By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring longstanding music writer Jason P. Woodbury’s latest cornucopia of cosmic country, JASON P. WOODBURY AND THE NIGHT BIRD SINGING QUARTET, and Cashier’s fuzzy, deeply-felt EP, THE WEIGHT.
Cashier – THE WEIGHT
Genre: Noise Rock, Alternative Rock
Favorite Tracks: “A Curse I Know So Well,” “Part From Me”
The spirit of Steve Albini lives on in the drum sound of Cashier’s appropriately titled THE WEIGHT. There is a vehement, dry tone to each strike that recalls everything from Jayson Gerycz’s defined, precise urgency on Cloud Nothings’ ATTACK ON MEMORY to Mac McNeilly’s isolating, absorbing plod through the Jesus Lizard’s GOAT.
The Lafayette, Louisiana band have spent time sharing the stage with modern shoegaze pillars like Whirr and Nothing, and their affiliation with the current cool kids at Julia’s War would, on paper, certainly frame them in a specific kind of scene and sound. But Glixen or Joyer this is not — the guitars here are decidedly warmer, and the post-hardcore and noise rock edges offer something more genial, channeling an en vogue ‘90s palate that is closer to the post-Sonic Youth drive of Swirlies or the humming pop undercurrent of Lilys’ A BRIEF HISTORY OF AMAZING LETDOWNS.
None of these observations or comparisons stop Cashier from playing loud and fast. Outside of the closing title track, a fuzzy stomper with huge, hypnotic guitar parts, Zachary Derouen’s aforementioned drumming is relentless. On opener “A Curse I Know So Well,” the tempo revs up and down while shifting from one gear to another, letting the gauzy post-chorus breakdown slow things down for literal seconds before bringing it back to speed. Highlight “Part From Me” is a piece of yearning, angry loneliness, a blazing, distorted rock song where Kylie Gaspard’s guitar and lyrics are cathartically released. Gaspard’s vocals are mixed perfectly, the words nearly swallowed by the noise but never succumbing to it, the directness of the songwriting simple but purgative. It’s among the best EPs of the year so far. You can check it out over on Bandcamp!
Jason P. Woodbury – JASON P. WOODBURY AND THE NIGHT BIRD SINGING QUARTET
Genre: Cosmic Country, Folk
Favorite Tracks: “Calling From Somewhere,” “AlL Motion Aglow,” “What Else Is Now”
Jason P. Woodbury has been a fixture in the music industry for years. An Arizona legend through his time with Zias and Hello Merch, he’s spent roughly 15 years creatively guiding and building a handful of the most exciting media outlets to survive and thrive in the online era, first with Aquarium Drunkard and more recently with the TRANSMISSIONS podcast, WASTOIDS, and the newly launched Public Records.
Woodbury makes music that he himself would cover in any of the aforementioned publications — be it the in-the-pocket, Woods-y psych folk of 2022’s SOMETHING HAPPENING / ALWAYS HAPPENING, or the fuzzy, occasionally funky alien rock of his 2025 Dad Weed collaboration AMASSED LIKE A RAT KING. His latest, JASON P. WOODBURY AND THE NIGHT BIRD SINGING QUARTET, is his best yet. That quartet, made up of producer, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Zachary Toporek, bassist Andrew Bates, guitarist and pedal steel player Rick Heins, and keyboardist Rob Kroehler, amplify Woodbury’s diverse sonic ambitions. A blend of swelling cosmic country, earthy power pop, and jammy studio psych rock, it’s a thrilling collection of sounds and ideas — ones that encapsulate not just Woodbury’s well-documented admiration for those musical textures, but really the direction of the last decade of indie rock music: major label-era Kurt Vile, any of Ripley Johnson’s bands, the many creative inputs within Taper’s Choice, and beyond.
In one breath, JPWATNBSQ can shift from the hazy, astrosurfing instrumental “Gila River” to the existential porch jam “The Season Has Arrived”; from the piano-stomping, hand-clapping radio cut “What Else Is New” to the drifting, aimless vocal harmonies of “Get to Meet Them.” But it’s all of a piece — perhaps Woodbury’s reputation as a tastemaker, curator, writer, and podcaster precedes him in this way, allowing him to present his own interests as a singular idea that makes some acoustic sense. But even if that’s true, it also finds a kind of primal, perhaps celestial, connection from song-to-song. His delicate, cooing vocals land like latter-day Robin Pecknold, guiding us through a lifetime of interests and passions. While his debut album was revealing a piece of himself, this album succeeds at giving us all of him. More fans of Rose City Band, Friendship, Cut Worms, and Sam Blasucci need to be in on this album. You can ride with the Night Bird Singing Quartet over on Bandcamp.
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