Wierd Records (home of Xeno & Oaklander, Martial Canterel, Led Er Est, and those great vinyl compilations) presents another fine reconstitution of '80s darkwave or, for the purposes of the French duo Frank (Just Frank), "Vague Froide Moderne". Well actually, they're half French, with one of the boys growing up in New Jersey before transplanting to Paris. Synths, guitar, bass, and drum machines are applied to the skeletal, if lush arrangements of Frank (Just Frank), with the lyrics mostly being handled in French. Much of the songs take their cues from The Cure's bassist Simon Gallup who, especially on Faith and Seventeen Seconds, guided those songs through his bouncy goth basslines. As such, the guitars for Frank (Just Frank) mostly chime and jangle while the the basslines lead the tunes, whose detached emotions are furthered through the atmospheric synths and pleading vocals. The Brutal Wave? Hmm. A bit of a stretch as a title for this album which is far more sanguine than the title suggests. Nevertheless, Frank (Just Frank) deliver what is expected of Wierd these days, with allusions to the likes of B-Movie, For Against, Eleven Pond, OMD, Siglo XX, and of course, The Cure. We like.
Bay Area label Three Ring Records expand their roster by a third with four impressive new releases by Rykarda Parasol, Scattered Pages, Tom Thumb & The Latter Day Saints and this lone gent Frankel. Three Ring has already got fine releases by the indie rock/pop likes of Elephone, Soltero, Ebb & Flow and D.W. Holiday and Scrabbel, but with this recent outpouring they bolster their country and folk branches. Frankel is a folksy pop singer/songwriter whose music can easily draw comparisons to Nick Drake and Elliott Smith, but his songs tread through a place far less dark and tormented. A most gentle, comforting listen.
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Good single! Danny Rankel is a famous percussionist who has played with eveyone from Lou Reed to Paul Motian to Michael Penn.
First things first, let's just say that nothing we say is gonna dissuade the legions who've been tingling with anticipation about the new Franz Ferdinand album. Second things second, you should know that we don't just dis stuff 'cuz it's the flavor of the day... geez, we quite often like the flavor of the day! That outta the way, we can also say that while FF have by no means offered up an album that'll have ya shouting, "Holy shit, you've gotta check this out!", they haven't even offered up a single song deserving of that sort of exclamation. This ain't their swaggering hooks'n'hits-a-plenty self-titled debut, that's for sure. Really, you could count on each of these hip bands of the last couple years having at least one kickass single per album, and FF actually had a few of 'em including "Take Me On". So we were somewhat surprised and disappointed to find that YCHISMB doesn't have even one! WTF? It's sorta lame to discover that the songs that do catch your ear are the ones on which the band's already resorting to regurgitating the riff from the abovementioned 'hit'. Even the cover art is lacking -- they've simply taken an image straight from a vintage Russian film poster and done little else to make it distinctly their own. Not at all surprising really when you recall their debut's even more ho-hum artwork. It is surprising though when you consider the band's ultra stylin' videos. This is genuinely disappointing. Hmmm, the trouble with album titles such as this one's is that often it can turn around and bite you on the ass... a la "Yes, you could have it so much better!" And we have had it so much better -- namely their previous album. Let's give her another spin, shall we?
Buzz buzz buzz! This Scottish band's name has certainly been poppin' up lately. So what's are they all about? Well, if you're seeking something along the lines of the angular danceable retro pop rocks of Hot Hot Heat, The Rapture or Radio 4 but with vocals a la the emotive croon of Interpol or a suave Euro popster such as Bertrand Burgalat, you won't want to miss Franz Ferdinand!
Could there be a worse band name than Frat Dad? Does it help having a song called "Greg The Nerd"? Or having your record cover a photo of two jocks doing karaoke? We're beginning to think this is some sort of secretly subversive aesthetic, spearheaded by the Underwater Peoples label (check out the Alex Bleeker lp reviewed elsewhere on this list, with its bros hanging out around the pool in khakis and flip flops cover art), but the label has definitely proved itself to be a reliable source for the sort of murky reverb drenched garage pop we've been digging so much lately, and this 7" from Frat Dad is just that, jangly, fuzzy, distorted power pop in garage rock's clothing, a sound that would most definitely appeal to fans of Ty Segall, Bare Wires, Thee Oh Sees, the same sort of hazy sixties vibe infused with that more modern retro thing that seems to be taking over. But it's a sound we dig, and these guys do it well. You might remember their tracks from the two Under Water Peoples Records compilations, and if you dug those, you'll dig these too.
