Dark Family has really stepped up both their songwriting and production games, peeling away some of the lo-fi haze and the more languid song structures to reveal the most direct, tuneful compositions I've heard from them yet, all presented at a level of clarity that marks a turning point in their catalog.

We last heard from Davenport-based composer William Campbell earlier this year with the release of his soundtrack to the Academy Award-nominated short film Hunger Ward, which profiled the famine in Yemen and the efforts of health workers to combat starvation and malnutrition of the children in the region. While Campbell’s score for the film featured swathes of his moody, affecting composition for the piano, the instrument formed only one piece of a larger palette that incorporated dark-ambient electronics and orchestral strings.

While Davenport-based experimental folk artist and singer/songwriter Sammerson Bridge foregrounds his new album Happy Day with an air of self-deprecation and presents the project as a tossed-off lark, from the crude photo collage on its album cover to the tongue-in-cheek verbal greeting he plants at the beginning of the first track (“this is my new album”), these appear to be little more than defense mechanisms to downplay the fact that the dude makes great music.

There must be something in the water in the Quad Cities that makes absolute shredders out of its residents. I feel like every month, when I’m digging through local music on Bandcamp, some new project that I’ve never heard of before leaps out at me with a malevolent grin and says, “Here, take this masterful, fully realized [death metal] [black metal] [progressive metal] [grindcore] album that was probably recorded in some guy's home studio but that hits with rock-solid ideas and a professional level of production that can compete with the most high-budget release on a larger label.”