Highly recommended.

Debut vinyl from North Carolina’s FITNESS WOMXN. Adding a synth player since their earlier cassette-only release, Macho City, New Age Record finds one of North Carolina’s most enigmatic and exciting bands delivering on the promise of their three contributions to the American Idylls compilation earlier this year. While Fitness Womxn’s grooving post-punk / no wave-informed music might remind you of any number of historical antecedents, they don’t have the studied air of historical reenactors. Instead, their music is of the moment, not only addressing the complications, tragedies, and absurdities of post-modern life in their lyrics, but also sounding like a fleeting lightning-strike of energy, imagination, and possibility. 

Like the Raincoats or early Public Image, Ltd, Fitness Womxn’s songs sound like dangerous alchemical reactions, influences and emotions and ideas sometimes swirling around one another hypnotically, sometimes exploding like droplets of water hitting hot oil. For all of its ambition, though, New Age Record is as exhilarating as it is challenging, with more than enough moments of catchiness and danceability to keep you flipping it over and over.