The B-side is much more minimal and murky and moody and stripped down, spidery guitars, distorted vocals, shuffling drums, all woozy and washed out, with a distorted crunch of a chorus, and a killer hook. Which once again, just goes to show, you shouldn't judge a record by its dude/bro/frat rock cover.
Cool stuff.
On their debut album, Frausdots thoroughly mine Echo & The Bunnymen's musical wardrobe, but they don their findings in a more elegant, lush scene than the Bunnymen's characteristic pit of brooding angst. Each song on Couture Couture Couture rings with that ol' overcast British melancholia that only the Brits can do. The odd thing is that Frausdots are from Los Angeles! Mainman Brent Rademaker (formerly of the wide-ranging bands Further, The Tyde and Beachwood Sparks) leads his well-heeled entourage that includes a typically L.A. eclectic guestlist (members of The Cure, The Tyde, Rooney, Warlocks, Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Mia Doi Todd) deep into the evening. And if you've a penchant for smoldering post-punk and latenight decadence, you'd do well to follow.
Drifting in like a female Chris Isaak of old - a la 'Don't Want to Fall in Love' - and a hint of Patsy Cline, is Paula Frazer (of Tarnation acclaim). All lilting and lovely. The music offers shades of Calexico with a sprinkling of clarinet and piano. For fans
Here's the third fine full length from Ms Paula Frazer (also of Tarnation). We've mentioned before that her soaring vocal delivery brings to mind a female counterpart to Chris Isaak, and it still does. Seemingly effortless. She also continues to draw inspiration from various eras of Americana -- from the fluttering ruffles on the ladies' elegant gowns at the Grand Ol' Opry to '70s soft rock horns of bands such as Chicago -- bringing it all together under her own captivating umbrella and distinguishing it with the lush sounds Rhodes keyboards, pedal steel and some tasteful tambourine. She's assembled quite a luminous cast of players too including American Music Club's Marc Capelle, Court & Spark's James Kim and Scott Hirsch, the Moore Brothers, Oranger's John Hofer, and former Kronos Quartet cellist Joan Jeanrenaud.
Damn, this lady can sing! Now It's Time is her fourth full length, the follow-up to 2005's Leave The Sad Things Behind. From the sounds of it, she hasn't heeded that album's title. This SF country gal's music continues to resonate with a haunting heartbreak. That said, she's brought back some of the good things too, such as resurrecting her beloved old band Tarnation for the occasion. Despite her plaintive lyrical subject matter, she doesn't wallow, occasionally stepping up the overall languid tempo with a mildly jaunty clip. Front and center, her impassioned voice rings strong and clear. Wistful, but with a steadfast resolve.
We first encountered The Freak Scene as the lesser half of a two-fer cd reissue with the very tangentially related Devil's Anvil album Hard Rock From The Middle East. THAT awesome album was recently reissued solo by Rev-Ola, and highlighted here last year. Now for those that need it, there's also a separate cd reissue of The Freak Scene as well, via the Lion label.
As you might guess from that band's name and album title, The Freak Scene were a bit of a psychedelic-era novelty, a studio project put together by producer/songwriter Rusty Evans for CBS Records. The record exploits all of the trippy tropes of the times, from Eastern-raga modes to LSD-inspired lyrics. It's no classic, but does include at least one truly great psych-pop track, the Nuggets-worthy "A Million Grains of Sand". The Freak Scene also indulges in dated but amusing free-form sound-collage experiments like "...When In The Course of Human Events (Draft Beer, Not Students)" which tries to make a statement about the whole sixties counterculture vibe. It's a mix of Pete Seeger, Laugh-In, and LSD party. Total Vietnam-era pop culture hippie kitsch, worthy of reissue for the nostalgic entertainment value. As with all Lion reissues, nicely done, with plenty of liner notes and vintage graphics. There's also nine bonus tracks, bringing the total to 21 and making this the definitive edition for sure. Those tracks are 1966 demos for songs that mostly either wound up on Psychedelic Psoul or another project Evans and other Freak Scensters were involved with, The Deep, and their album Psychedelic Moods.
