RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Club Silencio brought the music of David Lynch to The Garden Club at Wild Heaven on Friday, January 23

Meghan Dowlen of Club Silencio. Photo by Jeff Shipman.

On January 23, The Garden Club at Wild Heaven transformed into a darkened threshold between worlds as Club Silencio paid loving tribute to the music of David Lynch’s films and television series. Billed as a celebration of what would have been Lynch’s 80th birthday, the atmosphere ebbed and flowed with a deep knowledge of just how much this music breathes, trembles, and rumbles.

The night began with a Morphine cover dubbed Cure For Pain, which found saxophone player Ben Davis joined by bass player and vocalist David Railey, and drummer Robbie Nelson paying homage to Cambridge, Mass’ once great low rock trio. The group’s set was a well-balanced counterpart to Club Silencio, crafting an atmosphere that was both fun and foreboding while channeling Morphine’s slow-burning fusion of jazz, blues, and alternative rock in songs such as “You Look Like Rain” (featuring Matt Coleman), “Cure For Pain,” and “Honey White.”

Club Silencio photo by Jeff Shipman.

Club Silencio drew from the haunted lullabies and skronking unease of soundtracks from films such as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Inland Empire, and, of course, Twin Peaks. Vocalist Meghan Dowlen brought a commanding presence to the stage, her voice equal parts torch song and apparition, while the band—Jeffrey Bützer on guitar, TT Mahony playing keys, saxophone player Ben Davis, bass player Matt Steadman, guitarist Henry Jack, and drummer Sean Zearfoss—proved deeply fluent in Lynch’s cinematic language of mood, menace, and overdrive. “The Pink Room” and Julie Cruise’s “Rocking Back Inside My Heart” from Twin Peaks laid the ground for the band to show off some of it’s own flare while taking on the Lynchian hits: “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” from Eraserhead, Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” from Blue Velvet, and Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” from “Wild At Heart.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The evening peaked for me when I was unexpectedly invited to sit down on the stage with Bützer, Davis, and Dowlen while they serenaded me with the painfully sincere “Just You” a.k.a. James’ sappy acoustic love song from Twin Peaks. It was just a few days after my birthday, and for as much trash as I talk about James’ character, the situation was hilarious. Davis nailed those exaggerated high notes with a devotion to the bit—trusting the audience to follow his lead, never spelling anything out—pushing past sincerity and into something beautifully, mischievously funny. After all, humor has always been an integral part of Lynch’s films as well.

Lynch once said that “music is a ‘magical’ tool that can convey emotions and moods faster and more directly than film.” Club Silencio understands this instinctively, and honored the notion by trusting atmosphere, feeling, and form above all else.

Check out a gallery of images from the show below. All photos by Jeff Shipman.

The setlist
“Pink Room” / “Ghosts of Love”
“In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)”
“Love Letters”
“Blue Velvet”
“I’m Waiting Here”
“That Magic Moment”
“Just you”
“Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart”
“Wiked Game”
“Into the Night”
“Song to the Siren”
“Sycamore Trees”
“Locomotion”
“In Dreams”
“Falling”

Check out more releases featuring Club Silencio’s players


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RadATL New music

RadATL’s favorite Atlanta albums of 2025

Throughout much of last year, Atlanta’s music scene felt like an S curve, emulating the backstreets, house shows, practice spaces, DIY venues, clubs, and warehouses that punctuated so many late-night excursions. Each turn revealed a different version of all that “Atlanta music” can be. Punk barked and snapped with urgency, hardcore hit with blunt force, indie rock melodies and shoegazing textures ruled, while the city’s secret love affair with drone and experimental sounds churned and hummed in exciting new ways.

What ties these 15 albums together is pure intent. These are records made by artists who are aware of the ground beneath their feet, even while pushing outward. It comes through in their grit, patience, and refusal to sand down the edges. Some of these albums feel like snapshots of specific rooms and nights. Others stretch time, inviting listeners to sit with each note until the music becomes revelatory. 

If you don’t see your favorite year-end picks here? Leave a comment with a link for us all to check out.


