Aggie Miller

What would you rather be than lucky?

Here’s something you may have noticed about people from NYC: they have the unique perspective that comes from always having had everything at their fingertips. The city somehow condenses a dizzying number of cultural exports into a matter of blocks, where it’s easy to find world-class art, music, anything; it’s also easy to get lost, to not know who you are. Aggie Miller’s (Annabel Hoffman) self-titled debut tackles the problem of finding your identity in a place where identities are rapidly bought, sold, reinvented. Second single ‘Bedroom Song’ centers this early-20s ennui — “I’m back in the city I was raised by / I don’t know who to talk to or how to act” — and leans into the duality of feeling trapped in your room while you are technically now as free and loose as the “howling” wind through the high-risers. Take a walk through the rest of Miller’s map of New York as sketched from memory, and you’ll soon get to know the territory: the 7th St church that isn’t there anymore, the ferry station disappearing into the fog. What a privilege, then, to be let into this vanishing world — of old New York, of young adulthood — and what would you rather be than lucky?

Foster Powell

SURGEON GENERAL

Live at Martha Hill

Caught between obsessive and complacent.

“How can I accurately sum it all up in five to seven sentences?” Surgeon General’s Garrett Crusan asks within the first minute of the band’s first offering, a full-length live album, Live at Martha Hill, which will quickly supply a clear answer to this question. Hell, I can do it in one sentence: Surgeon General is the Best Band In The World. Press play and you’ll immediately be wondering, “Wait what? They did this live?” It’s a rhythm section that must be heard to be believed — you’ll think this album was recorded back in the days of actually good musicians, like maybe 1987, but the truth is they are just actually good musicians. That’s not all they have going on, though — Crusan’s compositions are all built around the energy of their lead vocal, and once you start paying attention you’ll realize that it’s not just energy, they’re going after “all the important questions” of life, neuroses, and ambition: “What am I if I’m not / just a door that won’t unlock” they sing on ‘Velcro,’ “Is it okay to show up last / or be vulnerable about the things that I lack?” If it sounds this fucking amazing… well sure, you can show up anytime.

Foster Powell

EGG ROUTINE

Let’s Eat The Garnishes

egg

Little is known about Harry Zucker and Tristan Beltrami’s studio band egg routine. Or perhaps it’s all there in the name: they get together once in a while, fry some eggs, and make gold records. 2023’s EP Let’s Eat the Garnishes is a showcase for the duo’s ability to produce dazzling, understated songwriter music that would be at home in LA’s Largo scene of the late 90s (a point upon which a number of notable, understated songwriters converged for a few years, among them Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann, and Jon Brion). Zucker and Beltrami also hail from LA and have evidently absorbed something of the city’s legendary recording studio mystique, for LETG is the best kind of record: the one that rewards repeated listenings with additional details as you peer into the back of the mix, like a glorious reverb send on the tambourine track or a bit of chorused-out guitar that elegantly sneaks us into the next unexpected chord change or searching lyric: “It’s funny how you start to see me / when I was here the whole time.” These songs are rich with the well-worn feeling of an enduring friendship, and you’ll soon feel like you’ve known them all along.

Foster Powell

A.M. Rodio

Married / Buried in a barn?

As Beloved

Press play on A.M. Rodio’s “A Shy Declaration” and after a quick mic check — yes, the left and the right sides of the stereo are working — you’ll look around and realize your 15 minute mid-afternoon mental health walk has led you across the Avenues, to Fifth and Sixth, and: wait a minute! This is it, The Roughest Place In Town, where the major players cut publishing deals on sheet music; where songs were born. Yeah, you got it, it’s Tin Pan Alley. Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Asa Marder is right at home here, especially on piano ballads like this one, which begin simply, like in the old days, then rapidly expand into 21st-century bedroom-studio maximalism. Marder’s songs are old-fashioned underneath — you might say, “pre-war” — but also have a will to capture the information-overload of trying to exist in the present, where you find meaning for an instant while flossing your teeth, only to quickly snap back to cold reality: “It’s delight I cannot stand / when I wake up we’re alone again.”

Foster Powell