Israeli shoegaze - it's no idle navel-gazing. Even amid intense political struggle and ongoing war, daily life has a way of proceeding in its usual vagaries, making mundane moments as likely as impassioned ones. Boredom, in fact, is a much part of Israeli life as it is anywhere else and is maybe of even greater import, and relief, considering its antithesis. Through swaths of dreamy, atmospheric psych-rock, Tel Aviv-based band Vaadat Charigim explores these moments of reflective inactivity on their latest album, Sinking as a Stone, which translates directly from Hebrew as "The Boredom Sinks In". Fortunately, the songs themselves avoid tedium through propulsive rhythm and bass enveloped by reverb-drenched guitars and vocalist Yuval Haring's gloomy Hebrew lyrics, and their live performances are moody but not monotonous, and pounding rather than ponderous. Recently in-studio at KEXP, Vaadat Charigim doused the doldrums with an epic live set. Another reason to prefer the mundane.
Though they hail from the small village of Castleton, UK duo Drenge is anything but quaint. Brothers Eoin and Rory Loveless load an explosive arsenal of potent hooks to their 2015 release, Undertow, featuring a surprising mixture of metallic riffs and Morrissey-like melodicism. Recently in-studio a…
Cooking up a rich mixture of fuzzed out indie jams and smart lyrics, Massachusetts's Speedy Ortiz knows how to make the tastily technical sound effortlessly easy in this catchy KEXP live session. Showing off a selection of tracks from their new release, Foil Deer, Dupuis controls the room with her …