1. Ultra Lights: Ultra Lights (Chunklet Industries)
Ultra Lights’ self-titled, six-song LP blends wiry guitars, sharp melodies, and a restless beat into a taut, urgent album that demands an instant replay every time the needle comes up. The group features former members of Turf War and Illegal Drugs. As such, songs like “It’s Your Funeral,” “Clockin’ Out,” and “Nostalgia” rank among the finest post-punk and garage-fueled numbers the city has ever produced; each track leaving a lingering echo in the air. There’s a precision to Ultra Lights propulsive sound, a sense that every chord and drum hit is calculated, yet it remains unpredictable, yielding an energy that feels alive and electric.



2. Franks atl: Ode To Lucenay’s Peter
With Ode to Lucenay’s Peter, Franks atl bends Appalachian ghosts and downtown Atlanta drone into something intimate and quietly unhinged, with Brian Frank Halloran’s cello and Frank Schultz’s banjo circling each other like wary old friends. Expanding upon Halloran’s work in Smoke and w8ing4UFOs and Schultz’s past in Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel, the record drifts and gnaws at the edges, lingering in the room like a half-remembered dream.



3. Sword II: Electric Hour (section1 Records)
Sword II’s Electric Hour turns jittery guitars and elastic rhythms into a collection of songs that are both nervy and warm. The album hums with restless momentum, balancing lush atmosphere and sharp musical instincts with a melodic patience that reveals more with each listen.



4. Token Hearts: Token Hearts (Midnight Cruiser Records)
Token Hearts’ self-titled LP hums with lived-in melodies and ragged resolve, stitching together jangly indie rock and bruised Americana in a way that feels both familiar and quietly defiant. With songs such as “Behind These Walls,” “Amateurs,” and “American Lens,” Buffi Aguero (Subsonics) and Patrick O’Conner are the creative nucleus leading a rotating cast of players, finding slow beauty in the fray, turning hard-earned miles and small moments into songs that are warm and resonant.




5. Hubble: 1,000 Heads (Rope Bridge Records)
Hubble’s 1,000 Heads bristles with restless energy and bruised melodies, from the skittering urgency of “Starhead” and the narcotic swirl of “Reviver” to the punk‑tinged skronk of “Chrome,” painting an Atlanta sound that’s both defiant and introspective.


6. Ultisol: Precession of the Equinox
Ultisol’s debut album, Precession of the Equinox was conceived and composed by multi-instrumentalist Daniel Lamb. Each song blends drone and classic guitar sensibilities, as Lamb’s celestial strumming is anchored by a bucolic tangle of acoustic resonance and Southern avant-garde atmosphere. Produced by Dale Eisinger (YVETTE, House of Feelings), Precession expands its reach with contributions from various collaborators weaving together noise, raw textures, and wide-eyed sonic explorations into an immersive abstract wash of sound. Banjo rolls, field recordings, and ambient textures swirl together creating something both grounded and cosmic—an astral Americana for the ages.


7. Blammo / Riboflavin split LP (State Laughter)
Blammo and Riboflavin both called it a day just in time to release a split 12″ that stands as testament to the more adventurous pockets of Atlanta’s post-punk and new wave underground. Here, both bands tangle in jagged minimalism and a shambolic strum. Blammo shines a light on spiky German, Austrian, and Swiss post-punk energy. Riboflavin leans into a loose and hypnotic jangle. Sarah Prewoznik’s voice cuts through with icy shrillness while Graham Tavel sculpts intricate pop melodies. Tyler Roberts Channels the most elusive qualities of new wave’s undefinable inflections. Ian May and Josh Feigert’s guitars revel in a discordant haze. There is tremendous diversity here, as each track veers from smooth to maniacal, humming along with fleeting moments of noisy brilliance, harmony, and anxiety.


