The Spin Cycle setting has been on overload the past few weeks, with a heavy rotation of wide-ranging musical gems that run the genre gamut. And while I’d love to have some sort of thematic quotient to every edition of this humble column, aside from the following artists being talented, fierce queer forces of nature, there are nearly no discernible aural similarities. And you know what? THAT RULES. If variety is the spice of life, I’ll take mine triple-X hot with a side of fresh Carolina Reapers. Will my ears still work if my entire stomach explodes? Hope so!

While I wander off to find a late night Thai restaurant, permit yourself some spiciness and treat yourself to the same amazing sounds I’ve been treating myself to. Your impervious ears will thank you.

Cassie Candles

Hat

For fans of Kevin Barnes, Destroyer, Why?

On her fifth album, Portland’s Cassie Candles executes a whimsical throughline for expressions of familial longing, of belonging in general, and the trials faced in ditching toxic environments. The resultant Hat is a quirky slab of lo-fi dream pop ready-made for contemplative dancefloor wiggles and existential malaise. 

That dichotomy is evident from the outset, as Candles’ bedroom production yields infectious beats and an undercurrent of disconnection on “When I Write,” an early indicator of her experimental vocal cadences. As something of a mooring for Candles’ deft guitar playing and the sometimes blown-out earworms she navigates through, revealing lines like “When I write music I want it to be fun / I can’t afford to be stressed out when I am coming undone” emerge as poetic salvation in an ocean of abstract soundscapes. Similarly, the kaleidoscopic track “Runaway Bunny” shimmers in an odd-timed shuffle, vacillating Candles’ subterranean pop with jaunty acoustic guitar flourishes and a robust audio discharge full of synths and an assortment of MIDI-wrought accoutrement.

“Josie’s Keyboard” blasts potent fantasy-video-game vibes, with Candles’ syllabic prowess threading addictive melodies through the needle of her hyper-clever songwriting. Here, a lovesick, anti-pop sidewinder emits matter-of-fact lyricism (“I have determined that my heaven is a place where I am in a band and you are on the drumset”) that articulates the minutiae of introverted psychologies and romantic yearning. 

Scattered visionary lyricisms haunt the bones of Hat, revealing Candles as a kind of bedroom-pop oracle, at home in the processing of her various cerebral tribulations, in a fantastic and often magical suite that demands repeated listens.

Cassie Candles joins forces with her band, the Cocker Spaniels, Sunday June 14 for the Hat album release show at Swan Dive (727 SE Grand) with New Here and Woe Nelly. She’ll have CDs for sale, and the album can also be streamed on her Bandcamp and on Subvert.

corook 

How do I relate to you? 

For fans of Wet Leg, dodie, Olive Klug

In the realm of radio-ready pop juggernauts that originated online, there’s really no point in looking beyond Nashville songwriter corook. Their new EP, How do I relate to you?, is instantly hummable, whip-smart, and poised to take over the hearts of all who partake. 

The EP, at its best, is pure observational alt-pop, centered on the terror of consumerism, the cringe-y communal psychoses of pop culture, and the dressing-down of social media automatons. The prime example of this timbre is heard on the single “Scooby,” a feisty track enumerating a laundry list of infuriating trends that culminates with a melodic shrug. The second verse posits a response to the mayhem with incendiary lines like, “It’s not your fault that the algorithm whips you into an angry froth / The only thing we see in common is ad space insurance companies bought.” Were it not for the stinging accuracy of corook’s lyrics, the bubbly tunes they curate could come across as too cloying. And therein lies the winning alchemy; it’s an almost unfairly catchy vignette of bespoke modernist burns.

“You get me babe” is syrupy and endearing, finding a lovestruck corook in a cooing, lovey-dovey soul spasm, with sweet lyrics like “Baby, you’re a bird and I’m a worm / I would let you catch me just to show you how to squirm” invigorating a fun ditty that, like every other song on the EP, seems destined for endless spins. 

Edges of playful folk dot the perimeters of “Banana Peel,” a meta song about personal indefinability, which showcases corook’s supple vocals and big-time pop record production, with a cavalcade of layered guitars bending and sliding around formidable arrangements. 

Caution: May be habit-forming. 

How do I relate to you? was released May 29 from Atlantic Records. The album is available for streaming on, like, every streaming platform there is, and for purchase in major record stores.

Dua Saleh

Of Earth and Wires 

For fans of anaiis, SZA, Gaidaa

Post-apocalyptic imagery and divine feminine energy thrum across 11 warm R&B tracks on Dua Saleh’s second LP, Of Earth and Wires. And if you thought they were just that actor from Sex Education, it’s high time you disabuse yourself of that finite understanding.

The album takes flight with the spacious “5 Days,” a plaintive song with meandering string-plucks that erupt into a distorted beat and a roboto-voiced Saleh hollering into the void of an arm’s-length relationship. A meditation and response to the latest civil war in Sudan—where Saleh was born and from where they and their family fled in the 1990s—Of Earth and Wires casts a wide sonic net on songs like “Breathe,” which is introduced with a menacing synth progression and a steady rhythmic pulse. 

The reverberations of the songs come trimmed with global instrumentation, as heard on “I Do, I Do,” which features the oud—a Middle Eastern short-necked string instrument—alongside sultry R&B grooves. “Flood” is the first of three collaborations with Bon Iver, a curious teaming that nevertheless thrives in the record’s fertile electronic undergrowth. Both vocalists engage in upper registers, offering atmospheric ballast and a welcome vocal texture to the proceedings. Another cameo, in the form of Sudanese R&B songstress Gaidaa, brings the heat on “Anemic,” one of the better late-LP cuts, while a collaboration with poet and musician aja monet on album closer “ALL IS LOVE” bookends a powerful dissertation on resilience, feminism, and making sense of who we are in a violent world. 

Of Earth and Wires dropped May 15 on Ghostly International. Vinyl, CDs, and digital can be purchased on Dua Saleh’s Bandcamp.