Flush It Friday: They’re Itty, They’re Bitty, They’re Just A Little Ditty
I’m a gravely silly person.
It is Friday. The semester is nearly complete. In a month I will be in Boston. Here are some albums that I listen to because I’m awesome. You can be awesome, too.
Boldy James & V Don – Alphabet Highway
RRC Music | April 4, 2025
The second of three albums released already in the Year of Our Lord 2025, Alphabet Highway sees Detroit’s Boldy James team up with Harlem’s V Don to produce the most Griselda-adjacent album of Boldy’s career. Boldy’s effortless, relaxed flow belies his grimy lyrics, and V Don’s minor-chorded, darker beat aesthetic focalizes Boldy’s streetwise nature. Sure, this isn’t Rome Streetz or other Next labelmates, but there’s a glossy grittiness that other Boldy projects lack. “My [homie] Luck been locked up for so long, he damn near from jail.”
xWeaponx – Weapon X Demo 2
Daze | April 18, 2025
I like to think when Weapon X opens their second demo with the broad declaration, “Weapon X hates you!” they’re speaking directly to me, still mad that a sellout party animal gave them (and vegan compatriots World of Pleasure) such effusive praise back in 2023. Led by Knocked Loose’s Isaac Hale and bolstered by Bo Lueders (Harms Way), Weapon X is mosh-brained early-aughts straight edge that could give a fuck about how you feel about crowdkilling. What great fun, too, that Bryan Garris provides some backing vocals on “Everybody Breaks.” So just remember: Weapon X. Straight Edge. Fuck You. Louisville.
Hadley Roe – The Inner Garden
PITP | April 9, 2025
One could simply cry. As Roe tells us, she “started creating ambient music when [she] was diagnosed with a rare and debilitating mental illness.” Unable to hold a job or maintain relationships or exist “normally,” she moved to the British countryside to compose ambient music as a way to not only navigate through but also reshape her new life. Her debut for Past Inside the Present has a rare narrative quality, an intense yearning, a pacific beatitude. “Summer Rain” reminds me just enough of Aphex Twin’s “Rhubarb” and holds me ever so gently in its incandescence. Momentarily, there is peace.
Nomadic Rituals – Fust
Cursed Monk | March 14, 2025
It’s been 4 long years since Tides, an album that had me seeing stars. Riffs this hulking and woebegone take time. They take it and make a meal of it, swallowing seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia in their magnificent scale. Keeper and Conan and Rabies Caste and Rwake are all present in Nomadic Rituals’ type of bog-breathed and moss-draped sludge. We’re stuck in the fens, folks While things get doomier on “Beneath Black Skies,” tracks like “Nothing to Call Home,” “Fault in the Process,” and “The Rot” are cudgels to the back of your skull.
Teardrinker – Killing the Flowers Will Not Delay Spring
Independent | April 14, 2025
I’m just gonna say it: Rotterskramz. There are moments of bright iciness on “Water / Well” that one could mistake for quieter, more contemplative black metal, acting as as ballast to the prickly Richmond-style emo of the song’s first half. Starting in the emotional doldrums that end “Water / Well,” second track “Equilibrium” abruptly surges up and lashes out, sounding not a bit unlike Deafheaven on Roads to Judah. What you must know is that you will die in time, and we should focus on dying well together rather than being blown apart. Your cruelty and belligerence will not stop time.
Let’s keep being awesome and Flush!
Stick with even more of the worst music you’ll hear this year on TMP. Woldy got wicked with this WWW edition of TTT.
Toilet Radio 555 with 365 and Brenocide talkin’ Black Band Shirt, not killing yourself to work, and the strange world of music these days.
Adam Schwartz is back with some Vastum show reviews. Why didn’t you people stop me from skipping the show a few weeks ago?!
You know what to doooooooooo. Share your GBUs in the comments and maybe you’ll get a little smooch from me. No promises.
