Listening to Shotgun Driver’s new EP, “Jester Privileges”, is like finding a glitter bomb in a padded cell. The four songs present a disorienting, strangely compelling contradiction. On the surface, the alt-pop framework pulses with an upbeat, almost defiant energy; this is the slick, rock-tinged anxiety of a Machine Gun Kelly track built for open-road brooding. But beneath it, the narrative, carried by those...

Some songs arrive like warnings from streets that have already learned the smell of rain on hot concrete. Before the first shout fully settles, there is a sense that bodies are gathering, feet are refusing to move, and some private fear has been pushed into daylight. Total Reverends build that pressure into 'The Revolution Is Inevitable', a single that treats rock music as a public...