* PREORDER * ARTIFICIAL GO - Musical Chairs LP

* PREORDER * expected to arrive June

Highly recommended.

Less than a year after their debut album (a favorite of 2024), Cincinnati’s Artificial Go are back, and their sound has evolved. While Hopscotch Fever was primarily rooted in bouncy post-punk and minimalist no wave indebted pop, the band’s second album, Musical Chairs, continues to expand their vision, keeping the tightly coiled charm of their debut, but opting for something much brighter. The band weaves charismatic art punk appeal with a perfectly resonant dream-pop core. With a blissful nature and massive hooks, Artificial Go sound utterly phenomenal as they blur genre lines with energetic joy.

"On Musical Chairs Artificial Go expands their stylistic palate while retaining the New / No / Whatever Wave weirdness that charmed listeners on their debut —a group effort to be sure, but spearheaded by Angie Willcutt’s singular voice and clever, adroit lyrics. In Willcutt’s hands, the struggles, and at times terrors, of our current age are playfully subverted with agile world play and dynamic vocalization that moves from sweet and dreamy to cartoonishly exaggerated as she charts an emotional course through such topics as the difficulties of playing the role of “woman” in a misogynist world (“Playing Puppet”) or the injustice of anthropocentric hierarchy (“Tightrope Walker”). Musical Chairs is serious music not meant to be taken too seriously, a playful act of resistance, a meditation on the good and bad of this world, and ultimately a  remarkable statement on the continuing growth of Artificial Go." - Ben Michaelis