In light of recent events, we figured that this reissue of "Hard Rock From the Middle East" would make a great choice for record of the week...no, we don't mean 'cause of the current war, we mean because of the popularity of the "Turkish Delights" and "Hava
The cover art shows the band hangin' in the desert in front of the pyramids of Egypt -- but don't be fooled, they were actually mostly Arab-Americans, based in New York City. Still, their rock n' roll was as authentically "Middle Eastern" as their Turkish contemporaries. They could have held their own with the likes of Erkin Koray and Mogollar.
Ok, now we'd better explain about this particular cd (pay attention, it gets kinda confusing): Sony's Collectables has reissued two long-out-of-print 1967 albums by two totally different bands on *one* disc. The bands are tenuously connected through the friendship of The Freak Scene's Rusty Evans and Felix Pappalardi of The Devil's Anvil, as the two had played together four years previous. Okay, so maybe it's a bit of a stretch putting these two albums together on one disc. Whatever. The real treasure here is The Devil's Anvil album.
The Devil's Anvil got together in the happenin' mid sixties Greenwich Village scene, playing their Middle Eastern influenced music at folk cafes and rock clubs. Eventually they hooked up with classical musician-turned-rocker Felix Pappalardi (producer of Cream's "Disraeli Gears", later to play alongside Leslie West in Mountain). He began playing bass with the band and eventually scored the group a record deal. The resulting album was truly one-of-a-kind and would certainly made greater impact had it not been released on the very eve of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. Thus, no New York radio stations would play it and unfortunately the album has remained an expensive collector's find until now.
The rock contained herein is absolutely kick ass, with bluesy and impassioned Arabic vocals, electric (or at least amplified) oud, bouzouki, tamboura, durbeki as well as the usual rock suspects of (fuzz!) guitar, bass and drums. The majority of the tracks here are either rock arrangements of traditional Middle Eastern and Greek numbers or original compositions, but a couple are actually straight traditional numbers with no western instruments at all. Plus there's an excellent Middle Eastern-esque rock arangement of "Misirlou" that's perhaps the best version ever recorded, IMHO. And the record ends with a Devil's Anvil original that kinda reminds us of one of the Beatles' more Eastern-influenced tunes. This is about as good as it gets. Even if the Freak Scene album doesn't interest you at all, this cd is still worth buying for The Devil's Anvil alone. Very, very highly recommended! Nay, ESSENTIAL.
(As for The Freak Scene -- you might guess from that band's name and album title, The Freak Scene were a bit of a psychedelic-era novelty, a studio project put together by producer/songwriter Evans for CBS Records. The record exploits all of the trippy tropes of the times, from Eastern-raga modes to LSD-inspired lyrics. It's no classic, but does include at least one truly great psych-pop track, the Nuggets-worthy "A Million Grains of Sand". The Freak Scene also indulges in dated but amusing free-form sound-collage experiments like "...When In The Course of Human Events (Draft Beer, Not Students)" which tries to make a statement about the whole sixties counterculture vibe. It's a mix of Pete Seeger, Laugh-In, an LSD party -- Vietnam-era pop culture hippie kitsch -- consider it a free bonus that comes with The Devil's Anvil album.)
Another blast of Sic Alps, and another good one, apparently an outtake from their recent full length, it sounds like it too, a fantastic slab of crunchy fuzz guitar glam rock stomp, which starts off all folky and acousticky, fluttering falsetto vox and lilting melodies, before blowing up into some serious glam folk garage pop radness.
The flipside comes courtesy of a duo called Freakapuss, who we had never heard of, but apparently is a new group born of underground UK pop outfit the Tronics, who Sic Alps covered on a previous 7", and it's a good match, a more sort of electric era Dylan vibe, fuzzy electric guitar jangle, loose free percussion, and the vocals delivered in a stream of consciousness drawl, heck, had we not known, we might have just assumed it was a Sic Alps song too...
Got just 3 or 4 of these, a special vinyl reissue for Record Store Day, of probably our favorite record (originally released in 1993) from this long time aQ beloved old timey country combo, their first for Thrill Jockey, a way influential record in the early early days of the No Depression movement, the group is fronted by Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean, and here as on all their records, their gorgeous voices perfectly harmonize over acoustic guitar and mandolin on a handful of originals and few kick ass covers (Nick Lowe, Woody Guthrie and more). It's been years since we listened to this, but hearing it again, we're loving this like crazy! Remastered for vinyl, and housed in a thick, old style tip-on jacket.
