Brilliant Swords - (2021) Everything Anywhere Anytime

Self Rleased – none

New Zealand’s Campbell Kneale is, I believe, one of the relatively unheralded musical geniuses of our time. I first became familiar with his work as Birchville Cat Motel in the early 2000s (later Our Love Will Destroy the World), drone work that felt monumental and all-encompassing, capable of blistering noise and crafty subtlety. He’s part of drone-metal trio Black Boned Angel and experimental outfit Ohm, among many other collaborations, and his personal aliases, Brilliant Swords among them, are legion. Most artists who are as prolific as he is suffer for quality; Kneale applies a thoroughness, richness, and precision to everything he does. Brilliant Swords is pure Hüsker Dü worship, executed with that Kneale flair (he plays all the instruments!)—taut, punky indie rock shot through with nervous energy and packed with hooks. Everything Anywhere Anytime is his latest under that project, arriving with zero fanfare this week, and it contains five sublime gruff, blown-out punk-pop tunes cut separately and also mixed the way they would be as a 12-inch. They’re all so good it’s hard to pick favorites, though I’m partial to the title track and “Imaginary.” It’s hard not to listen to this alone and be stunned by how good it is (what one-man band sounds like this?) but viewed as a part of Kneale’s enormous and incredible oeuvre, that argument for how special he is and how worthy of praise only grows.