We're huge fans of Santa Cruz black metallers Fell Voices, their sprawling epic blackness immediately held us in its thrall, flitting from total classic Scandinavian style blackness, to raw punky pounding filth, to meandering post metal drift, to furious Cascadian style epicness, all blurred into massive totally transcendental, side long black metal jams. But ever since we first reviewed the Fell Voices lp, we had a handful of customers emailing us insisting that we had to check out Sleepwalker, a side project of the drummer of Fell Voices. We managed to get in touch with him, and now we finally got a handful of the two Sleepwalker demos, one from last year, and a brand new one from 2010, most folks will probably want one of each, they're pretty crazy cheap after all, and they're amazing, but sadly, they're the very last copies we'll be able to get, we only have about 10 of each, so grab one before they're gone...
Sleepwalker is similarly epic, but more washed out and murky than Fell Voices, occasionally more midtempo and depressive. The 2010 demo begins all gorgeously washed out and hazy blurred blackness that in some ways sounds more like Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, the drums a buried metronomic pulse, the guitars a smeared swirl, a lumbering melancholic dirge that grows more and more jangly as the record porgresses, only to finally switch to what sounds like a black blast, but it's hard to tell the sound is so gauzy and indistinct, regardless it's simple more dense swirling buzz drenched blackness. The second track begins with a long stretch of frantic buzz, and spoken word vocals, only to finally slip into a punkish blast, the guitars again blurring into strange amorphous shapes, all wrapped up with weirdly crooned vocals, the production muddy enough that the heavier it gets, the more abstract and spaced out it sounds, and finally, the last track is all acoustic, but not just folky interlude style acoustic, it's almost like acoustic black metal, the guitar strummed fiercely, frantically, eventually strange almost industrial percussion surfaces and the track begins to sound like some sort of militaristic industrial folk before finishing off in a cloud of stel string buzz.
The 2009 demo, is more post rock influenced, spare simple drumming, deep rumbling bass, spidery guitar melodies, repetitive and motorik, eventually the sound cranks up but doesn't get metal so much as it gets rocking, pounding away for a while before exploding into something more expansive and epic, sounding a bit like Godspeed, noise rock and black metal all woven together, surprisingly melodic and catchy, a little bit jangly too, although it does seem to get darker and blacker as it goes. The second track is much like the opening track on the 2010 demo, murky and washed out, blurred and a bit shoegazey, even the shrieks and blasts and buzz and smoothed out into something way more hypnotic and dreamlike, before the final track finishes off in a blaze of blown out, blissed out blackened post rock buzz, epic and majestic, hypnotic and repetitive, the vocals buried yowls, the drums way down in the mix, all riding on the soaring sheets of black-psych-metal-gaze guitars. Awesome.
Both demos come in oversized white envelopes, each with a different pasted on front image, each with a small printed inserts, and unfortunately they're both out of print so these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
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Originally released as a super limited cd-r back in 2009, and more recently as an insanely limited lp, these first recordings from this Fell Voices side project get a second vinyl pressing, again on heavy white vinyl, mastered at 45rpm, and BEAUTIFULLY packaged.
Here's what we had to say about this Sleepwalker record when we first reviewed the cd-r:
We're huge fans of Santa Cruz black metallers Fell Voices, their sprawling epic blackness immediately held us in its thrall, flitting from total classic Scandinavian style blackness, to raw punky pounding filth, to meandering post metal drift, to furious Cascadian style epicness, all blurred into massive totally transcendental, side long black metal jams. But ever since we first reviewed the Fell Voices lp, we had a handful of customers emailing us insisting that we had to check out Sleepwalker, a side project of the drummer of Fell Voices. We managed to get in touch with him, and now we finally got a handful of the two Sleepwalker demos, one from last year, and a brand new one from 2010, most folks will probably want one of each, they're pretty crazy cheap after all, and they're amazing, but sadly, they're the very last copies we'll be able to get, we only have about 10 of each, so grab one before they're gone...
Sleepwalker is similarly epic, but more washed out and murky than Fell Voices, occasionally more midtempo and depressive. The 2009 demo, like the follow up, is seriously post rock influenced, spare simple drumming, deep rumbling bass, spidery guitar melodies, repetitive and motorik, eventually the sound cranks up but doesn't get metal so much as it gets rocking, pounding away for a while before exploding into something more expansive and epic, sounding a bit like Godspeed, noise rock and black metal all woven together, surprisingly melodic and catchy, a little bit jangly too, although it does seem to get darker and blacker as it goes. The second track is gorgeously murky and washed out, blurred and a bit shoegazey, even the shrieks and blasts and buzz are smoothed out into something way more hypnotic and dreamlike, before the final track finishes off in a blaze of blown out, blissed out blackened post rock buzz, epic and majestic, hypnotic and repetitive, the vocals buried yowls, the drums way down in the mix, all riding on the soaring sheets of black-psych-metal-gaze guitars. Awesome.
As for the packaging, Vedavu have pulled out all the stops. The vinyl is housed in a full color inner sleeve, which in turn is housed in a full color jacket, all the images super bright and abstract, not really black metal looking at all, the cover looks like pouring milk or some mysterious white honeycomb, all very striking, and on top of that there's a thick textured paper letter pressed Japanese style obi, black on black. Wow. Already sold out at the label, these are the only copies we'll be able to get!
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Originally released as a super limited cd-r back in 2010, these early recordings from this Fell Voices side project finally gets a super deluxe vinyl reissue, much like the 2009 demo, also repressed and listed elsewhere on this week's list. But unlike I (2009), this is the very first time the second Sleepwalker demo has been available on vinyl. Like the other reissue, II (2010), pressed on heavy black vinyl, mastered at 45rpm, and BEAUTIFULLY packaged.
Here's what we had to say about this Sleepwalker record when we first reviewed the cd-r:
We're huge fans of Santa Cruz black metallers Fell Voices, their sprawling epic blackness immediately held us in its thrall, flitting from total classic Scandinavian style blackness, to raw punky pounding filth, to meandering post metal drift, to furious Cascadian style epicness, all blurred into massive totally transcendental, side long black metal jams. But ever since we first reviewed the Fell Voices lp, we had a handful of customers emailing us insisting that we had to check out Sleepwalker, a side project of the drummer of Fell Voices. We managed to get in touch with him, and now we finally got a handful of the two Sleepwalker demos, one from last year, and a brand new one from 2010, most folks will probably want one of each, they're pretty crazy cheap after all, and they're amazing, but sadly, they're the very last copies we'll be able to get, we only have about 10 of each, so grab one before they're gone...
