Review Roundup: MORGXN, Bonnie and the Mere Mortals, Pinc Louds

There are so many great albums, and never enough time! In this feature, editor Rachel Cholst celebrates some of the best queer country EPs and albums you may have missed!

MORGXN – HEARTLAND: PART II

MORGXN delivers a soulful return to his happy place on Heartland: Part II. If Part I explored all the ways MORGXN has found home, part II delves into his past. MORGXN's sensitive performance gives his explorations into rejection, religious trauma, and grief a reassuring depth. His duet with Langhorne Slim, "Every Beginning," serves as the project's cornerstone: this is a song about all the ups and downs that come out of a life lived with taking risks and a determination to be free.

Bonnie and the Mere Mortals – Take Me to the Moon

Bonnie and the Mere Mortals hit cruising altitude quickly on Take Me to the Moon. The album kicks off with a gothic swagger on "Wildfires" that can never quit hide the band's good nature. There's plenty of heartbreak here – it is country music, after all. Once the album slows down for a series of gothic torch songs like the title track, we can see that they're just as good at kicking dirt as they are at waltzing a hole in the floor. Yet Bonnie and the Mere Mortals have a cheerful brightness that can never quite be beaten down – not out of defiance, per se, but out of a warm optimism that things will in fact get better.

Pinc Louds – You Can't Eat the Moon and Be a Werewolf Too

Pinc Louds gets raucous in You Can't Eat the Moon and Be a Werewolf Too. There's something old-school New York in the band's raucous energy and refusal to be tied to anyone genre or sound. Lead singer Claudi captures that burst of spirit with their life story – moving from Puerto Rico to New York to play in the subway, the band has rallied the Lower East Side around their creativity and energy. When you peel back the layers of the band's unique brand of electropunk, you get raw lyrics