Carrier

Brooklyn group Carrier’s debut album, When New York Is Drowning, feels like a decade of inspiration compressed into forty minutes. Over the course of nine songs, Carrier runs the emotional gamut, going from bombastic grandeur to anxious ambition to existential melancholy and back to adolescent triumph, emerging with a record recalling sweaty basements, beer-soaked euphoria, car rides through suburbia and brutal ennui. In short, it feels like one’s twenties.

With Adam Downer on vocals, jazz guitarist Bart Mol on guitar, jam band-loving bassist Sarah Elaz, and New Jersey pop-punk native Greg Russo on drums, Carrier plays with clashing textures, blending the soul of mid-2000s emo and the sprawl of 90s alternative into a sound all their own.