8. Insomniac: Om Moksha Ritam (Blues Funeral Recordings)
Insomniac’s debut album, Om Moksha Ritam, comes on quietly at first, like billowing storm clouds scraping across a foreboding sky. The album’s opening number, “Meditation,” bursts with droning rhythms. “Mountain,” “Forest,” “Desert,” and “Sea” invoke the cinematic imagery of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western film scores, steeped in late-night ambiance. Each song sways between delicate intimacy and glacial crescendos of rhythm, distortion, and trance-like vocal mantras that peak in the “Awakening,” gliding with intensity through the subconscious. If the end is nigh, Om Moksha Ritam is an immersive hymn calling down the mystical and forbidden forces that separate a dreaming mind from the waking world. R.I.P. Mike Morris.


9. Archeology: Gains In Perspective
Archeology’s Gains In Perspective thrives on the quiet tension between momentum and reflection, sounding like a band taking stock of where they’ve been without losing the nerve to push forward. It’s a record that rewards close listening, revealing its emotional weight not in grand gestures but in the accumulated force of carefully chosen moments.


10. Dillon & Paten Locke: Rations (Full Plate)
With Rations, Dillon & Paten Locke strip things down to their bare essentials, letting restraint, texture, and booming negative space do the heavy lifting. It’s a glowing and smooth record that commands the listener to lean in, finding power in what it withholds as much as what it reveals.


11. Upchuck: I’m Nice Now (Domino Recording Company)
I’m Nice Now sharpens Upchuck’s already feral brand of punk and indie rock into something leaner, louder, and more self-aware, pairing bile-spitting hooks with a street-level sense of humor that never dulls the blade. It’s an album that sounds like growing up without growing tame—still reckless, communal, and bristling with purpose.


12. CDSM: Convertible Hearse (Mothland & Exag’ Records).
Convertible Hearse barrels forward with CDSM’s serrated blend of noise, industrial-grade beats, and punk belligerence, sounding less like a collection of songs than a sustained act of controlled demolition. It’s confrontational and unpretty by design, but there’s a grim clarity beneath the chaos for those willing to stand close to the blasting zone.


13. Gringo Star: Sweethearts (Dizzybird Records)
Gringo Star’s Sweethearts trades indie-rock grit for a 1950’s pop shimmer, weaving together soft-focus textures that imbue their signature blend of garage rock and psychedelia with a new and introspective depth. The album’s first two singles, “Blood Moon” and “I Sleep to Dream,” highlight a musical evolution in progress, each one floating in reverb, harmonies, and instantly familiar melodies wrapped around love stories. The songs shape shift with dreamlike grace, expanding upon elements of both nostalgia and innovation, carrying the band into new terrain.


14. Jacob Chisenhall: Be Steel, My Heart
With Be Steel, My Heart, Jacob Chisenhall crafts a love letter to the pedal steel guitar. Songs such as “Flowers For Inez,” “Beachfront Bossa” (ft. Rose Hotel), and “One for Mr. Byrd” (ft. Paul Guy Stevens) turn quiet resolve into a weighty pop excursion, stitching heavenly rural melodies to the kinds sparkling atmosphere that would make Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson smile.



15. Various Artists: Friends of G.G. (Scavenger of Death)
Friends of G.G. is a dispatch from the underbelly of Atlanta’s post-punk continuum—noisy, melodic, and creatively off-center. This compilation shines a light on a dozen side players who have passed through G.G. King’s orbit over the last 18 years, paying homage to the city’s kaleidoscopic lo-fi, post-punk, and hardcore roots. Tracks by Wymyns Prysyn, Whiphouse, and Gentleman Jesse blend with cuts from bands that never made it out of the basement. La Serra’s “Horses” reveals some charming indie pop intricacies hiding in G.G.’s avant-garde tapestry of sound. It’s a fever dream of blown-out demos brought together in a pastiche of outsider anthems and flashes of brilliance from Atlanta’s post-punk family tree—less a retrospective more an atlas of living breathing friction and resilience.

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Revisiting Pylon Reenactment Society’s ‘Christmas Daze’


Pylon Reenactment Society’s “Christmas Daze” captures that peculiar mix of frantic motion and quiet clarity that settles in around the holidays. The song was born on instinct during a late-2021 rehearsal: bass player Kay Stanton dropped a riff that snapped the room into sharp focus. Within minutes the group had a new song on their hands. They carried that momentum straight into Chase Park Transduction, tracking the tune on December 29, 2021, while the season’s energy still hung in the air. The song was initially released via Bandcamp on December 1, 2023.

