Stream: New releases from Communicant, Tashaki Miyaki and Almost Monday

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From left: Communicant, Tashaki Miyaki and Almost Monday

Highlighting three recent releases — from Communicant, Tashaki Miyaki and Almost Monday.


COMMUNICANT, “Sun Goes Out”

Dylan Gardner, who as a teenage singer-songwriter was signed to a major label, told us in 2019 about the three albums that led to his “epiphany” — Love’s “Forever Changes,” “The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators” and “Begin” by the Millennium. “Sun Goes Out,” the first big statement from his new project Communicant, does those albums proud. Like his forebears in psychedelia, Gardner goes the consciousness-altering extra yard (even more than on Communicant’s 2020 debut EP, “Memory Palace”), striking in his riffs, harmonies and effects a comfy balance between concise pop songs and trippy excursions. You might want to start in the desert, then press play on the whole record.


TASHAKI MIYAKI, “Castaway”

Your pulse might not pound, but you will definitely feel it over the course of Tashaki Miyaki’s second full-length, “Castaway.” Its hazy, measured guitar pop offers a strikingly haunting and devastatingly direct contemplation of the push and pull of being in a relationship, and of simply being. The pandemic contextualizes some of it: “Sittin’ alone in my bedroom / Wishing I had more head room / Thinking about all this gloom doom,” Paige Stark sings to open “I Feel Fine” before ultimately deciding she does. So much of “Castaway” — “Gone” and “Wasting Time,” for instance — feels like somebody simply talking things out. You could hardly ask for a prettier conversation.


ALMOST MONDAY, “Til the End of Time”

Calibrated perfectly for today’s pop tastes (hook! choruses! even guitars!), San Diego-bred trio Almost Monday’s second EP figures to be part of summer’s soundtrack. “Live Forever” is the highlight; “Hailey Beebs” is not as cloying as its title; and even though nothing quite reaches the heft of early single “Broken People,” it’s a catchy dose of sonic adrenaline.