“Liminal Garden” is Dolphin Midwives’ Least Enya-like and Most Anxious Album Yet

The album, which Fisher releases this week at a show at Mississippi Studios, marks a departure from the comparative harmony of her 2016 release, Orchid Milk. The songs on Orchid Milk are all longer than five minutes; the compositions on Liminal Garden are much shorter. You can lose yourself in Orchid Milk’s lush yet familiar soundscapes, but Liminal Garden is less relaxing—Fisher actively resists traditional song structures, so you can’t predict the flow of each song. In that sense, Liminal Garden is a cultivated soundscape that wordlessly reflects the global zeitgeist of anxiety.

Five Letter Word’s Debut Album Fills All the Requirements for Breezy Folk Music While Testing the Genre’s Boundaries

The resulting record touches on well-trodden tropes of Five Letter Word’s chosen genre. But what makes Siren work—beyond the trio’s goose bump-inducing harmonies—is the record’s ability to highlight each member’s divergent passions and talents. Murder ballads like “Cast Iron Skillet” and “Rumor of the Money” stand next to darling songs like “More Than Your Dog,” which is about wanting more attention from a lover than he gives his dog. The languid, horn-assisted jazz of “Bills in the Mail” recalls Norah Jones’ early records, and the sultry “Easier to Go” is a song about a relationship that sounds as if it was written for the bedroom.

After It Was on Hold for Two Years, Bed is Finally Releasing Their Debut Album

For two years, the release of Replay remained on hold. The Haagers continued to run their PR company, Breakup Records, had their first child and briefly relocated to Eugene. From the outside, it looked a little as if Bed had ridden a wave of hype right into the doldrums. It wasn’t until last spring that the duo released the lead single and title track off Replay, and it’s not until this week that the album will be released via Bug Hunt. Now that the album has finally materialized, the delay seems totally fitting. Replay trades delicate, ethereal lo-fi for a sound that’s as blurry-eyed as it is resolute.

Lee Corey Oswald’s New Album Is Essential Listening for Elder Scenesters

Loaded with buzzy guitars, shout-along choruses and tempos well above the threshold for circle pits, Darkness, Together, the latest from Portland quartet Lee Corey Oswald, is essential listening for anyone who feels trapped in the demographic netherworld that’s too old for the Warped Tour and too young for Pickathon.

Holy Grove’s New Album Manages to Stand Out From Portland’s Overcrowded Doom-Metal Scene

Call it what you will—doom metal, stoner rock, heavy psych, heavy metal—Portland has no shortage of metal bands with slow tempos, wailing vocals, swinging drums and chugging guitar and bass.

Miss Rayon’s Debut Album Makes Dread Danceable

Miss Rayon weaves together post-punk and no wave with a thread of uncertainty and dread. The band’s debut LP, Eclipse, spends the bulk of its 37 minutes lurking in the darkness that creeps into the corners of every normie’s fantasy of a calm and collected life.

Maarquii’s Debut Album is Full of Mantras for Squashing Bullshit

KayelaJ’s Debut Mixtape Pays Tribute to Women in Rap

Each of the 25 songs on “Homage”—the 22-year-old Portland MC’s debut mixtape—samples an iconic track from an influential woman rapper, from the retro wobble of MC Lyte’s “Ruffneck,” the starry synths on DeJ Loaf’s “Try Me” and the gritty guitar riff of Janelle Monáe’s “Q.U.E.E.N.” Homage is both ambitious and bare-bones. The sampled beats are unaugmented and unadorned.