🥤 SIPSMAN COMMUNIQUE: February 2025
Lily Seabird • POP Montréal • The Convenience • Fusilier • Paper Castles
We’re under two weeks out from Mardi Gras and my dream of dressing up as a sleeve of saltines is likely to be crushed (🥁). I hope my costuming improves in the coming years.
Everyone read Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine? Good.
If you’re a writer and you haven’t heard these albums, please let me know if I can send them your way:
LILY SEABIRD
Announced last month and out April 4 via Lame-O Records, Trash Mountain pares Seabird’s songwriting down to its most resonant essentials. As Josh Terry wrote in the bio, “it’s an album of unwelcome exits and uncertain futures, but there’s resiliency and hope at its core.” Thanks to Flood, The Fader, and many others for shining a spotlight on the almost titular lead single “Trash Mountain (1pm)” and its “What’s Up Fatlip?”-inspired music video (Jokerfied swagger at 0:37). Seabird returns to the UK again in August for an appearance at this year’s End of the Road. And there’s a Lily Seabird Beer on the way via Ocelot. And she’s heading to SXSW next month, so please get in touch if you’d like to hear some Trash Mountain songs early in an Austin locale.
FUSILIER
“U N I NO” is the absolutely ferocious single from the Brooklyn artist’s new album Ambush, arriving March 28 via IS NOT MUSIC. Bringing the 10/8 time signature to the masses. It was released last week with an equally masterful video featuring Fusilier under heavy surveillance. Thanks to Consequence for naming it one of their Songs of the Week, writing “the song is impossible to predict or pin down, careening through heavy guitars, distorted vocals, and energetic percussion at a driving pace.” On Monday, previous single “Nightmare Muscle” was named Song of the Day at The Current. New Yorkers can and should celebrate the release of Ambush with Fusilier at Public Records on April 9 with support from Cleo Reed, Katzin, sandile, and Philip Morgan.
THE CONVENIENCE
Last week, the Crescent City rockers returned with another peek under the hood of their new album Like Cartoon Vampires, due April 18 via Winspear. “Dub Vultures” (Yes, that is an accidental reference to the New Order remix of “Sub-culture”!) arrives with a hook that will lodge itself under your skin, as well as a stop motion music video that brings to life the album’s collage’d, scrappy front cover. Check it out on Paste, who called it "a gothic guitar track that contorts into this incongruous, jumping pretense of woozy rock magic.” J’agree. The songwriting and production duo is currently backing Video Age on the west coast.
PAPER CASTLES
I’m returning to releasing albums after taking 2024 off, and I’m thrilled to be doing that with one of Vermont’s best kept secrets, the songwriting project and band fronted by Jericho’s Paddy Reagan. Dive into the Paper Castles 101 playlist on Bandcamp via Buy Music Club or Spotify. Along with the signing announcement earlier this month, Paper Castles’ back catalog—2011’s Bleating Heart, 2013’s Vague Era, and 2018’s Acceptionalism—is available digitally once again. They also shared “Crooked and Narrow,” a previously lost b-side, which was so ahead of its time that it made it onto Apple Music’s New In Rock and New In Alternative playlists. San Diego also seems to be loving it. Will report back.
POP MONTREAL
Your Wednesday evening in Austin during SXSW is sorted, hooray! Where else would you wanna be but Swan Dive on Red River? “POP” and M For Montréal are showcasing some of the newest and brightest artists coming from their city, province, and country. Stereogum was there last year, be like them—it’s a solid decision annually, like Juan in a Million for breakfast, or absconding to Small Victory. Press play on the showcase playlist, RSVP here, see you there, go Expos.
Lastly, a reminder that I am a Show Booking Guy once again. This don’t-call-it-a-Saint-Patricks-Day show was announced on Tuesday.
Excited for that Fusilier record
The WUFL video is pretty epic 🎈