Sleepwalker is similarly epic, but more washed out and murky than Fell Voices, occasionally more midtempo and depressive. The 2010 demo (here renamed II) begins all gorgeously washed out and hazy blurred blackness that in some ways sounds more like Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, the drums a buried metronomic pulse, the guitars a smeared swirl, a lumbering melancholic dirge that grows more and more jangly as the record progresses, only to finally switch to what sounds like a black blast, but it's hard to tell the sound is so gauzy and indistinct, regardless it's simple more dense swirling buzz drenched blackness. The second track begins with a long stretch of frantic buzz, and spoken word vocals, only to finally slip into a punkish blast, the guitars again blurring into strange amorphous shapes, all wrapped up with weirdly crooned vocals, the production muddy enough that the heavier it gets, the more abstract and spaced out it sounds, and finally, the last track is all acoustic, but not just folky interlude style acoustic, it's almost like acoustic black metal, the guitar strummed fiercely, frantically, eventually strange almost industrial percussion surfaces and the track begins to sound like some sort of militaristic industrial folk before finishing off in a cloud of steel string buzz.
As for the packaging, Vedavu have pulled out all the stops. The vinyl is housed in a full color inner sleeve, which in turn is housed in a full color jacket, all the images super bright and abstract, not really black metal looking at all, the cover image is all swirling liquids and abstract textures, all very striking, and on top of that there's a full color printed inner sleeve and a thick textured paper letter pressed Japanese style obi. Wow. Already sold out at the label, these are the only copies we'll be able to get!
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Originally released as a super limited cd-r back in 2009, these first recordings from this Fell Voices side project finally gets a super deluxe (but sadly INSANELY LIMITED, only 100 copies, of which we got TEN) vinyl reissue, pressed on heavy white vinyl, mastered at 45rpm, and BEAUTIFULLY packaged (more on that below).
Here's what we had to say about this Sleepwalker record when we first reviewed the cd-r:
We're huge fans of Santa Cruz black metallers Fell Voices, their sprawling epic blackness immediately held us in its thrall, flitting from total classic Scandinavian style blackness, to raw punky pounding filth, to meandering post metal drift, to furious Cascadian style epicness, all blurred into massive totally transcendental, side long black metal jams. But ever since we first reviewed the Fell Voices lp, we had a handful of customers emailing us insisting that we had to check out Sleepwalker, a side project of the drummer of Fell Voices.
And they were right, Sleepwalker is similarly epic, but more washed out and murky than Fell Voices, occasionally more midtempo and depressive.
The tracks here, originally released as the 2009 Demo cd-r, are more post rock influenced, with spare simple drumming, deep rumbling bass, spidery guitar melodies, repetitive and motorik, eventually the sound cranks up but doesn't get metal so much as it gets rocking, pounding away for a while before exploding into something more expansive and epic, sounding a bit like Godspeed, noise rock and black metal all woven together, surprisingly melodic and catchy, a little bit jangly too, although it does seem to get darker and blacker as it goes. The second track is murky and washed out, blurred and a bit shoegazey, even the shrieks and blasts and buzz and smoothed out into something way more hypnotic and dreamlike, before the final track finishes off in a blaze of blown out, blissed out blackened post rock buzz, epic and majestic, hypnotic and repetitive, the vocals buried yowls, the drums way down in the mix, all riding on the soaring sheets of black-psych-metal-gaze guitars. Awesome.
As for the packaging, Vedavu have pulled out all the stops. Especially considering there are only 100 copies. The vinyl is housed in a full color inner sleeve, which in turn is housed in a full color jacket, all the images super bright and abstract, not really black metal looking at all, the cover looks like pouring milk or some mysterious white honeycomb, all very striking, and on top of that there's a thick textured paper Japanese style obi, embossed and printed in gold reflective ink. Wow. And again, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! We have ten and once these are gone that's it!!
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This is the debut cd-r from lone sludge-folk troubadour Sleepy Boy Moe from Oakland. There's so much murk and hiss on his lo-lo-fi recordings that they sound like they're coming off an old cassette tape that was retrieved from the bottom of the lake. But don't let that dissuade you. Peer through the haze and listen close. You'll hear what we've likened to the tweaked instability of Daniel Johnston sung through the sandy throat of Tom Waits.
We initially gave this a spin just 'cause of the cool band name, without knowing really what to expect. Turns out that this ep from Seattle's Sleepy Eyes Of Death is fantastically full of fuzzed out, synth-heavy shoegazing post rock. Six spacey, soaring, cinematic songs, seemingly inspired by the nexus of new wave and krautrock (or Trans Am and John Carpenter and Kinski and Klaus Schulze...).
Perhaps the briefest and best description we can come up with is: M83 meets Zombi. There, that ought to do it! Seriously, that's what this sounds like, and thus it's a quite recommended treat 'cause we love both those bands, and the combo is a natural one. Whooshes of distorted electronics, interlaced with airy melodies, mark these melancholic, majestic tracks, mostly instrumental but for a sparse few moments of processed, computery robo-vocals. Though the pulsating rhythms sometimes are purely electronic, deliberate drum beats on an actual drum kit are often also poundingly present, adding more of a muscular human factor to the proceedings.
Though we've never seen their live show, we're not surprised that someone is credited with "lights and fog" in the cd booklet. You could imagine that they had a role in the studio too, 'cause you can almost HEAR lights and fog on this recording, lights flashing with atmospheric radiance, sonic clouds of synth-fog billowing from speakers...
San Francisco psych lords (and lady) Sleepy Sun have been making quite a name for themselves as of late, and with the long waited arrival of their debut full length it's easy to understand why: Sleepy Sun simply rock. There is enough of what everyone loves about psychedelia - swirling guitars, melodic wandering basslines, all kinds of cool percussion, and vocals that seem to float hazily in the atmosphere - but there's just something about these guys that seems so natural and sincere, so much so that they are pretty much able to transcend the trappings of a genre that is overloaded with stale wannabes. Sleepy Sun recall everyone from Dead Meadow (in fact, we're pretty positive the song "Sleepy Son" features a riff Dead Meadow made use of a while back, not that we're complaining, it's a killer riff!) to Neil Young to Bardo Pond, without coming off as anything other than themselves. There's plenty of acoustic instrumentation, giving the album a nice folky vibe at times, rendered all the more powerful when the band launches into their fuzzed out stoner jams, and it's not unthinkable to assume that SLEEPy Sun may also be indebted to stoner gods Sleep, as the heavier excursions have no difficulty making their way to the riff filled land. That said, things never get to the point of discomfort for people who aren't into that kind of thing.
