For the Record: Hear the Last Recordings From the Late Stevie Pohlman’s Pop Project Mope Grooves

Mope Grooves

Box of Dark Roses (12XU)

Portland’s underground music community lost one of its brightest lights and loudest advocates earlier this year with the suicide of Stevie Pohlman, the fierce and righteously furious leader of ever-morphing bedroom pop project Mope Grooves. This double LP set features her last recordings—songs that vary wildly in sound quality and style (most hover in a wobbly, jangly post-punk zone à la The Raincoats and pre-Loser Beck), but maintain an unwavering desire to, as she writes in the liner notes, “connect the dots between fascism, settler colonialism, reformism, and the tension between liberation and assimilation in trans communities.” Profits from sales of this album go to survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence.

V/A

Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996 (Light in the Attic)

The evolution of the music community in Ukraine prior to and after the collapse of the USSR is captured beautifully in this double LP compilation put together by venerable reissue imprint Light in the Attic. Chronologically sequenced, underground artists like Radiodelo and Vadym Khrapachov who managed to create stylish pop within the tight strictures of the Soviet regime give way to powerful work by Svitlana Nianio and Yarn who were quickly absorbing the influence of decades of U.S. and U.K. music that had been previously unavailable to them.

ELUCID

Revelator (Fat Possum)

New York MC ELUCID continues his unbroken streak of greatness, both on his own and as one half of the dogged duo Armand Hammer, with this fresh collection of futurist hip-hop. With contributions from bassist Luke Stewart, his AH partner billy woods and Brooklyn rapper Skech185, the album plays like trying to navigate the streets of a Blade Runner-esque metropolis while high on a heroic dose of psilocybin and bourbon. Oppressive and liberating, alluring and alienating.