Finding confidence outside genre or scene

KANDLE “DAMNED IF I DO” (SLEEPLESS)

Kandle Osborne claims that for most of her life, she did not know how to sing. That’s frankly hard to believe, listening to her delivery on this EP, which arrives four years after the 27-year-old Montrealer’s debut album. She comes from a rock ’n’ roll family and started her first band when she was 16, but it wasn’t until that first album that she had the confidence to stand on a stage in the spotlight. Her music draws from torch songs, country and western, Nick Cave, and that genre of music that’s always best described as David Lynchian: spooky and twangy, where familiar forms are subverted by an innate darkness. Working again with Broken Social Scene guitarist Sam Goldberg Jr., and featuring a cameo from July Talk’s Pete Dreimanis, Osborne offers five new songs that stake her claim as one of the more interesting young singer-songwriters in this country, though she doesn’t fit in with any particular genre or scene. There are some similarities here with Lindi Ortega’s recent direction, or that of her old bandmate Louise Burns, but Kandle is definitely in a class of her own. Hopefully we don’t have to wait another four years for a mere five songs.

Stream: “Bender,” “When My Body Breaks” feat. Pete Dreimanis, “Broken Boys”

LOTIC “POWER” (TRI ANGLE)

For an African-American trans musician living in Berlin, where they were briefly homeless during the making of this record, choosing the word “power” as the title of a debut full-length record is a strong statement, to say the least.

Born J’Kerian Morgan in Houston, where their musical career started by playing in high school marching bands, Lotic is an instrumental artist whose music feels political even before you find out their back story. It’s post-Aphex Twin distorted electronic music, which is likely what appealed to Bjork when she invited Lotic to remix a recent track (a track co-produced by Arca, with whom Lotic shares many esthetic similarities). It’s also rooted in Southern hip-hop, rhythmically, which gives it more bounce than many others in this scene — not that it’s remotely similar to club music, however, though modern dance choreographers can and should have a field day with this record. In its more cathartic and lurching moments, here are also nods to the sprawling emotional landscapes of Sigur Ros.

Lotic’s music achieves, in part, what the recent collaboration between Daniel Lanois and Venetian Snares could not: a headspinning array of sonic pleasures and punishments. The drum hits here can feel like a shot to the gut; this music is about living with the very real threat of everyday violence. “I’m bulletproof,” intones Lotic on one of the few tracks here to feature vocals, and they’re not just channelling Luke Cage. Another track here is called “Resilience,” which sums up the entire record: situating beautiful and uplifting passages in a ragged landscape. “Brown skin, masculine frame / head’s a target / acting real feminine / make ’em vomit,” goes the chanted chorus of “Hunted.”

“Power,” the album, is about transformation, between worlds, between identities. “Finding my own power was living in my femininity,” Lotic told Fact Magazine. No question their personal life bleeds into the music, but the music itself is powerful just on its own terms, especially when Lotic’s surprisingly beautiful, crooning voice takes the lead on the closing track, “Solace.”

Stream: “Love and Light,” “Hunted,” “Resilience”

BODEGA “ENDLESS SCROLL” (WHAT’S YOUR RUPTURE?)

It’s a lesson that rock ’n’ roll has to learn over and over and over again: keep it simple, stupid. Guitar, bass, drums and vocals that value enthusiasm over pitch: that and a few great riffs are all you need. The Stooges, the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, the White Stripes: every generation of rock ’n’ roll needs a back to basics. This New York City act could be that band in 2018.

There is nothing remotely original about Bodega (not to be confused with the 1990s rock band from Toronto); one can draw a straight line from The Fall to Pavement to Le Tigre to here. There is one less obvious reference point: Toronto’s Barcelona Pavilion (2001-05), to which Bodega bears an uncanny resemblance — though that band was obscure enough that it’s unlikely to ever come up in conversation (but if, like me, you remember them as one of the most exciting acts of the so-called “Torontopia” movement of the time, it’s hard to unhear the comparison).

These three women and two men are too effective as players to be considered amateurish; they simply know how to utilize the bare minimum for maximum impact. Co-lead vocalists Nikki Belfiglio and Ben Hozie are neither singers nor rappers — they’re more like sloganeers, articulating the ennui of the digital generation (“All day at work / stare at computer! / come home from work / stare at computer! / do my own work / stare at computer!”) and documenting the mundanities of everything from moving boxes to masturbation.

“Your playlist knows you better than your closest lover,” shouts Hozie at one point. If you have Bodega on your playlist, at the very least it means you’re funny, critical of consumer culture, suspicious of people who can’t interact IRL, and have long fantasized about forming a rock band with your closest friends, if you haven’t already.

Stream: “How Did This Happen?” “I Am Not a Cinephile,” “Bookmarks”