“Christmas Daze” follows a lone traveler who runs out of gas on the way to and from a family gathering. But the breakdown serves as a reset. Instead of leaning into frustration, the song’s narrator reconnects with the small charms that make the holidays worthwhile. Tiny flashes of warmth are found in roadside stillness, the glow of passing decorations, and the quiet pause between obligations.

Pylon Reenactment Society. Photo by Christy Bush

PRS delivers it all with their signature taut and wiry pulse. Vanessa Briscoe Hay’s voice cuts through like a cold wind, carrying equal parts wry humor and wonder. Jason NeSmith’s guitar sparks and coils around Gregory Sanders’ crisp drumming, and Stanton’s riffs propel the music forward. ‘Christmas Daze’ hums with the notion that life moves better when you stay present enough to catch the beauty flickering in every passing second.

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Record Review: The Tear Garden, ‘Astral Elevator’

Since Edward Ka-Spel and cEvin Key first merged their creative worlds in the late 1980s—bridging the surreal poetics of the Legendary Pink Dots with the dystopian electronics of Skinny Puppy—their collaboration has always thrived on the outer limits of both realms. Astral Elevator reinforces their hold on that liminal space where mysticism and melody blur into something strange and beautiful.

“Lady Fate” with its spacious and droning melodies rekindles the psychedelic beauty, melancholy, and paranoia of the Tear Garden’s defining masterpiece, 1992’s The Last Man To Fly. Later, “Square Root” emerges like a spectral echo from 1987’s Tired Eyes Slowly Burning, subtly recalling the supreme weirdness of “My Thorny Thorny Crown.” Its interplay of a high, brittle vocal winding around a low, counting voice vaguely personifies a ritualistic dialogue between innocence and gravity—an auditory tether to the project’s origins, rendered here with the clarity that comes from decades of stylish evolution.

Astral Elevator, eschews the impenetrable darkness of 1996’s To Be An Angel Blind, The Crippled Soul Divide and 2000’s Crystal Mass. Here, the group—rounded out by Randall Frazier and Dre Robinson—reaches for a shimmering new plane where memory and revelation become one, and the music drifts like a transmission from some unknown realm that lies just beyond the edge of consciousness.

“War Crier” unravels around a skeletal rhythm, layered with shimmering synths that pulse like a dim heartbeat. Ka-Spel’s voice hovers in the mix like a transmission from a lost frequency—detached yet intimate. “Toten Tanz” channels the darker undertones of Key’s industrial roots, twisting through metallic percussion and vaporous drones, while “Exorcism” leans into rhythmic dissonance; its tension underscored by cascading synths that crackle like static in the ether.

“Swallow the Leader” balances that darkness with warped melodies, unfolding like a carnival waltz in zero gravity. “Chow Mein” delivers the record’s sharpest dose of surrealism, pairing grotesque humor with a hypnotic, playful groove. “Unreal” lands as one of the album’s most striking statements—a reflective confrontation with modern disconnection, holding a mirror to the hollowing effects of AI on human intuition, creativity, and trust in perception. It’s both prophetic and deeply personal, as its synthetic textures frame a lament for authenticity in an increasingly artificial world.

“It Just Ain’t So” and “Always Take the Highway” tap into a lighter strain of the chaotic pulse that propelled “Inquisition” from Skinny Puppy’s Last Rights.

By the time “Undiluted Bliss” fades into focus, the record resolves its internal tension—weightless yet grounded, alien yet profoundly human. Ka-Spel, Key, and Co. refine their own musical vocabulary. The result is a work of hallucinatory grace, and an ascent that is entirely of this moment, yielding a worthy successor to the Tear Garden’s most luminous works.

Press play below to watch Randall Frazier’s video for “In The Name Of” and Cory Gorski’s “A Return.”