Embrace features 8 tracks, including the song "White Dove" from the 7" of the same name, as well as the two songs from the New Age/Lord 10" reviewed recently. The other songs follow a similarly stoned path, and the album flows really well with its clear production and celestial spaciousness. And it just SOUNDS so damn good - there's soaring dual guitars played by dudes who know how to expertly wrangle a wah wah pedal, the drums pound sufficiently but know just when to lay low, and then there's the beautiful, spectral harmonies, which lead to some of the strongest moments on Embrace. All the while, there is a serious understanding of how to groove, and the warm, super catchy basslines keep things moving perfectly.
It's interesting to see the reactions people have when we put this on. The sounds created by Sleepy Sun sound so familiar in some ways, but this album is like a breath of fresh air, and will no doubt win over all types of music fans with its dreaminess, its heaviness, and its classic sense of songcraft. If you've been digging Wooden Shjips, White Hills, or any other of today's best and brightest psych groups, then you have to check this out. With its mid-June arrival, Embrace makes for perfect summertime listening, especially here in San Francisco. Take that as you will...
San Francisco's psych headz are back with a killer follow-up to last year's Embrace, which made itself quite at home on the aQ store stereo. Picture that same psychedelic sound, heavy goovin' riffs, swirling vocal harmonies, blazing fuzz solos, all wrapped up and even more polished into a deep pop outing. Not to say that Fever comes off as a complete '60s/'70s rock rip off, it's quite the opposite. Sleepy Sun manage to take elements of the past and fuse them into a direction that is all their own. We're hearing a familiar leaning toward Dead Meadow-ish riffage, slooooow head nodding rhythms and flailing untamed guitar leads, something we loved about Embrace. But there's a dash of something different here, there's a pop sensibility about Fever that reminds us of folks like Band of Horses or MGMT, basically more hooks and straightforward pop catchiness.
"Marina" opens the record with an Eastern flavored fuzz guitar lead, droning and soaring into the red horizon. Suddenly the band kick in out of nowhere with a dirgey Blue Cheer romp, the kind of heavy kick that sets the tone for the rest of the album. But be forewarned, among all the heaviness and psychedelia lurks a hippy undertone that we can't ignore. Mostly bongo interludes and peppy flute stuff, sort of cheesy to some ears, but as far as we're concerned it totally works. "Acid Love" is another standout track, droooooning twangy distorted guitars turning and rumbling below soaring vocal lines. We're hearing similarities to Penastar-era Earth, granted the ethereal female vocals harmonies soaring into oblivion are a new touch that is super rewarding and pleasant. So nice, so recommended, and so perfect for your upcoming summer road trip!
Hazily drifting along like a fog over the bay, San Francisco's own Sleepy Sun have been making quite a name for themselves as of late, and it's easy to hear why with this 10" single. Being their first recording for the fairly high profile ATP label, it's not difficult to imagine Sleepy Sun's dreamily drugged out psychedelia hitting the spot with both the potheads and the indie rockers. To put it simply, Sleepy Sun are a jam band. But don't let the words "jam band" scare you away, as this has less to do with Widespread Panic and hacky sacks and more to do with, well, JAMMING, while thankfully keeping a steady hand on actual songcraft. It seems like the logical progression a band like Dead Meadow should have made after their shoegazey Feathers album. One customer thought it sounded a bit like a male-fronted Cat Power, which isn't necessarily too far off the mark, as the band possesses an earthy, bluesy sound with a definite nod to classic rock. The best thing about Sleepy Sun, however, is how effortlessly their songs are presented. They aren't "retro" or anything like that, instead using psychedelia as a stepping stone to venture off into their own realm full of burly bass lines, focused drumming and tasteful use of wah wah pedals (something easy to fuck up). The vocals are especially ethereal, and one can easily envision these tunes being made by a bunch of stoned angels jamming it out in the spheres.
This limited release is pressed on appropriately cloudy vinyl with purple splatters and comes quite recommended.
Record number three from this SF psych rock combo, and it's another heady blast of swaggery fuzz drenched psych stomp laced with fluttery freakfolk and big pop hooks. Like Fever before it these guys take the classic sounds of sixties San Francisco, and fuse them to the new wave or retro-psych that's all the rave, but all along Sleepy Sun has way more of a pop side, and a tendency toward shoegaze-y drift, and that really hasn't changed much on Spine Hits. The biggest change in fact, is in fact, the exit of vocalist Rachel Fannan, who's ethereal angelic voice definitely had a lot to do with the groups shoegazey sound. On Spine Hits the band seem to position themselves as much more commercial proposition, opener "Stivey Pound" the sort of jam that should have fans of the Black Keys and the White Stripes flipping their lids. We still hear plenty of Dead Meadow for sure, and lesser known aQ faves like Earl Greyhound and Malachai, but the sound is definitely arena ready, and would sound as amazing pumping from one of those massive sound systems as it does pouring through the open windows of your car as you cruise down the coast. Vocalist Bret Constantino has a killer raspy croon that has some Black Crowes too it too, but his voice totally reminds us of weirdo studio retro rock alchemists Malachai, although the sounds here are not nearly so tripped out. The record drifting from hushed almost Dead like slow jams, to blown out fuzz drenched dirges, and from hazy dream pop drifts, to groovy bouncy shuffles, but throughout, the songs kill, the guitars buzz, the rhythms shuffle, the songs swagger, and Sleepy Sun offer up a whole mess of hook heavy psychedelic fuzz pop, that while maybe a wee bit too polished for true psych-heads, is still pretty goddamn good.