Fred were young hippies from central PA, who left college to jam together in a rural farmhouse playing prog/psych rock. They'd do covers by the likes of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa, and Procol Harum, but also worked up a lot of original material for this, their sole, self-titled album, originally recorded in 1971. Mostly kinda mellow, but with flashes of acid-rock
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A Teutonic Magnetic Fields? An emo variant of post-rock? A John McEntire spartan production of Prolapse's 'beauty and the beast' jangle-pop? Maybe all of the above. On Hausmusik, home of AQ favorites Village of Savoonga.
Wonderful! This is album number three from this fine Swedish trio, and they continue to grow and delight. Perhaps in keeping with the changing seasons, the tranquil frosted shimmer of their previous recordings has given way to subtly more active and warmer tones. Still very softly pastel hued with shadowy underpinnings, the aptly titled Flora stirs visions of springtime nature - of tender young leaves and limbs pressing up through the recently thawed earth, of tiny blossoms bursting open, all seeking the sun. Their trademark dewy-eyed murmured vocals and ghostly atmospheric washes are contrasted nicely by the occasionally more robust rhythmic elements (as on "Rites Of Spring" and the gently stormy "The North Greatern"), resplendent strings, and chiming percussion (definitely check out "The Shape and Colour of Things Gone Blind"). This music sighs enchantingly and you will blissfully sigh right along with it! We could go on and on. Recommended... particularly if you dig the likes of Sigur Ros, Jose Gonzales, The Notwist, Lali Puna, and Mum.
Ooooh, and if you find yourself craving more... we still have a handful of their limited edition Origami 7" in stock. Get it while you still can!
Been meaning to stock and review the delightful debut album from this Swedish duo (who've recently expanded to a sextet) for quite some time! We've been snugly enveloped in its whimsical beauty ever since it was recommended to us by a kind aQ mailorder customer a number of months ago. Finally it's here! Fredrik is indeed the name of one of these fellows. You'll hear his lulling voice, guitar, piano and horns. Lindefelt is the other, and he entwines a glistening array of strings and shuffling, twinkling electronics. There are also some uncredited angelic female backing vocals that are the absolute whipped cream and cherry topping on this glorious musical confection. Together, they've made one of Cup's favorite albums of 2009... yeah, even though it was released in late 2008! Hey, you discover things when you discover them, right? From note one, you'll be swept off your feet! Filled with an air of wide-eyed innocence, hazy atmospheres, and daydreamy reflective moods, it's the perfect album for taking your little row boat out on the sun dappled lake for the day, setting it adrift, and leaving the oars at rest. A balance of songs and scapes, each track is its own mesmerizing folk-tinged journey. The title of the seventh number "Angora Sleepwalking" really captures the essence of this album. You may find Na Na Ni to be in some ways akin to the dream pop of Kings Of Convenience or The Notwist, but a bit more electronic than the former and somewhat more airy and pastoral than the latter. Or perhaps they're the long lost music box and wind-up toy festooned brethren of the Elephant Six collective, but with a bit more European flair and a bit less psychedelics? To boot, folks who dig Arcade Fire's lush emotiveness or Weakerthans' earnest sensitivities may also find Fredrik's vocals particularly appealing. That said, hopefully those references don't lead you astray because they definitely weave their own beautifully crafted enchanted magic... and it all sounds mighty good to us. Oh yes, very recommended!
Ahhh, Fredrik is helping us start our new year in the most lovely fashion with this new 3-song 7". Gauzily atmospheric, softly groovy, subtly folksy, hushed elegance. The central pair Fredrik Hultin and O. Lindefelt are now joined by vocalist / instrumentalist Anna Moberg, and the new sounds they are conjuring together are a glistening joy to hear, a glorious progression from the duo's already sparkling previous recordings - Na Na Ni and Trilogi. If you have a penchant for lush and dreamy sounds you can snuggle into and drift off to, you definitely must make a bee line for any and all music created by this Swedish trio (psst, a new full length is slated for March)! Limited vinyl pressing, the first installment in a new 7" series from seven year old indie label The Kora Records.