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RECORD REVIEW: Tortoise sharpens the edges of its hypnotic pulse with new album, ‘Touch’


With Touch (International Anthem/Nonesuch), Tortoise takes a deliberate step forward, refining and reimagining the motoric pulse and Krautrock undercurrents that ran through 2016’s The Catastrophist (Thrill Jockey). The Chicago-Portland-LA-based ensemble has always thrived on subtlety—those interlocking rhythms and textural sleights of hand that reveal new details with every listen. Here, the group hones that language to near perfection. Songs such as “A Title Comes,” “Axial Seamount,” and “Organesson” inhabit familiar terrain, yet each one breathes with renewed clarity and intent. There’s no need for grand reinvention when refinement feels this purposeful.

The album’s cool, monochromatic hue contrasts the warmer analog tones of earlier releases, creating a sense of precision and poise that’s both cerebral and deeply human. The production places every element exactly where it needs to be, crafting an atmosphere that’s minimal yet immersive. “Night Gang,” with its twangy, Morricone-inspired guitar lines, closes the record with an air of cinematic grandeur that is self referential while marking a turn into a brave new world.

Tortoise: From left to right: Jeff Parker, Dan Bitney, Douglas McCombs, John Herndon, and John McEntire. Photo by Heather Cantrell.

With Touch, Tortoise sounds as vital as ever: confident, contemplative, and completely in control of their craft. It’s an album that rewards patience and close listening, unfolding in waves of understated brilliance that reaffirm the band’s quiet mastery of mood and motion.

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RadATL Atlanta shows, New music, Podcasts & Interviews

Randall Frazier & Erik Drost get Orbit Service off the ground while finding their way within the expansive universe of the Legendary Pink Dots

ORBIT SERVICE: Erik Drost (left) and Randall Frazier. Photo by Joep Hendrikx.


The Legendary Pink Dots and Orbit Service are two bands bound by a shared sense of mystery, atmosphere, and musical exploration. Over the years, both projects have cultivated an aura that’s equal parts cosmic and deeply personal—music that drifts between dream states, where melody and texture blur into something transcendent. Now, the connection between the two acts runs deeper than ever. Guitarist Erik Drost and keyboard and electronics player Randall Frazier—both longtime fixtures in the Pink Dots’ ever-evolving lineup—are on the road performing sets steeped in the ethereal tones of both Orbit Service’s Spirit Guide and the LPD’s latest album, So Lonely in Heaven, and the more abstract, experimental energy of Chemical Playschool 23–24.

When the tour stops at Purgatory at the Masquerade on Friday, October 17, expect a performance that stretches perception as much as sound—a collision of meholy, beauty, and otherworldly tension.

In conversation, Drost and Frazier reflect on their creative chemistry and how their paths crossed during the making of 2004’s The Whispering Wall. They trace the evolution of Orbit Service from its early recordings to its current incarnation, and share what it means to inhabit the ever-expanding universe of Edward Ka-Spel’s songwriting. Together, they reveal that for all the mystery and gravity that surrounds their music, the heart of it all remains simple: connection, experimentation, and the pursuit of transcendence through sound.

Before playing a show in Purgatory at the Masquerade, on Friday, October 17, Drost and Frazier took an hour out of their day to talk about collaborating with each other, collaborating with Ka-Spel, and their go-to Waffle House meals while traveling across the United States.

Press play below to listen in on our conversation.



The Legendary Pink Dots and Orbit Service play The Masquerade (Purgatory stage) on Fri., Oct. 17. $23 (+fees). 7 p.m. This is an all ages show.

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RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

The Legendary Pink Dots and Orbit Service play the Masquerade (Purgatory) on Friday, October 17

LPDs: Randall Frazier (from left), Erik Drost, and Edward Ka-Spel. Photo by Joep Hendrikx.

The Legendary Pink Dots return to Atlanta on Friday, October 17, bringing 45 years of beautifully warped psychedelic mysticism to the Masquerade’s Purgatory stage.

Since forming in London in 1980, the Pink Dots have carved out a singular space in the underground—too strange for pop, too melodic for noise, too abstract for goth, and too open-ended to be called industrial music. Led by enigmatic vocalist and founding member Edward Ka-Spel and rounded out by Randall Frazier (synths, samples, and electronics), Erik Drost (guitar), and Joep Hendrikx (live engineering and effects), the LPDs weave together surreal narratives and immersive, cinematic soundscapes that take shape like dispatches from a fever dream.