Bluesy psychedelia packed far beneath a thick, heavy cloud of marijuana smoke. If you're willing to indulge and unlock the latent Creedence and Skynrd potential lying dormant within bands like Dead Meadow, eat an eighth, take this to the beach in headphones, and figure out just how far you can walk. Comprised of five members, Sleepy Sun musically grew together in Santa Cruz, eventually reaching the shores of the San Francisco Bay peninsula. And they do embody the popularly conceived vision of their hometown. Comfortable, a high drenched in fog, floating inland on ocean wind. Compositionally, things feel natural and free. Each instrument as integral as the rest. Breathing, moving. Always cohesive, without relying too heavily on the standard verse, chorus, verse format. Maneuvering in and around the beats, the lead vocalist's feelings, arrangements, and his both thoughtful and clever melodies bleed clear in the mix. In particular, "White Dove" is perfectly suited for a 7" release. It's essentially two separate movements, each expanding and contracting, showing one piece of the larger picture. These guys take the track and "smear it" across both sides. We've heard the full-length, and this excellent release is a glimpse of what lies waiting. (The album itself was recorded by Colin Stewart -- producer of Black Mountain and Destroyer) They're helping keep places like Santa Cruz weird. Literally a full-on trip soaked in feedback. Completely recommended.
Up from the ashes of the beloved and astounding spectacle known as Idiot Flesh comes Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. At times, thunderously heavy carnivalesque metal like Mr. Bungle wrestling with SlipKnot. At others, minimal piano plinketry, disjointed
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are in a league all their own, and have been since their beginnings back in 1999 when they rose out of the ashes of the equally indefinable, incomparable Bay Area ensemble Idiot Flesh. Truly inventive, imaginative and way the hell 'out there', who else has successfully integrated rock, pop, black metal, prog, Dada, Futurism, Butoh, puppetry, high falutin' art school-isms, utter madness (you name it!) into their monumental being? And yet the disparate elements all come together to form a cohesive elaborate body of work. It'd be easy to conclude that the members of this quintet live sleep and breathe SGM, but they all somehow have energy and time to do numerous other highly regarded creative activities too. Wow.
Their fourth album is even more guerrilla than gorilla. It's an aural assault from the get go. The opening song "Helpless Corpses Enactment" blasts your tender ears in true black metal fashion. Then they move swiftly into wildly skewed territories that other artists would dare not tread, least of all as deftly and fearlessly as this group.
Perhaps too monumentally strange and strangely monumental for some, In Glorious Times is not for everyone. It is not an album that you just slap on while your washing dishes or yakking on the phone. No, you must enter into it with focus and fortitude. Even still, be prepared for your ears to be dumbfounded and downright confused.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Live craziness from this popular Bay Area prog groop.
Second album (third if you count the live one) from this Bay Area band (ex-Idiot Flesh) of musical maniacs into math and metal and, uh, museums. Herking and jerking heavily, this is surely some theatrical, bombastic prog, like a gothic industrial version of, say, Mr. Bungle, with both male and female vocals. At (rapid) turns spastic, melodic, melancholic, complex and controlled... Maybe a bit over-the-top for some -- too thespian for rock and roll y'know -- but definitely a good fit for the Web of Mimicry label and that whole surreal circusy scene, so fans of the Secret Chiefs and (of course) Sleepytime themselves will be well pleased.
As we mentioned before, Man Is The Bastard, one of our favorite bands ever, are not very well represented on the aQ website, mostly due to the fact that their records, and in fact almost their whole career predates the list, which we will address one of these days, maybe as their back catalog slowly gets reissued. But their musical legacy lives on, most notably in recent Record Of The Week honorees Geronimo, as well as a whole mess of other post MITB combos: Bastard Noise, Unicorn, and this here, maybe our favorite of the bunch, Sleestak.
We recently listed a triple cd set called No Skull Left Unturned, which collected a bunch of rare and unreleased tracks from various Man Is The Bastard related groups, and if you remember, we raved about Sleestak there too, and now we finally managed to track down a source for the Sleestak full lengths (the band themselves in fact!) so here you go, the last Sleestak record before the various members went on to play in Drunk On Blood, Monte Carlo 76, Slowrider, Bastard Noise, Spastic Colon, Trogotronic, Unicorn and of course Geronimo.
And listening to this Sleestak stuff, it's easy to hear the roots of what would become Geronimo, in some places the sound is uncanny, it's like a more raw, lo-fi Geronimo, which means this stuff is fucking awesome. Might as well just quote a bit from the No Skull review, since it sums up Sleestak pretty well:
What a more mellow MITB might have sounded like, an ominous low slung brutality, bass heavy dirges, moody malevolence, more a sort of beautiful brutal post rock. A loping bass line wanders through a field of hiss and hum and buzz, spacious and spare, almost like a meaner more malevolent Low or Bohren. Slowcore peppered with bursts of twisted noise freakouts, and distant bits of shortwave squiggle, a very Slint-like vibe, with the guitar locking into super hypnotic loops, over lurching downtuned bass, drifting detuned melodic fragments, if someone didn't know better, they could definitely mistake this stuff for some super obscure Touch And Go or AmRep noiserock band, indeed!
"Atomic Clock" is a slow brooder, a low slung drums and bass drift, with distorted vocals, garbled and buried in the mix, streaked with fractured electronics, interrupted by brief bursts of chaotic crunch. "Faster Than A Sleeping Bullet" is total Geronimo, a grinding metallic riff, and a super minimal bit of percussion looped and locked for nearly 5 minutes. "When In Rome..." is bass heavy riffy noise rock, howled vocals over slithery post rockisms and angular riffage. "Dumb Luck" is another track that sounds like it was lifted and re-done as Geronimo, a simple drum line, beneath a hypnotic chunk of twisted electronics. "Dumb Luck Part Two" stretches it out into something much more post rocky, with plonked and plinked piano, the drums a bit more up in the mix, still flecked with insectoid buzz. Every track here is amazing. And at least half of 'em will have you thinking Geronimo, EVERYONE who bought that Geronimo record, or who dug that No Skull comp NEEDS this. But even those of you new to the whole MITB world, and who missed out on Geronimo, Sleestak stand up pretty well on their own, a dark and fucked up mysteriously brooding, ultra heavy and sludgey, rhythmic dronerock, and while we described Geronimo as Man Is The Bastard meets This Heat, that would also pretty much apply to Sleestak, but take that equation and mix in more MITB and a whole mess of noise rock.
WAY WAY WAY recommended.
Beautifully packaged in silkscreened matchbook style packaging, with a printed insert, all housed in a thick plastic sleeve.