Alrighty all you good people who swooned to this Norwegian duo's debut (released in late 2008) which we just recently reviewed, let's keep the love flowin', shall we? Yes, we shall because we've got more of Fredrik's glorious sounds in stock now. We are getting ourselves all properly caught up with this, their sophomore full length... and such a fine album it is!
With their softly shadowed faery folk choral passages, gentle clattering percussion and sighing brass, Fredrik's intricately patchworked and multi-layered songs conjure visions of moonlit meadows and enchanted forests. We imagine them to be sort of the aural counterpart to the mesmerizing and darkly fanciful animated filmworks of the Brothers Quay. When they bring in more electronic instrumentation as on the song "Ava" they draw closer in line to the heartfelt dream pop of Postal Service or The Notwist. And on particular standout numbers such as "Milo", Fredrik Hultin's hushed dewy-eyed vocals are quite reminiscent of Kings Of Convenience's Erlend Oye and Notwist's Markus Acher. You know, that charming murmur that sounds like it has a sweetheart secret to tell only you! But that said, the overall lasting impression of Trilogi is far more otherworldly. Glistening, lovely and artfully crafted... yes, we recommend it! (By the way, we should forewarn you that the songs that make up this album were originally released on three very very limited edition cdeps titled Holm, Ava and Ner - hence the title - but they were gone in a wink of an eye. So chances are you missed them like we did, but happily you can get them compiled on one disc now!)
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The best of Free Design. Four fancy-free voices from the '70s singing life-affirming songs about kites and bubbles and love. Beautiful harmonies with lush orchestrations, produced by Enoch Light. Like The Carpenters on ecstasy, or a less cynical Stereolab unplugged. You always knew who is the biggest influence on Stereolab's music (Neu!) but now you know who most affected their vocals, cos most of this sounds EXACTLY like Mary and Laetitia harmonizing.
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Another collection of saccharine sweet songs from '67 to '73. For these songs, add a little more Ray Conniff Singers to the description above. Mostly covers here--"California Dreamin'", "If I Were a Carpenter", "59th Street (Feelin' Groovy)", and even, yes, "Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?"
Hurrah for reissues! Especially ones like this, the long out of print fourth album from The Free Design! And it's arrived in such a timely fashion, what with the recent spurt of soft'n'easy pop groups (Fancey, Young & Sexy, Call And Response, and of course The Polyphonic Spree!). You could say they're here to show the young pups how it was done "back in the day" which in this case was 1970. With their elaborate assembly of bright horns, spritely woodwinds, cascading strings, and multi-tiered cake-sweet chorus vocals, The Free Design made music that was so deliriously upbeat and gloriously produced (by Enoch Light, no less!), 'twas almost obscene! Sonically they were very much in the same vein as The Carpenters, but a whole lot sweeter, cuter and much more optimistic.
A word of warning: Please proceed with caution when dabbling with The Free Design 'cause although this may be used as a substitute for the sun on a cloudy day, it might induce a super sugar shock too.
Includes two bonus tracks: the previously unreleased "To A Black Boy" and the single version of "Butterflies Are Free".
Hurrah for reissues! Especially ones like this, the long out of print second album from The Free Design! It's filled with both feel-good originals and glowing covers ("Eleanor Rigby", California Dreamin'" and "Happy Together"), and it's arrived in such a timely fashion, what with the recent spurt of soft'n'easy pop groups (Fancey, Young & Sexy, Call And Response, and of course The Polyphonic Spree!). You could say these reissues are here to show the young pups how it was done "back in the day" which in this case was 1968. With their elaborate assembly of bright horns, spritely woodwinds, cascading strings, and multi-tiered cake-sweet chorus vocals, The Free Design made music that was so deliriously upbeat and gloriously produced (by Enoch Light, no less!), 'twas almost obscene! Sonically they were very much in the same vein as The Carpenters, but a whole lot sweeter, cuter and much more optimistic.
A word of warning: Please proceed with caution when dabbling with The Free Design 'cause although their music may be used as a substitute for the sun on a cloudy day, it might induce a super sugar shock too.
Includes two bonus tracks (oddly both seasonal songs): "Close Your Mouth (It's Christmas)" and "Christmas Is The Day".
