Aster Tracks

  “Forget Your Own Face” is the follow up to last year’s Forever in Your Heart, a record that made my top fifteen at the end of last year . It’s also the second record Ava Rook and Devi McCallion have put out as the band since breaking up the project in 2020. This studio-only status as well as the other music the two make, make it hard to be ready for these records, especially when they just drop on announcement, so I don’t really have much prior information to share with you, except to just dive into the songs themselves. We start off very messy but as always very fun with “u_u2.” (Not sure how I’d say that out loud.) I’m loving the synth and guitar built beat that’s structured like a club banger in a post-apocalyptic dance hall played over broken speakers. Vocally and lyrically this feels like a diss track that I’m missing the context of and the passage; “Who the fuck are you trying to do this shit I do? Who the fuck are you coming in the booth sounding like me? I wish you were me.

  Year of the Snake is the second release from Ontario based twin sisters Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn, aka Softcult. This is the follow up to last year’s Year of the Rat, which I saw potential in and even had on my top EPs at year end but ultimately I felt in no way tapped the true potential of this particular project. I kept my ears to the ground though and when they started dropping single after single for this next record I was very much looking forward to it. Seeing as there were so many singles, we’ll go by order of track listing. The project opens with “BWBB” (boys will be boys) a more typical track from what’d you’d expect of a band of this genre. Borderline punk instrumental and themes of calling out violence against women and it’s justification in a male-led society. The percussion and drums are really strong here and the effect used to make every bare string pop is downright powerful. Leading to the final chorus there is a almost mosh-call like, half spoken word section m

  I Went to Hell and Back is the fourth record by Brighton pop punk outfit As It Is, their first as a trio since guitarist and co-vocalist Ben Langford-Biss left the band in 2019. To me personally As It Is have been one of the most consistent bands in the pop punk or emo lane. On every record they have committed to exactly what they want to be. Never Happy, Ever After, their debut, was a true pop punk record akin to bands like Neck Deep, State Champs and others that As It Is came up around the same time as. On okay. the band expanded on this sound but with a 1950s aesthetic and getting broader in their subject matter touching on things like life at home. Then finally The Great Depression really threw everyone for a loop as they completely shifted into this sadder, darker theme akin to bands like My Chemical Romance. All this to say; I look back at those three records as being one of the strongest three album runs in any band's career and was really looking forward to a follow up.

  Avril Lavigne - Love Sux (Elektra) In the past two years we’ve gotten a lot of these “pop punk” records by rich Tik Tok stars, already celebrities and people who failed at other genres where they pay Travis Barker to come up with as many blink-182 b-sides as he possibly can to form a record. While this is within that universe and has features from a lot of those players, it's far from the low quality of those other albums. Avril Lavigne is the original player of this game and on Love Sux that really shows. These songs are a great time and a lot of them will probably serve as really fun revisits as the year progresses. It’s not a perfect record by any stretch, the lyrics still feel very manufactured, the features from Machine Gun Kelly and blackbear sound so lazy on their behalves, would it kill MGK to sound like he wants to be on a track? I digress. Lavigne’s come a long way from her past, very single driven records and the movie soundtrack based career that she had somewhere in