We still can't figure out how the hell we missed this band when they were still a going concern. Ex-members of the mighty Man Is The Bastard, a sound that is so aQ at times it sounds like they made this record just for us. Super rhythmic, hypnotic, krautrocky, heavy, noisy, squalls of analog noise, walls of feedback, buried distorted vocals, heavy and mesmerizing, like a power violence This Heat for sure. Sound familiar? It should. We described former aQ record of the Week honorees Geronimo similarly, which makes sense since basically, Sleestak eventually morphed into Geronimo shedding some of the grit and noise, but not all of it, tightening up their sound into something almost machinelike. Sleestak also sonically predated/predicted another aQ Record of the Week outfit, French post kraut noise rockers Aluk Todolo. So anyone who went nuts for either of those discs, or loved the Sleestak disc we listed a few lists back, you're probably gonna need this one too. Another mind blowing collection of mangled avant krauty noise rock, that is both brutal and abrasive, as well as weirdly repetitive and seriously heavy.
The drums are the core, and the heart of the sound, locked into seemingly simple grooves, the belie surprisingly complex arrangements, the drums are dense, hard hitting, the recording lo-fi but still thick and crunchy, swinging from doomy plod, to tripped out and space rocky, to totally abstract and spacious. While the drums pound away, the rest of the band wrap the rhythms in thick clouds of buzzing analog crunch, all manner of glitch and grit, squealing synths, rumbling downtuned bass, streaks of malfunctioning electronics, strange sound bites and snippets, and vocals, that range from howling guttural roar, to hysterical shrike, to hushed whisper. The band lets the drums drop out, sometimes for long stretches, the electronics and synths spread out swirling and churning, changing shape and sound, building all sorts of tension so when the drums do crash back in, it's super intense.
The Power Of Gemini(a was the first Sleestak record, originally released in 1997, and as such, it's definitely much more raw, more noisy, more lo-fi, the connection to MITB and various other post Bastard projects much more pronounced, but even back then, the band were already forging a super fucked up and gloriously idiosyncratic path, creating a sound, that managed to fuse the crushing heaviness and DIY roots of the members' previous bands, with a near maniacal future vision of some twisted, off kilter, and rhythmically obtuse post-everything sound.
Gorgeously packaged in a silkscreened letter pressed fold up origami style cardstock sleeve.
Sometimes we long for the pre-internet era, when bands took months, or more often years to get popular, instead of just days. Where it took tour after tour and show after show for the world at large to discover a new favorite group, instead of it taking just the posting of a single video that ends up being seen by a million people in a matter of minutes. Sure that stuff is amazing, and has made for some amazing discoveries, and the ability for bands to get their music heard is unprecedented. But the hype machine can be a cruel mistress. Take witch housers Salem, whose debut full length was incredible, but who had no live experience, and were thrust into playing their first shows in front of thousands of people, instead of a handful of drunk friends. Or take Lana Del Rey, who became the talk of the town (and by town, we mean THE WORLD), with one song, and one video, and before you know it, she was performing on Saturday Night Live in front of MILLIONS of people. Which brings us to Sleigh Bells, whose first record Treats was a big hit around here, but even then, we had to talk about the hype and the extreme blog love, and how all that made us want to hate them, but in spite of all that, we still dug it like crazy. The weird thing is, we recently saw Sleigh Bells on Saturday Night Live, and they were AWFUL, so much worse than Lana Del Rey, but for whatever reason, people didn't seem to notice. Part of the problem, which becomes obvious listening to the new Sleigh Bells record, is that SB are essentially a studio concoction, and a pretty fantastic one at that, but live, it just didn't translate, watching a sexy mallgoth singer dancing in front of two short haired metalheads riffing it up, all over a big bombastic pre-recorded beat. Maybe for some big dumb dance party, but it definitely left much to be desired. But on record, the listener can just revel in SB's big dumb dance metal pop fun, and the thing is it IS fun. Check out "True Shred Guitar", with it's faux crowd sounds, big hair metal riffage, pounding drum beats, and howled distorted vox, squiggly shredding and wild dive bombing feedback, goofy for sure, but again, totally fun. The rest of the record takes that same sort of cock rock / hair metal sound and weds it to fuzzy poppy synth sing alongs and old school M83 style eighties retro pop, with hints of Weezer power pop crunch, fuzzy new wave, beat heavy Digital Hardcore style blasts and that sort of "Hey Mickey" kind of cheerleader chant, all woven into a sweet sugary metal pop confection, that despite all the haters, we find ourselves sort of digging once again.
It was pretty impossible to not want to hate this band. The hype was unprecedented, they didn't even have a record out, and blogs and magazines and newspapers were hailing them as not just the next big thing, but the only new band that mattered. M.I.A snapped them up and signed them to her Mom + Pop label, and every tastemaker that mattered were singing the praises of this 'electro-metal' duo, so of course anyone with a punk rock or subversive anti-mainstream bone in their body, recoiled, and already knew, somehow, that the record would be a piece of shit. But guess what, it's totally not. It's actually pretty great. Listening to Sleigh Bells now, it's easy to see why people were freaking out, with nothing but live shows to go on, this stuff is total hipster dance party manna, big beats, stuttering and loping, big crunchy super distorted riffs, swirling synths, and woozy sing songy almost double-dutch style vocals. The similarities to M.I.A are undeniable, the same sort of beats and vocal cadences, makes a lot of sense they would find each other, and no doubt anyone who digs M.I.A. will probably like this too. Fun and funky, hooky and a little bit heavy, rambunctious, sweaty, groovy, definitely a perfect party record, we can almost imagine the sorts of herky jerky YouTube dancing this stuff will inspire, but you know what, fuck it, fuck the haters, this stuff is awesome, it's maybe not as important and genre shattering as some folks might want to believe, but it killer, and whether we wanted to or not, we find ourselves listening to this a LOT.
Still seems so strange though that one half of the Sleigh Bells duo is the guitarist from metalcore combo Poison The Well...
Pronounced "slepthhhh", meaning "blind man" in their native tongue, this Polish duo cranks out ear splitting noise coated breaks that lie along streaming rivers of distorted symphonic strings. This is pummeling dancefloor destruction for the end of the world.
We somehow missed out on Slices' debut lp from a year or two back, but had been hearing a lot about these Philly punks, with lots of comparisons to Fucked Up, which makes perfect sense once you get a load of the A side here, which while being heavy and riffy and a little bit noisy, is also super melodic, hooky as hell, and driven by the vocalist's very Fucked Up-like guttural bellow. The B side cranks up the hardcore a bit, the riffs super distorted and blown out, the arrangement much more classic punk rock, but here supercharged and revved WAY up, a total skate / pit / trash-the-club anthem if there ever was one. Definitely a heavy rock and roll vibe mixed with the group's chaotic punk blast, we hear some Turbonegro in there too, the songs short and sharp, over way too soon, but it's easy to imagine these songs KILLING it live, and odds are you'll find yourself playing both sides over and over anyway...