All right! Just in time for summer, some hot rockin' action outta Sweden! This is an aptly titled debut of catchy, classic hard rock / metal in the grand tradition of AC/DC, with a dash of Van Halen - updated with a bit of a heavier sound. Free Fall was formed by the ex-guitarist from popular garage psych act The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, in cahoots with a few other hotshot musicians (in Sweden, there's lots), including the drummer from International Noise Conspiracy, and, crucially, a previously unknown vocalist named Kim Fransson whose sandpapered pipes convincingly conjure positive comparisons to the likes of AC/DC's Bon Scott and Humble Pie's Steve Marriott - when Fransson sings "I'm the king of rock and roll" on the album's title track, his voice sells it, despite the fact that we've never heard him or them before.
There's a wild abandon to this, the guitar solos in particular, and in addition we dig how Free Fall have a formula and do it well - but also stick to that formula only as much as they wanna, allowing for some originality and surprises. The track "Attila" ferinstance, slows things down and establishes an interestingly moody vibe, still appropriately within the context of this band's '70s inspired hard rock concept, being a heartfelt semi-ballad with lashings of sinister riffery.
They cite The Who as a big influence and that's heard here, on eponymous track "Free Fall" for sure, along with the aforementioned AC/DC, VH, UFO, Montrose, Nazareth, etc. Unlike some other bands trying to capture the same sort of retro rock magic, Free Fall really do deliver - possibly the secret to their success is that these are garage/punk dudes, not metallers, so they're kinda coming at these sounds on the same trajectory as musicians back in the day.
In a just, rockin' world, these guys would be huge. Heck maybe they will be, and Fransson's line will be proved no idle boast. Recommended if you're ready to rock.
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Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Yoshimi of Boredoms, Julie Cafritz of Pussy Galore.
It's been over a decade since Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Yoshimi (Boredoms) and Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore) joined forces for a Free Kitten album. They've finally gotten together again and made maybe the best Free Kitten record yet! While they still display their scrappy and punky/bratty side on a couple tracks, the majority of Inherit finds them way more focused, smokey and rocking then we ever remember. Sharing much more in common with the sound of Sonic Youth then past Free Kitten outings, this is a must have for folks who have been digging the recent output by SY (some of us here are big fans of Rather Ripped, Murray Street, etc!) and Kim's contributions to those records. There is such a natural and free flowing feel to Inherit, with Kim rocking out all warm and smoky. The lead off track "Erected Girl" makes for such a perfect companion to the equally simple yet entrancing opener on the latest Breeders album. With new records lately by The Breeders, Mudhoney, Spiritualized and now Free Kitten it's feeling a lot like the '90s around here but we aren't complaining one bit!
We bet Japan's Christine 23 Onna digs this album! Only in the '60s... a far out, indulgent artifact of the era, an album of instrumental oh-so-psychedelic groovers with titles like "Chewing Gum Delirium" and "Cosmos Rhythms", full of wild organ jamming, funky chicken scratch guitar, and a whole lotta primitive analog synth bubbling burbling bleeping, culminating in the 14:52 tour de force of "F.P.E.T. No.1". It's a lot like the music from one of those cool "Instro-hipsters" comps, overrun with an absurd excess of electronic experimentation, that approach Hawkwindy levels of whooshing and swooshing, swirling FX. Originally released in 1969, it was a one-off project, "a new exciting experience" as it says on the cover, that today while not so new is still quite an experience.
Imagine freaked out electronics amidst go-go dancing grooves that would have both Pierre Henry and Austin Powers saying yeah baby! Or if Comets On Fire were a funky '60s soul group... which is what the core of this band is, Portuguese brothers Jess and James, who were joined by a free jazz drummer from NYC, a Latin percussionist, and most crucially a Moog madman from Belgium, the fellow responsible for all the crazy "free pop" electronics, one Arsene Souffriau. Yes, if you like Christine 23 Onna, Staff Carpenborg, or Les Maledictus Sound, check this out!
Freedom Hawk's most recent full length was a surprise hit around here, a surprise to everyone BUT Andee, who was lobbying all along for it to be Record Of The Week. But plenty of folks still got the message loud and clear, and we sold a ton, which really should come as no surprise considering how heavy and groovy and hooky and stonery and kick ass that record was. Here's how we described it for anyone who missed it:
"Huge sun baked riffs, throbbing fuzz bass, crashing drums, and howled Ozzy like vox, and most importantly some seriously catchy songs. Think a killer mix of vintage Kyuss, early Queens Of The Stone Age and classic Ozzy."