The group’s catalog spans countless albums, each one a kaleidoscopic swirl of experimental electronics, post-punk texture, avant-garde noise, and darkly poetic meditations on the human condition. On stage, their shows become ritualistic experiences—hypnotic and theatrical, blurring the line between performance and séance.

Erik Drost (from left), Randall Frazier, Edward Ka-Spel, and Joep Hendrikx. Photo courtesy the Legendary Pink Dots.

The LPD’s latest album, So Lonely In Heaven (Metropolis Records), finds the group at its most evocative, melancholy, and Orwellian in years, layering haunting synths, spectral melodies, and existential poetry into a deeply human meditation on isolation and transcendence. It’s a reminder that even after 40-plus years, the LPDs are still evolving; still chasing the unknown.


Bologna, Italy-based Orbit Service opens the evening with a set of deep, slow-burning atmospherics and haunted melodies. Featuring Frazier and Drost performing together, the duo builds patient, ethereal songs that hum with existential weight. They are the perfect gateway into the LPDs’ strange and beautiful world. The latest offering, Spirit Guide, leans deeper into cosmic territory, expanding its sound with shimmering drones, meditative textures, and a slow, patient gravity that feels like it’s tuning into another frequency.


For the faithful, this show is a rare chance to step back into the Dots’ orbit. For the uninitiated, it’s an invitation to get lost in one of experimental music’s most enduring and imaginative universes.

The Legendary Pink Dots and Orbit Service play The Masquerade (Purgatory stage) on Fri., Oct. 17. $23 (+fees). 7 p.m. This is an all ages show.

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RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

After Words and Gardens Of … play Independent Distilling Company on Saturday, September 6

After Words at Excelsior Mill (pre-Masquerade). Photo by Sara Epstein.

Between July of 1987 and December of 1989, After Words played a crucial role in pushing Atlanta’s post hardcore scene into new musical terrain. Seminal hardcore band Neon Christ had called it quits a year earlier. In their wake, a new generation of musicians stepped up to carry their influence forward.

In the late ‘80s, After Words co-founding guitar player Brian Nejedly began booking shows while he was still in high school. “When the Metroplex shut down, that was the only all ages venue in town, so I just started looking for places that I could rent out to put on shows,” Nejedly says.

He booked Fugazi’s first Atlanta show at the First Existentialist Congregation in Candler Park. He booked Ignition, Soul Side, 7 Seconds and dozens of other acts. “Once I started booking shows, I realized that a lot of these bands had a list of people and places to call for shows in each town, and I was on that list,” Nejedly says. “For a while, I was the only guy in Atlanta on that list.”

Along the way, Nejedly sent After Words demo tapes out to pretty much every label that was on his radar. “I sent a demo to Cruz Records because we loved the band All,” he says. “We sent tapes to everyone, and Amanda MacKaye at Sammich Records wrote back.”

Amanda, sister of Ian (Dischord Records, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Coriky) and Alec (Ignition, Faith, and Hammered Hulls) MacKaye ran Sammich with Soul Side’s Eli Janney (Girls Against Boys). She offered to release the demo tape, making After Words the only band from outside of D.C. at the time to receive distribution through Dischord. 

The label’s approval validated Atlanta as a place where post-hardcore ideas could thrive, and it placed After Words on the same label as Soul Side, Shudder to Think, and Swiz.

Drop a needle on After Words’ record and Nejedly’s jagged guitar carries weight over vocalist Noel Ivey’s cathartic voice, and propulsive rhythms laid down by bass player Craig McQuiston and drummer Kevin Coley. Emotional urgency guides songs such as “Looking Back,” “Ghost Dance,” and “As I See It,” all bearing the intensity of an early emo sound. The songs were never about nihilism or aggression. They were about wrestling with meaning, memory, and self-understanding.