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This is a Slicker remix record. Slicker is John Hughes III Son of *the* John Hughes. But don't expect any of that 'don't you forget about me' Breakfast Club pap - instead Slicker and the remixers enlisted here traffic in a sort of intellectual electronica. Richie Devine and Delarosa collaborate to provide slow moving IDM plod with Devine's trademarked electronic plateux of algorithmic clatter. Super ESP - the work of Chicago uber-producer Casey Rice - turns in a downtempo Squarepusher jazz / jungle hybird. Matmos - San Francisco's electronica kings - recalls the best Coil pieces from "Love's Secret Domain" - with obtuse tongue in cheek funkiness and lots of damaged electron quiggle. Savath / Savalas - vibe oriented summery electronic bubbliness. Miceparade's remix starts out as a twee version of Disco Inferno but regresses to typical Chicago post-rock irrelavance. Today, hyphens are a good thing - maybe not tomorrow - but certainly today ---.
Third album from Denver cowpunks who don't sound punk but you know that in the privacy of their living rooms they treasure their Black Flag and X records. Jello Biafra (who issued this record on his own label), calls Slim Cessna's Auto Club "the country band that plays the bar at the end of the world", and that's pretty accurate. Like Mekons in their honkytonkin' days, or Nick Cave if he went country and started wearing all white silver sequined duds. A little hokey, but very catchy. Everytime we play it in the store, someone wants to buy it.
It's been a while since we've heard from Slim Cessna, whose Auto Club remain to this day one of our favorite bands of country punks, along with Munly, Slim's partner in musical crime. We were under the impression that maybe SCAC were no more, which could still be true (and which would make us very very sad) as this is in fact not a new record, but is a collection of B-sides, unreleased tracks and odds and ends, from the beginning of this century. But these guys are so good, even their castoffs and never-weres are better than most bands' best. And yep, these jams are indeed killer, dark and twangy, catchy, brooding and mysterious, like a more wry and less end-of-the-world Woven Hand or Sixteen Horsepower, no surprise that they hail from the same place. But yeah, if you like that sort of apocalyptic grim folk, or dark twangy swampy country, the sound of SCAC should definitely hit the spot. Then the only consideration is whether you dig these guys' irreverence, which is not difficult as for the most part it's pretty subtle. The weird thing is that a lot of this stuff here sounds like the Old 97's, the -OLD- Old 97's, when they were great, mostly due to the vocals, but the same sort of twangy country rock, and wry twisted lyrics, also folks into the Decemberists might find a lot to like here. Not a bad place to start, we might suggest getting The Bloody Tenent Truth Peace first, but some of the tracks here definitely rank among their best, and for the most part Buried Behind The Barn is a much more serious and straight up country record, the humor and 'punk' much more subtle than on some of the other Slim Cessna records. Regardless, another great collection of songs from these guys, and here's hoping this is just to hold us over for a forthcoming brand new full length...
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Super limited live double cd, only available from the band, the label's website, and us!! Recorded live in 2004 at the Gothic Theater in Denver at a show celebrating the release of their latest record The Bloody Tenent Truth Peace, this is two full hours of wild and rambunctious, catchy and creepy country swamp rock revival, featuring tracks from all the Slim Cessna records as well as a couple of brand new tracks! For those of you new to Slim Cessna imagine some bastard mix of the Old 97's, Sixteen Horsepower, Uncle Tupelo and X, all whipped up into a hillbilly punk rock swamp folk country dirge din! Super clever, funny lyrics (think the Decemberists with a more backwoods bent) delivered with the fervor of a preacher testifying in a moth eaten tent sent up in a field in some God forsaken backwater, while the band whips up a furious bluegrass hoedown, moody and melancholy, replete with lap steel and banjo, all flecked with punk rock fury, and even the occasional country yodel! This is just the sort of rare and glorious show you can't even remember the next day, the only hints being your sweat soaked, mud caked clothes, your bruised and battered body, your black eye and split lip, the fact that you're laying on the floor in a pool of stale beer, vomit, moist sawdust and broken barstools, you smell of being bodily dipped into a vat of grain alcohol, there's lipstick all over you face and collar, and your ears are ringing so loudly you can barely think straight. So fucking awesome!
God I love this band! Totally rocking, totally catchy punk-rock-flecked country twang. If I had to be stuck in a bar, forever with only one band playing nightly, it would definitely be Slim Cessna's Auto Club. Sonically they bear a striking resemblance to the Old 97's who haven't made a GREAT record for going on 5 years now. And Slim Cessna's voice bears an uncanny similarity to that of the Old 97's Rhett Miller. In fact, let's be honest, this is what the Old 97's SHOULD sound like. Ths songs are just as good, but the lyrics are way more clever, sometimes downright hilarious, the arrangements are curious and complex, with lots of breakdowns, unlikely melodies, and spoken bits, and most importantly, the band manages to be really really funny without devolving into a joke band. A tough trick for sure. The way we imagine it, is that Cessna is a wandering preacher / musician / snake oil salesman who has been hand picking sonic elements and band members Dr. Frankenstein style, from various bands, to cobble together the perfect hillbilly country rock revival, borrowing from the Old 97's obviously, 16 Horsepower, X, Uncle Tupelo, Nick Cave and a bunch of others, and coming up with...well...the perfect hillbilly country rock revival!
Latest batch of end of the world, country twang, revivalist apocalyptic swamp folk from these Colorado cowboy punks, the perfect follow up to last year's Buried Behind The Barn, and while in the early days these guys were most definitely taking the piss, it's been long enough that any irreverence has become less schtick, and more just a part of what these guys do, and what these guys do, is something similar to groups like Woven Hand and Sixteen Horsepower (the vocals sound a lot like David Eugene Edwards, which is weird cuz Mr. Cessna used to sound just like Rhett Miller from the Old '97s!), Uncle Tupelo, X, Munly (he is after all ALSO in the Auto Club) and yeah the Old 97's, but also the Decemberists, Arcade Fire and the like, shuffly, twangy, with a sound that slips from
Devil-Went-Down-To-Georgia style country rock, to more dark and minimal folky twang, there's even some gospel going on, especially on the tracks that sound like some deep South faith healer tent revival meeting, call and response vocals, handclaps, but all wrapped up with slide guitar, banjo, lush haunting harmonies, and some seriously kick ass catchiness.
