If It's Too Loud...

I normally don't wait ten days after an album is released to write about it, but with the latest from Sapling I wanted to make sure I spent some time with it before overly gushing. After multiple listens, amor fati just keeps getting better and better. After loving 2020's No Sequoia , I thought I knew what to expect with this new album. And amor fati is more of what we love about Sapling. It's both aggressive and fun punk rock with a biting sense of humor and an artfulness you don't see a lot in the genre. But then the songs on amor fati start going off in these unexpected directions. Songs like "A Fox Upon the Tomb," "Inaction in Action," and "11:37" are the more traditional Sapling songs, but something happens during "UK Modern is Soft" that changes the whole trajectory of the album. It starts off pretty standard, albeit a bit poppy by Sapling standards. Then, it just veers off into this epic burst of gorgeous noise, keeping thi...

"Snake Charmer" is one of Sapling's more quiet songs, but quiet is relative in the world of music. It's a take on the classic rhyme (you'll know it once it starts), and starts off almost folk like. And then the sonic explosion kicks in, and you just get slammed with a wall of fuzz, which includes bass clarinet by Dana Colley (Morphine). It's a song sung by guitarist/Theraminster Amber Tortorelli who attacks the simple rhyme and melody, giving it more than a little menace. It's a hypnotic force of fuzz and distortion, and it may end up becoming one of your favorite ever Sapling songs. You can listen to "Snake Charmer" below. amor fati is due out May 7 on Sleazy Within Reason Records, with an album release party on May 7 at Starlite in Southbridge, MA with Minibeast and Crow Follow. Tickets for that show are available here . For more on Sapling, check out the band's website . Snake Charmer by Sapling

Massachusetts' premier bitch pop and art rock band Sapling have returned with a brand new single. "11:37" was written immediately following the death of Foo Fighters' drummer Taylor Hawkins, who was a major influence on Sapling bass player and vocalist Rainy. A quiet ballad wouldn't be a fitting tribute, and "11:37" is not a quiet song. It's a little more restrained than some of Sapling's previous offerings, but this is a song built from heartache and is equally mournful and frustrated. Despite the volume, it's an oddly beautiful song that seems to venture more into the world of prog-rock than we're used to from Sapling. In a Facebook post, Rainy says of the new song: "11:37 has been a sacred and synchronistic number for me for some time now and I realized that the first time I saw Taylor play live was when he still played for Alanis Morrisette in 1996. I was 11. Of course, I was 37 last year when he passed. "I sat down and star...