In February 2024, Nejedly revived After Words for a one-off show 35 years after the album’s release. Ivey, McQuiston, and Coley are no longer living in the area. So Nejedly formed a new lineup featuring Geoey Cook (Fiddlehead) on vocals and guitar, James Joyce (Cheifs, Car Vs. Driver, Blood Circuits) on drums, and Justin Gray (3D5SPD) on bass to bring renewed energy to the songs. 

In 2024, they locked in on an eight-song setlist—five from the original After Words LP, along with two other older numbers.

The two non-LP songs: “Things They Never Taught You” first appeared on The View: An Atlanta Compilation: 1984-1990, a cassette-only release that captured snapshots of the city’s underground post-hardcore and emo scene. Another song, titled “Without Answers” was documented during a 1989 Live at WREK session.


Earlier this year, the group recorded six songs with Tom Tapley at West End Sound—“Looking Back,” “As I See It,” “Without Answers,” “Third Party,” “Tell Me,” and “Ghost Dance.”

“We’re not doing anything different with the songs,” Nejedly says. “Pretty much keeping it true to the original with only minor changes. ‘Ghost Dance’ will always be my favorite,” he adds. “I think it’s the best song I’ve written and Noel’s lyrics were really good.”

Cook’s voice adds new dimensions to each song, adding depth and interplay. Joyce’s drumming locks into Gray’s bass lines with precision, adding heft, pushing each arrangement even further.

“We recorded it as a live studio session just for ourselves to document us getting together and playing these songs, but it came out so well Echodelick decided to release it,” Joyce says.

A release date for the record remains TBD.

What defined After Words in the beginning, and what continues to define the group now, is its place on the sonic landscape as early hardcore’s influence became diffuse and less severe. After Words proved that Atlanta was producing its own singular voices, capable of standing shoulder to shoulder with their peers in D.C., New York, Chicago, and elsewhere.

For Nejedly, the new recordings are about carving out relevance in the present tense, and honoring what the group built decades ago while refusing to let it calcify. For Cook, Joyce, and Gray, it’s about expanding on a framework that still has room to grow.

“After Words pivoted bands from Atlanta into a different direction in the early ‘90s,” says Joyce. “If you think about Fiddlehead or Freemasonry, Scout, or Car Vs. Driver, or the next wave of bands that followed them, they all changed course because of After Words.”

Moving forward, the group will play sporadic shows, but for now they aren’t writing any new material.

After Words. Photo by Brad Sigal.

If the late ’80s Atlanta scene was about carving out new space, After Words now stands as a reminder that the past can still fuel the present. The songs remain restless, powerful, and full of questions. That sense of questioning remains as vital now as it did when After Words record arrived in 1989.

After Words plays with Gardens Of … on Saturday, September 6 at Independent Distilling Company in Decatur. Free. 7 p.m. (doors). 547 E College Ave., Decatur.

A version of this story appears in Record Plug Magazine‘s September 2025 issue.

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Simon Joyner & the Nervous Stars play the Star Bar Sunday, August 31

Simon Joyner. Photo by Josh Doss.

Simon Joyner has spent more than three decades constructing one of the most devastating bodies of songs in American underground music. His catalog is steeped in bleak, Midwestern imagery, haunted characters, and unflinching emotional honesty that has drawn praise from the likes of Beck, Gillian Welch, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, and fellow Omaha songwriter Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst.

With his most recent album, Coyote Butterfly, Joyner taps into a deeper vein of sorrow and resilience, reckoning with the loss of his son Owen, who died in August of 2022. The result is one of the most affecting albums in his career—and he’s bringing it to the stage with a six-piece band that adds weight to every cracked note, every rich musical texture, and every solemn word.


Simon Joyner & the Nervous Stars’ lineup includes Australian songwriter Leah Senior (keyboards, vocals, and percussion) and her partner Jesse Williams (guitar), both of whom accompanied Joyner during a recent tour of Australia and New Zealand. The live band also includes Mychal Marasco on drums and Phoenix-based brothers and experimental musicians Caleb (bass and vocals) and Micah Dailey (guitar, miscellaneous instruments, and tape loops). 