The production is surprisingly lush this time around too, lots of organ, transforming Cessna's hillbilly stomp into something much more moody and brooding, and it suits them for sure, just give the record opener a listen, the awesomely titled "Three Bloodhounds Two Shepherds One Fila Brasileiro", gorgeously grim and ominous, minor key and moody, but it's also loose and fun, a tall tale told in sound by a master story teller, and of all the tracks here, this is the one that most sounds like Woven Hand, and definitely hints at what these guys could pull off if they weren't such inveterate jokers. "The Unballed Ballad Of The New Folksinger" (also an awesome title), starts out with an organ heavy almost ska sounding groove, driven by a bouncy rhythm, lots of buzz and twang, woozy spidery riffs, and some awesome intense vocals, the song getting more intense and dramatic as it goes, there's even a strange deep voiced breakdown before the song launches right back into it. "Thy Will Be Done" is another bluegrassy twang flecked stomp, with a super dynamic start stop ominous cautionary chorus. And so it goes, the only respite from this damned-soul sonic sermonizing, the woozy ballad "A Smashing Indictment Of Character", weeping slide guitars, over hushed hazy vocals, but even here, Cessna and his crew can't resist the temptation to pepper the track with more of that handclapping revivalism, and some low slung banjo driven verses to boot, and while the track revisits that opening dreamy drift, it's only briefly, there's more testifyin to be done after all. And so it goes, track after track: buzz, twang, shuffle, croon, howl, pound, stomp, hook, howl, repeat. AWESOME.
It's hard not to love these guys, they're obviously such incredible musicians, and have a killer sense of humor, and to see them live, it's sort of what you wish all shows were like, wild and loose, and totally rocking, super fun, and funny, the kind of show you never want to end, and after a while you're almost convinced that this amazing music is in fact some sort of salvation, and remarkably, these guys manage to capture at least some of that fire and energy on record!
Pretty genuine sounding country twang from these Denver boys. Former punk rockers (we think, but aren't they all) kicking out gorgeous twangy classic sounding country rock complete with yodelling, spoken word breakdowns mid song, awesome pedal steel and
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Only got one left of these. And it's incredible. Andee ordered a copy direct from the label the SECOND he heard about it. We managed to get just two for the shop, sold one, and now have just one left. It's now out of print too, so this could be your last chance.
What is Spiderland? It's an iconic indie rock masterpiece, a record that if you haven't heard it before, well, it means you're missing out on what might be one of the best records ever made. Moody and mathy, brooding and epic, intense and introspective, catchy and melodic, noisy and abrasive, emotional and majestic. So many bands you love owe everything they do to this band, and this record. A $175 boxset might not be the place to start or the version for someone just discovering Spiderland, but we think maybe it IS. If there was ever a record deserving of this sort of lavish treatment, it's most definitely Spiderland.
So you get the record proper, on both cd AND vinyl, the holy grail here being a BUNCH of unreleased tracks, rehearsals and stuff, all of which, are worth the price of admission alone. But you also get a huge book, packed with rare photos from the Spiderland era, as well as the dvd of the Slint documentary Breadcrumb trail. All housed in a big beautiful box. Needless to say, the HIGHEST recommendation. One of you lucky aQ customers is about to get even luckier...
The legitimate release of the last studio recordings made by Slint. Just two tracks, but good enough to live up to the downer math-rock legend.
First off, this cd has the best packaging I think we have ever seen, printed on shiny metallic paper, with the inside pages on vellum. *So* nice. Too bad it doesn't scan well, or you could see it on our website. Anyway, you should all be familiar with Slipknot by now. Whether it's their music or their costumes. It's been sort of hard to miss, if you have MTV or if you've even
Yeah, okay so it's nu-metal. So what? If all nu-metal was this weird and this heavy and this totally damaged, maybe nu-metal wouldn't be such a bad word. C'mon, there's like 8 guys in the band! Two or three drummers, two or three guitarists! Totally complex arrangements, and crushingly downtuned guitars, inhuman shrieks. And as far as costume rock goes, those post apocalyptic clown outfits are pretty creepy. Plus you gotta admit it's pretty awesome that they have the impressionable youth of America just a step away from listening to Immortal and Satyricon and Morbid Angel and Burzum. Can't be all bad. This time around, Slipknot have pretty much ditched all the funkiness/rapping that marred their past efforts (thankfully), and replaced it with some cool and weird melancholy melodicism, giving the proceedings a hint of Faith No More / Alice In Chains which actually compliments their pummel quite nicely.
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Deluxe vinyl-only reissue (cd put out in 1997 by Cleopatra). This is a nice collection of live cuts recorded during the early, pre-Budgie incarnation of the Slits. Features guest vocals by Nina Hagen and Neneh Cherry.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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This is a new three-song teaser from the recently reformed version of one of the most influential post-punk groups of all time, The Slits. Preparing for their first tour in a couple of decades, two of the original members with some help from Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols and Marco Pollini from Adam & the Ants, bring a combination of dub, punk and trip hop styles to these new songs which sound amazingly fresh. We want more!!
Sloan make amazing pop records, but live is where they shine, and boy do they shine on this live double cd culled from 4 nights of shows in Canada (where they are HUGE, opening tours with Alanis Morrisette, as opposed to the U.S. where they are constantly ignored by audiences and constantly dropped by labels that should know better). Perfect versions of songs spanning their whole career, faithful enough to the originals to not be frustrating, but different enough to be interesting. Just like being at a Sloan show; lots of sing alongs, stage banter, audience interaction, and amazingly beautiful complex pop songs!
Since their split from DGC many moons ago, these Canadian boys' music has been next to impossible to get here. At long last, Koch has been able to bring their music back to our hungry ears. It's about time too!
