New Stuff from Exmaid, Hysteria

Exmaid announced their debut LP and released the first single.

Appetizers

This is a big Friday of album releases from some venerable bands, and I hope to get to one or two of them over the course of the weekend. It's been kind of a busy morning around here, and CoolDaughter 2 is home for the beginning of her long weekend. I did want to hit you with a couple of quick ones, though, before we went out foraging for some lunch.

Exmaid, "Devoted"

Our friends in Exmaid released the first single from their upcoming debut LP earlier this week. Fair Sex is due from SRA Records on April 6th, and "Devoted" is our first taste of that.

Exmaid's first release was the excellent Neurotic Fantasies EP on which Miranda Taylor (Black Wine, Hunchback, Full Of Fancy) played mostly solo. Since then, Taylor has enlisted Philadelphia's Psychic Teens (Dave Cherasaro, Joe DeCarolis, Larry Ragone) as her band and collaborators. The foursome went into the studio this past summer to record Fair Sex.

With its jagged and staccato guitar and Taylor's crystal clear vocal, "Devoted" is probably the most assertive and straightforward song you'll ever hear about indecisiveness. I guess.



Hysteria, "New Wave"

Red Bank-based Hysteria are Michelle Nuccio, Lance Cashman, Matt Ramiz, and Nick Brucanti. Today, the band released their first single, "New Wave," which will appear on their upcoming 6 Songs EP.

The song is shoegaze-y post-punk that features Nuccio on, in what is probably a first for the genre, ukulele. I'm not sure that you can quite pick out the fact that there's a uke somewhere in the wall of sound; and, in fact, "New Wave" is a very good example of the dark and atmospheric post-punk that I always enjoy.