melt exclusive:
VILLAGERRR
“It just can all feel a little bit funny. But that's not really what the whole thing is about, I guess. It also just feels like, with the carousel imagery, it kind of reminds me of a carnival or something. The songs span a pretty wide sonic palette, I feel like. And there's so many different people playing on it, so I feel like it just feels like a big, messy thing. But in a good way.”
Read Above: Steeped in the same rawness that earned Mark Scott’s earliest, bedroom-recorded releases their initial admiration, Carousel is, in a way, a realized version of these sounds. With an accompanying band composed of Zayn Dweik (drums), Cam Garshon (bass), Alex Cox (guitar), and Henry Schuellerman (pedal steel), Scott’s trademark premeditation and delicacy is brought to rest in absolute perfection in its live incarnation.
submit to the melt weekly playlist
send your songs (Spotify Links) to: melt.fm.magazine@gmail.com
MELT Exclusive:
True Green
True Green, the brainchild of novelist and songwriter Dan Hornsby, recently released the follow-up to their 2024 debut, My Lost Decade, in the form of a tumbling, character-extracted, 13-track extravaganza: Hail Disaster, out via Spacecase Records in March of this year.
From the very moment that the opening track, “Italian Lightning”, settles into its trailing riff, Hornsby issues a poignant reminder of his storytelling acumen, painting a picture of a deadbeat (but irresistibly cool) relative with vague attachment to the criminal underworld. But as the project unfolds, a wider vision becomes clear— what does it mean to court disaster, and why are we so constantly attracted to the dark and sinister that underlies our daily lives?
Ahead of True Green’s stop at the intensely intimate Dissonant Works space in St. Louis (with local acts Matt Daisy and Huck on the bill) I spoke with both Hornsby and close collaborator Tailer Ransom about character-building, growing from My Lost Decade, and both of their intentions in working on Hail Disaster.
Featured Review:
Somewhere good — tara clerkin trio
MELT Curated: best dressed ghost
A dive into the tastes of New Jersey punk band best dressed ghost.
Artist profiles
Valentin Prince’s winding musical journey, which began as a child listening to his father sing Bob Dylan songs as he walked through the halls of their house outside of Boston and came to fruition in the small, passionate scene of Harrisonburg, Virginia, has left him with an endless array of imprints and fascinations— one that has been expressed in various forms in each of his unique solo releases.
VALENTIN PRINCE
When Northampton-based composer and producer Dan Langa set out to create a live version of his COVID-era concert After Nothing Comes, enlisting a number of collaborators to re-interpret and re-record the work in a live setting, he had very little idea what would ultimately come of it. Fugue State and its first full release— a collage-oriented, experimental version of the original chamber composition— came about unintentionally, as a gradual crystallization of Langa’s artistic intentions as he worked on the project.
FUGUE STATE
NYC-based guitarist and singer-songwriter Eli Frank has found creative release through Bummer Camp, his solo endeavour turned full-band project, in the years since the dissolution of his DIY punk venture Top Nachos. But now, as the release of the newest Bummer Camp record Fake My Death indicates a turn in a more pop-leaning direction, it’s become evident that Frank is operating at a level of artistic freedom that has, at times throughout his career, been difficult to keep near the forefront of his creative atmosphere.
BUMMER CAMP
When Violet Beller and Anakeesta Ironwood first met at the University of Miami, they knew immediately that they would click as friends. Their similar musical and creative affinities ensured it. But what they didn’t know was the coiling twists and turns that their original sapling of an idea would take on, incorporating member after member from their scene until rug, as a sprawling, seven-piece indie band, came to find its complete form.
RUG
Iguana Death Cult came to life as the garage-punk passion project of four teenage friends, and it has seen its fair share of transformations over the roughly 12 years since its inception. But their newest record, Guns Out, represents more than just a sonic evolution for the Rotterdam-based band. After two of the band’s original members made the difficult decision to move on from the project, Guns Out is a triumphant and searing continuation of the psychedelic and funk-rooted influences that defined their earliest efforts.