Following the lead of Joyner’s voice and guitar, the group moves with unhurried rhythms and quiet existential resonance. Together, they’ll breathe new life into some of Coyote Butterfly’s bedrock numbers such as “The Silver Birch” and “Port of Call,” allowing the grief to unfold in real time.

If Coyote Butterfly explores a raw, open wound, songs from Joyner’s upcoming album, Tough Love, promise a more complicated take on perseverance and connection. Many of the songs from the LP in-progress are being revealed here for the first time on this tour. Both albums are intrinsically linked.

“For the kinds of tough love the album addresses, there’s the tough love that exists between citizen and government where you love the country but are struggling with its faults and are at the point of choosing to fight for it to change or maybe abandon it,” Joyner says. “There are a couple of political songs on the album dealing with the state of the country right now. There’s the tough love between siblings, and the tough love of a marriage or any romantic partnership. And of course the tough love as the term first came about, where loved ones of an addict wrestle with how to support the person they love who is struggling and sometimes resort to tactics which isolate or cut off the person struggling with the problem. There are a million little ways we all behave which could be forms of tough love, so the album is about people in various kinds of relationships behaving like humans do which is sometimes good but not always.”

Recently, Joyner & the Nervous Stars released a 7-inch and a CD featuring  Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and Velvet Underground covers to raise money to help offset the cost of taking a six-piece band on the road.

The group will also play various songs from throughout Joyner’s career, all elevated to the full-bodied sound that a six-piece band affords. Joyner’s songs have always balanced poetry and brutal realism, but there’s a new weight in the air this time—a sense that the personal and political grief he’s singing about is inescapable, but not insurmountable. These songs don’t offer resolution. They offer endurance, and in this moment, that might be exactly what the world needs.

Simon Joyner & the Nervous Stars play the Star Bar on Sunday, August 31, with Anagrams and Karl Syrylo. $15. 7 p.m. (doors).

A version of this story first appeared in the August 25 issue of Record Plug Magazine.

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RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Record review: Total Peace comes out of the gate strong with self-titled debut

Three years in the making, Total Peace’s self-titled debut album comes out of the gate strong with volume and urgency. What began as a neighborly chat between Michelle Williams and Matt Cherry during the peak of COVID isolation turned into a full-fledged band grounded in old school human interaction and no-frills songwriting.


Cherry is best known for slinging layered and complex guitar parts in the psychedelic post rock outfit Maserati. Here, he trades his effects pedals for a bass and a microphone. His voice is heavy, tuneful, and raw in songs such as “Taped Up,” “Trance,” and “Slipped.” It’s a bold pivot that calls to mind the ramped up energy of Gang of Four’s Entertainment! and the introspective back-and-forth between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd throughout Television’s Marquee Moon—all driven by the sheer exuberance of the Stooges’ Self-titled LP. The riffs are bold and the rhythms are undeniable, reveling in the power of repetition.

Guitarists Williams and Craig Gates and drummer Greg Stevens round out the lineup with a compelling synergy. Stevens and Williams share roots in Atlanta’s early aughts indie rock band Red Level 11. Their chemistry grounds the record’s driving pulse, as they thrive on stripped-down dynamics—no synths and no nonsense.

There is no concept at work here per se, but Cherry says, “Michelle and I are neighbors in Inman Park. She has a bunch of historical documents about people and events on our street in the 1910s and 1920s that we thought were interesting. Several of the songs are loosely about those things. Other songs,” he goes on to says,” “are about different topics ranging from fictional characters to various midlife crises and dark thoughts.”

Recorded live at Maze Studios in Reynoldstown with engineer Ben Etter (Erasure, Washed Out, Nikki and the Phantom Callers) and mastered by Joel Hatstat (Bambara, We Vs. the Shark, Liz Durrett), this self-titled debut leans into its compact and hook-laden energy. “Tom Talbot,” “Mold Blue” and “Be Free” dance on a tightrope between post-punk tension and anthemic release. There’s a visceral joy in cranking it up for the sake of catharsis, and Total Peace hits like a welcome jolt of electricity.

Catch Total Peace’s live debut at Waller’s Coffee Shop on Friday, August 15, with Go Public and Tall Fences. 6-10 p.m.

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