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Adult Mom
May we all live long enough to savor our revenge. Since the release of their debut album a decade ago, indie-rock quartet Adult Mom has wholeheartedly grappled with pain, frustration, and disillusionment, all while offering koans to hopeful resilience. On Natural Causes, their fourth album, they embrace a new emotional register: rage that burns so bright you can light your way by it. Stevie Knipe, the group's principal songwriter and lead vocalist, wrote the songs on Natural Causes from 2020 to 2023 during a period of both global tumult and personal upheaval. The album arrives in the wake of Knipe undergoing intensive treatment for cancer in their late twenties, an experience that brought them into direct confrontation with their own mortality. As they started writing songs from that vantage, they found they could stare down difficult memories of abuse and toxic relationships with a new ferocity. "Feeling like you’re a prisoner in your own body to medical professionals makes you very sad, but also very angry. There were nights where I would have full tantrums. I felt like a 13-year-old just from the pure anger of it," says Knipe. "You revert to this childlike state of, This is not fair! It unlocks those other moments in your life when you were like, This is not fair." Though Knipe has been out as queer and non-binary since Adult Mom's debut, their relationship to their identity, like many queer artists', has evolved and revealed itself in long waves. They came out as a lesbian after writing Adult Mom's lauded 2021 album Driver, and many of the songs on Natural Causes cut through the knots of compulsory heterosexuality and coerced gender normativity. Getting more deeply in touch with your own queerness can feel liberating and thrilling; it can also thaw out oceans of anger you never knew you had from all the times you had to stay alienated from yourself to survive. "Thematically, I got more comfortable with getting darker," says Knipe. "I knew there were things I wanted to explore that I didn’t get to on Driver, like the traumatic side of trying to unravel all this learned straightness. There were things happening interpersonally where I was like, OK, now I need to really tackle the tough parts of this process."
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Bad Suns
Bad Suns are embracing everything that’s possible on their joyous fifth album, Accelerator. Together since 2012, Christo Bowman (vocals/guitar), Gavin Bennett (bass) and Miles Morris (drums) started playing as teenagers and went viral almost immediately with their magnetic blend of indie-rock and ‘80s synth sheen. After four hit albums, the trio reached a point where they needed to recalibrate and recenter if they wanted to continue. Recording their exuberant 2023 EP Infinite Joy was a cleansing experience that set them on a thrilling path forward into making Accelerator, which comprises 12 new tracks brimming with dance-pop hooks and poignant lessons learned. In planning their latest project, the band reconnected with their go-to producer Eric Palmquist (Tate McRae, Half Alive), who also helmed their 2014 debut Language & Perspective, plus follow-ups Disappear Here (2016) and Apocalypse Whenever (2022). Going into recording Accelerator, Eric encouraged Bad Suns to channel their sense of renewal into an energetic sonic direction they’d tapped into before, but never quite to this extent. “One of the first times we sat down with Eric, we were talking about what we'd all been vibing with. He said point blank, ‘It would be really cool to mess around with some ‘90s house-inspired music. Right away, the light bulb went off for me. I'd wanted to push in that direction forever.” The hook-packed gem “Slow Karma” acts as Christo’s mission statement for Accelerator. An intimate and cathartic track, the album opener finds Christo at a personal and professional crossroads as he confronts old habits and makes the decision to become sober. As Bad Suns move into their new era, one filled with exciting personal and professional milestones, they’ve never been more harmoniously aligned. “While making this album, I turned 30, I got married, I found out I was having a kid. Going to the studio every day and being in the room with the guys, I had this sense that I'm going to look back and know that was probably one of the best times of my life.”