It's hard to know what to say about Sloan, they're one of those bands that just makes us want to scream "What do you mean why are they so great? I don't know, they just are!!! You need to buy all their records NOW!" Everyone here just loves their perfect pop so much. Equal parts crunchy guitars, Beach Boys like harmonies, impossibly catchy hooks, stumblingly chaotic drumming, perfect jangle and strum guitars. And then there's the fact that each member of Sloan takes turn singing, playing guitar, and playing bass. How many bands can you say that about?! And the thing is, they all completely kick ass at all three. And as you get familiar with the band you start identifying songs as a 'Jay song' or an 'Andrew song'. That's sort of the appeal, they are crack songsmiths, and most definitely rock stars (certainly in Canada) but at the same time they are so self effacing, dorky and lovable. Their music is totally earnest and over the top bombastic at the same time. Sometimes it shuffles along all moody and downcast, sometimes it's a blast of high energy RAWK, sometimes they'll whip out some full on Chicago horns. And it all sounds great, fitting perfectly into Sloan's perfect pop puzzle. The second half of this greatest hits packed less of that Sloan pop wallop we so hold dear and more of an arena rock flair (which is sort of the direction their records have been taking, but hell, we'd rather Sloan be rocking the stadium than Janet Jackson or Counting Crows!). If you somehow missed Sloan the first time around (or if you just plain miss them!), this singles compilation serves quite well as shorthand summary of their many albums (although Andee and Cup wish a few other choice cuts had been included). This is essential pop, power or otherwise. PLUS while supplies last you get a whole DVD of all of their videos, which are all totally fun and funny and wildly entertaining. Plus it's a blast to watch the band go through an impossible number of hairstyles over the years! Anyone who loves the Posies, Weezer, Jellyfish, Big Star, Silver Sun, the Fastbacks, Superchunk, the Stereo, Zumpano, the New Pornographers, Fallout Boy, the Get Up Kids or any of that stuff, who doesn't already have a big chunk of Sloan in their collection has a lot of catching up to do. This is as good a place as any to start!
Highly anticipated around these parts (well at least here at AQ!), this is the domestic release of the newest album from one of our favorite Canadian bands. Cup nabbed an import copy for Andee a couple of months back, so he's already more than acquainted with it. As has been the case with each Sloan album, after the first couple of listens we're initially apprehensive... not quite sure if they've successfully worked their pop rock magic again. However, by the third, fourth and fifth listen, we're hooked! Action Pact is no exception.
Sloan fans know very well how the four fellows usually split up songwriting/singing duties fairly evenly. Well, depending on who your fave Sloan member is, you may be pleased or disappointed to hear that Action Pact seems more Patrick and Chris heavy than Andrew and Jay. Can't tell you for sure 'cause all of their songs are simply credited to "Sloan", but that's what it sounds like to us.
They've got some good lines on this one (like "One thing I know about the rest of my life / I know I'll be living it in Canada"), but their lyrics can sometimes be their weak spot. Good thing they're singing in Canadian! There's a distinct almost wide-eyed innocence that surfaces in their lyric writing -- often this is a endearing, positive thing, while other times it can be a bit cringable (is that a word?!), falling in the too-clever / cheesy pun department. But it's all part and parcel of why we love Sloan so much. Goofy and fun summery jangly perfect pop, sometimes dumb, but always so damn catchy! Perfect for cruisin' in your Camaro! Sloan rule, that's just a fact.
Note: this domestic release includes a couple of dandy bonus tracks (which may even entice any of you who already got the import)!
These Canadian pop-rock geniuses (popular at home, can't get arrested over here, so it goes) have a new album! It's taken a while for this to grow on us, but despite this disc's lack of the kick-ass power pop that we usually love 'em for, the songs on here are quite pretty and are beginning to stick. Fans should go for it, for you other unenlighted folks may we suggest their album "One Chord To Another"?
If you go back and look at our old reviews of past records from these Canadian power pop masters, you'll see that we often talk about how we didn't like the record at all, and it wasn't until way later that those records revealed themselves, and blossomed into eventual all time favorites. Which when you think about it is sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. By the time a new Sloan record has in fact become our new favorite, we play it to death, listening to the songs over and over and over, obsessively listening, so when the next one drops, it's inevitable that the whole process begins again. There must be some musical method to their madness, but somehow, so far, not a single Sloan record has failed to find its way into our Sloan pantheon.
So with this new one, we're again faced with the same dilemma, even more so in that we just went to see them live, and of course they played tons of new songs that we weren't familiar with yet, and had still not become the pop classics we know they eventually will. But somehow the new songs mixed with the old, helped a lot in the transition to the new record, even though we're guessing it wouldn't have taken that long anyway for it to grow on us. And it is, more and more with each listen.
One of the interesting things about Sloan has always been that each member writes songs, but unlike other bands, those members sing their own songs, so if you see them live, they often switch instruments, trade off vocals, and that method is spotlighted on Commonwealth, but separating the record into movements, each a different playing card suit, representing one of the four main members, Chris is the Heart, Jay is the Diamond, Patrick is the Club and Andrew is the Spade, with each member getting a whole side of one of the lps (less obviously delineated on the cd obviously).
We generally tend to like Chris's songs the best anyway, and on Commonwealth, he remains our favorite. In fact, "Carried Away", the first track from Chris's 'songsuite' is probably the best song here, and the most like a potential Sloan 'classic', with one of those crazy choruses that sticks like glue, and you'll find lodged in your head for ages. "So Far So Good" is impossibly Beatles-esque, channeling classic rock, through Sloan's power pop prism, then there's "Misty's Beside Herself" which is extremely sonically similar to the aforementioned "Carried Away", so much so that for the first few seconds we though it was some sort of redux, but it quickly establishes itself as yet another potential Sloan Chris classic.
The record begins though with Jay's songs, and they're great too, but other than those Chris songs, much of the record sounds more subdued, more moody and brooding, but Jay's "You've Got A Lot On Your Mind" might be the best of his bunch, certainly the most immediately catchy. Patrick stars off his batch with the fuzzed out almost metallic sounding groover "13 (Under A Bad Sign)" which sounds like it could have been plucked right off of One Chord To Another (one of our favorite Sloan records). "Take It Easy" is another serious rocker, with more fuzzed out guitar crunch and a big hooky chorus.
Probably the track/songsuite here, and the biggest surprise is Andrew's side, which is a single sprawling 18 minute epic, beginning with barking dogs, atonal piano and echoey percussion, before gradually coalescing into some brooding, slow build popsmithery, which throughout remains in continual transformation. You could argue, that unlike the other guys, he just crammed a bunch of his songs together into one, which he did, sort of, but there's definitely a sonic thread that runs throughout, with melodies and lyrics and themes being revisited and subtly tweaked, it's like Sloan's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" and it's definitely a doozy.
And as always, while our heart will forever belong to Sloan records like Twice Removed, One Chord To Another or Smeared, check back with us in a few weeks, and Commonwealth could very well be our new favorite. For now!