Sound good huh? That's cuz it is. And this one is just as good, if anything, the Ozzy vocals are even MORE Ozzy, in fact, reviews online described this record as the "record Ozzy SHOULD have made", which is sort of true. It's Sabbathy, melodic and heavy, definitely catchy, and those vocals, wailing and classic. It's really hard to know what else to say about these guys, we're all raved out after reviewing the self-titled full length, but needless to say, if you dug that one, you probably want this one too, and if you somehow didn't catch on until now, grab this, dig it, like crazy, and then get the other one too.
It's pretty much irresistible, massive riffing, wailing vox, killer harmonies, wild drumming, insanely catchy songs, cool fucked up arrangements, hooks all over the place, GUITAR SOLOS! Not to mention one song that's a surprisingly spaced out experimental almost dub reggae sounding slow burn space groove, like their very own "Planet Caravan" or something. And be sure to stick around for the hidden extra track (or not), a fucked up and way drugged out, very goofy 'funk'(?) jam...
These guys are definitely one of our favorite new discoveries, and both Freedom Hawk records have been on non stop heavy rotation for the last few months, and that shows no sign of letting up anytime soon...
We have to admit, when we first got this in, there were some Freedom Rock jokes, "Is that Freedom Hawk? Well, TURN IT UP", but that lasted precisely until we threw it on the stereo, at which point "Is that Freedom Hawk? Well, TURN IT UP" stopped being a joke and became a COMMAND, something we found ourselves thinking if not saying every time someone put it on in the store. Easily the heaviest, hookiest, grooviest slab of stoner rock / hard rock / classic metal we've heard all year. Huge sun baked riffs, throbbing fuzz bass, crashing drums, and howled Ozzy like vox, and most importantly some seriously catchy songs. Think a killer mix of vintage Kyuss, early Queens Of The Stone Age and classic Ozzy. It's stoner rock for sure, it is after all on the stoner rock centric Meteor City label, but it's so METAL, and so so poppy and catchy, and yeah heavy, totally rocking, very likely to induce headbanging, or at the very least air guitaring. One or two folks here thought maybe it was too derivative, and hell these guys do plunder and purloin, but they were quickly won over by the sound, the songs, and how these guys OWN their influences. Even the folks less inclined toward this sort of stuff, we've caught throwing this on when they though no one was listening.
At first we thought this was just a fun record, a sort of guilty pleasure even, but fuck it, this RULES, a killer hard rock / stoner metal record, well crafted, the playing bad ass, the sound warm and crunchy, the songs so catchy, guaranteed to stick in your head like crazy. We could go on and on, and usually do, but the true test is really how much we end up listening to something, and how often it gets played in the store, and if that's really the case, well, then this might just end up being one of THEE records of 2009 (in fact it even made it onto one aQuarian's top 10!!)...
Heavy psychedelic vibes from these '70s South African proggers, getting all, um, astral and spacey and downright spooky at times on this, their second album dating from 1971 (or maybe 1970?). A lost classic, this is, if you're a fan of Pink Floyd and/or cosmic Krautrock stuff of similar vintage. It's super trippy, with echoey vox singing weird conceptual lyrix over majestic acid rock meets church organ jams.
This was reissued on cd before, in '97, but what we've got here is a 2005 reish that adds a bunch of bonus tracks, yay. Recommended.
Here's this South African psych band's 1968 concept album debut, also reissued. Great title, eh? Compared to the Floydian space rock and Zeppish hard rock of their other, later two albums Astra and Galactic Vibes, this one is more '60s beat, definitely post-Peppers psych pop sounding, sometimes folky and balladic, at others more bombastically progged, with groovy organ and some fuzz guitar. It's also laced with random weirdness like sound FX, a vintage Pepsi radio advert, and spoken word intros to each track delivered in a sort of South African/Scottish brogue. Pretty neat.
All three albums from this South African '60s psych rock band in one handy box set. See elsehwere on our site for reviews of the individual records.
