comfortable, and respectfully reframe tradition.

Zoon created Bleached Wavves with extremely limited, often broken gear. They worked through frustrating, lengthy delays and yet managed to reverse engineer a masterpiece of a debut. With sophomore album,  Bekka Ma’iingan  (Bay-ka Mo-Een-Gan) a broad spectrum of possibilities, lush orchestration, resources, collaborators and friends all supported the process. Bleached Wavves provoked us to face many difficult questions and reckon with a deeply uncomfortable and painful history. Bekka Ma’iingan continues to explore their Indigenous and life experience, and while still clutching to the unresolved, it moves us more softly and sweepingly towards acceptance. Within moments into the lead track “All Around You” otherworldly strings are ushered in, and one is assured, as always with Zoon (the intricate musical work of Daniel Monkman), to expect the unexpected. Bekka Ma’iingan: translates directly from Ojibway to ‘slow down’ and ‘wolf’. The two words aren’t meant to be directly linked but considering the past few years, Zoon has enjoyed slowing down within the space of creating this new album. Ma’iingan is also a reference to the wolf clan Daniel is a part of, a clan handed down from their father, a clan-connection Daniel only became aware of at their father’s funeral. Gloriously intact is the shoegaze core Monkman has become known for. It rapturously arrives in full force with tracks “Care” and “Dodem.” Zoon intentionally pushes through the previously unexcavated in his work. “Shoegaze to me, always lacked colour,” remarks Monkman. “There didn’t seem to be a lot of diversity, or intricacy to it, yet it still felt really accessible, that’s why I loved My Bloody Valentine so much.” Zoon is not content to paint their work with a muted palate or stay within the traditional confines of shoegaze, but then again, they’ve already shown us as much. Monkman proved this not only with their Polaris Music Prize shortlisted, and internationally regaled debut, Bleached Wavves, but followed with their two EPs from last year, and the sonic swings they were taking were apparent.  Big Pharma featured “Oil Pastel/Dopesick” – a single with Cadence Weapon that effortlessly fused shoegaze and hip hop and “Astum” (feat. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson) which garnered 2022 ‘Best of The Year’ accolades from both CBC + Exclaim!. On the second EP,  A Sterling Murmuration, Daniel unearthed decades old material, that sounded as fresh and as original as anything else Zoon has released over the past few years. Add that to a back-to-back Polaris shortlist album nomination for their collaborative work with Ombiigizi, alongside composing for film and television and we are made blissfully aware that Zoon’s musical instincts know no limits or bounds. With Bekka Ma’iingan, Monkman is continuing to rebuff any limits or expectations yet again, and fully embracing the adventure and expanse of what’s next. Cue collaborating with Polaris Music Prize inaugural winner Owen Pallett to compose sweeping string arrangements, then performed by the FAMES Orchestra. Grammy nominated Michael Peter Olsen who is a regular in Zoon’s live band, played on the new record as did Zoon’s drummer Andrew McLeod/Sunnsetter who additionally sings on Bekka Ma’iingan’s premiere single, “A Language Disappears”.  Grammy Award winning Mark Lawson mixed the album, and in a burst of creative collaboration, after meeting in Montreal, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo played on album track “Niizh Manidoowig (2 Spirit)”. Zoon has steadfastly woven their Indigenous experience and activism into every fabric of their work. The first single to be released from Bekka Ma’iingan, “A Language Disappears” acknowledges part of a deeply hurtful history for Indigenous people: the fear of their language being forgotten and the slow abandoning of culture due to the fading conversations, traditions and a people, by past and present colonialism. “This was something I started to fear when I became a Born Again Indian in my late 20’s,” says Monkman. “For a lot of native folks, we’re taught to hide our identity, to keep us safe from the outside world. Somewhere along a native person’s journey, they start to ask questions about their heritage and where they come from.” For Monkman that meant learning about their tribe and clan, followed by language. “I started to see that learning the language was nearly impossible at the time and feared how one day Ojibway may never be spoken.” Safety and wellness plays into another central theme to Monkman’s new work in acknowledging their own ‘2-spirit’ identity. This comes forward in the instrumental album track, titled “Niizh Manidoowig (2 Spirit).” The choice to more openly share that side of themselves now, is partly in hope of supporting others who may not feel or be in a safe space to show or be themselves yet. “I wrote ‘Niizh Manidoowig’ while thinking about our ancestors who may have been niizh. I found a lot of peace knowing that there were others way before me. Sometimes growing up not around your own people you start to forget about your past.” It was a long journey for Monkman. “Growing up on the rez with my dad’s family in the late 2000’s was like entering a different world,” says Monkman, who always felt like an outsider because of being of mixed blood. When they were young, they connected with a queer/2-spirit person. “I knew then I was different and could feel it in the way I was perceived in the world.” Monkman knew the word ‘ninjichaag’, which means ‘the spirit within’ and after they left the rez, they would run into others who had also formerly teased Monkman about their energy. “I always wondered if they too were ‘ninjichaag’”. “This album is about acknowledging a part of me that I felt was there the whole time.”