First Thought Fridays: Sis and the Lower Wisdom, The Cribs, Dry Cleaning

Photo of Dry Cleaning by Max Miechowski

First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week, serving up first impressions, favorite or least favorite songs, and whether or not they’re worth a second listen. Check back for more each Friday night or Saturday morning.

I am fortunate enough to have a day job where I spend a lot of time with my earbuds in listening to music—it’s pretty much the only thing that makes this column doable. This week, however, was not like that, hence why it is arriving so late, and also doesn’t hit as many releases as I’d usually prefer. But hey, I’m here, and I’ve got three new releases that are all worth checking out: an album outside of what I’d normally enjoy but is hitting just right, a band I haven’t checked in with in over a decade that dropped a new album with a couple valleys but some very high peaks, and an album that has me reassessing a band that had never grabbed me before. It’s a fun, eclectic mix of stuff, and I hope you spot something worth checking out. Here’s what I listened to this week, in the order in which I listened to ‘em:

Sis and the Lower Wisdom, Saints and Aliens (Native Cat Recordings): The one constant in Jenny Gillespie Mason’s discography as Sis is that no two albums sound the same. Through the course of her career she’s gone from brittle trip-hop to poppy electronica to a mix of sample-driven grooves and organic instruments (her 2022 EP Gnani, the release that put her on my radar) to her vocal-less ambient side project from last year as Ship Says Om (which I reviewed in this column last November).

Saints and Aliens finds Mason simultaneously moving in both a more ambient and a more organic direction, and hitting a new career high. Mason’s songs blossomed thanks to collaborations with a group of local musicians (hence the addition of the “…and the Lower Wisdom” to the moniker), primarily Brijean Murphy and producer/mixer/bassist Dougie Stu (both of the band Brijean, who first collaborated with Mason on Gnani). But the album’s VIP is Nicole McCabe, whose saxophone provides a beautiful fluttering effect throughout. (It’s so easy for the skronky sound of a saxophone to dominate any song, but McCabe’s subtlety is perfection here.) The end result is a blend of melodic indie rock, African-inspired percussion, and atmospheric jazz—the kind of songs that don’t insist on your attention, that are so smooth and ear-pleasing that they work as background and mood music, but that have so much variety and so much interesting stuff going on that they warrant deeper listening as well. Will I Listen Again?:  Absolutely.

The Cribs, Selling a Vibe (Sonic Blew/PIAS): One of the things I hope this column makes clear is that, man, there is a lot of amazing music put out into the world every week, and even when you make listening to new music a high priority, it’s still impossible to keep up with everybody. Case in point: man, did I love the Cribs’ 2005 sophomore LP The New Fellas, and I caught them live quite a few times over the next half decade or so, but I hadn’t checked in with them since Johnny Marr (yes, that Johnny Marr) left his short stint in the band way back in 2011. I ended up missing four albums in the intervening 15 years.

I’m very happy I checked back in with the Jarman brothers (Gary, Ryan, and Ross) because their new album, their first in five years, is a great listen. The Cribs’ earliest records were catchy as all get out, but earned a lot of their good will from the band’s raw, shouty exuberance. This time out, they’ve teamed up with producer Patrick Wimberly (formerly of the band Chairlift) and the result? It’s not raw (the guitars have a little scuzzy distortion but the production glistens), shouty (Gary and Ryan sing in more of a slight sneer these days), or exuberant (the pace is decidedly mid-tempo). But catchy? You’re damned right they’re still catchy. Like a good baseball lineup, the heaviest hitters are in the 3 and 4-spot with “A Point Too Hard to Make” and “Never the Same,” which sound decidedly Strokes-y with their click-clack drums and bubbly basslines (early Strokes producer Gordon Raphael helped out on a couple tracks, though not those two in particular). The middle of the record sagged a bit for me—“Summer Seizures” didn’t connect with its melody or lyrics, and “Looking for the Wrong Guy” is a slow builder that takes too long to get where it’s going—but the front and back of the record are strong enough for me to consider this album a strong recommendation. Will I Listen Again?: Probably not front to back, but I’m definitely down to revisit multiple songs here.

Dry Cleaning, Secret Love (4AD): My massive music tracking spreadsheet tells me that I definitely listened to Dry Cleaning’s last two works (their 2022 album Stumpwork with its distinctly gross album artwork and its companion 2023 EP Swampy) but I guess they didn’t make much of an impression because my memory was off about which genre they were even in. Maybe it was the mundane band name?

But despite some more off-putting album artwork, I listened—really listened—to their new album Secret Love and wow, what an original. Florence Shaw delivers her spoken-not-really-sung vocals in a disaffected scoff, sounding like Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon crossed with Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier airing her grievances and expressing her philosophy of life over a second bottle of wine at 10:00pm in a quiet Paris bistro. The music is post-punk by definition with its clangy, chiming guitars, but it’s also languorous, foggy, mysterious. And that band name—at first glance it is mundane, but the mundanity seems to be the point, as Shaw’s lyrical topics are things like being a cruise ship designer, or not liking cleaning her apartment, or enjoying the taste of burned food, decidedly unsexy topics all and yet somehow she makes talking about these things sound effortless cool. Paired with the rest of the band’s grooves and the effect is downright hypnotic. Will I Listen Again?: Absolutely. | Jason Green