Newly reissued, here's a superb slice of acid rock psych from South Africa, circa 1971. Shadoks have also reissued one from Freedom's Children we already loved, Astra (also on this list), and another one yet to be reviewed here, their debut Battle Hymn Of The Broken-Hearted Horde.
This was their third album, following Astra which had made them the #1 pop band in South Africa. Hmm, things were different back when! But if you were a hippy hearing this then, Galactic Vibes was definitely everything its title promised. Lots of spaced out guitars echoing over polyrhythmic percussion, certainly a multi-layered cosmic experience, peaking perhaps with a 16 minute extended live version of "The Homecoming" from the Astra album, complete with an epic drum solo. Elsewhere, there's the freaky blips and bloops of an experimental "electronic concerto", lovely Middle Eastern inflected, orchestrated balladry, moody pop bombast, and, maybe best of all, fuzzed out heavy stoner riffery!! Opener "Sea Horse" is one of album's bad ass proto-metal moments, in a Frijid Pink style, and on "That Did It" they rock out again, much like Led Zeppelin or Leaf Hound. Other parts of this album make 'em seem closer to a homegrown South African Pink Floyd. All in all, pretty damn cool for those of you for whom a druggy album title like Galactic Vibes has already piqued some interest.
No bonus tracks, but this does feature lengthy liner notes in tiny, tiny type, full of info.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
There is something so self assured about the Fresh & Onlys sound, that really makes them seem like wise old sages in a garage rock scene full of impressionable younguns and wannabe hipsters. Luckily these guys aren't burnt out folks at all, as the sounds they crank out are pretty damn fresh sounding, with enough muscle to hammer those pop chops home, with confidence and enough melody to keep things so entertaining and super rocking. While there are some similarities to label mates Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, there is also an almost old school punk aesthetic a la Mission Of Burma at play in these songs as well as psychedelic undertones that help make the Fresh & Onlys the perfect soundtrack for a nice and drunk and slightly stoned sunny afternoon barbecue.
With a lineup that includes members of Skygreen Leopards, Black Fiction, and 3 Leafs you can hear the excitement in these short blasts of songs, as they are so much different in sound and scope than what most of these folks usually crank out.
We FINALLY got enough lps of this pop jam to list the vinyl:
There is something so self assured about the Fresh & Onlys sound, that really makes them seem like wise old sages in a garage rock scene full of impressionable younguns and wannabe hipsters. Luckily these guys aren't burnt out folks at all, as the sounds they crank out are pretty damn fresh sounding, with enough muscle to hammer those pop chops home, with confidence and enough melody to keep things so entertaining and super rocking. While there are some similarities to label mates Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, there is also an almost old school punk aesthetic a la Mission Of Burma at play in these songs as well as psychedelic undertones that help make the Fresh & Onlys the perfect soundtrack for a nice and drunk and slightly stoned sunny afternoon barbecue.
With a lineup that includes members of Skygreen Leopards, Black Fiction, and 3 Leafs you can hear the excitement in these short blasts of songs as they are so much different in sound and scope then what most of these folks usually crank out.
So, if you wanted to tell someone, hey, there's this band, called The Fresh & Onlys, from San Francisco, and they're really fantastic, it wouldn't hurt to start 'em off with this disc. Unreleased stuff from the prolific garage pop outfit's early days (obviously), circa 2008 (?), a dozen tracks that will have all fans of Tim Cohen & Co. rejoicing - as well as aforementioned person you play this for to demonstrate to 'em that The Fresh & Onlys are really good.
It's a convincing batch of foot tapping tunage, sensitive and sunshiney, rocking out too with classic garaginess. Some of this sure has an '80s indie feel, like these songs wouldn't feel out of place on the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, with the likes of "Pile Of Bones" giving off a Jonathan Richman vibe. No idea why these songs weren't released at the time - glad they dug 'em out of the vaults, making our day. Hindsight is 20-20, but listening to this, we venture to say that The Fresh & Onlys are a band likely to go places!
By the time we had finally heard the Fresh & Onlys, there was already some sort of mania for them going on, that we found ourselves in the midst of, all their records were sold out, we couldn't get more, out of print 7"s were popping up on eBay, the sort of thing that we might expect to happen with super popular ultra hip bands, but this local band who only had a couple 7"s?? We were skeptical, until we heard 'em, then it all made sense. These guys rule. And rock. They have sort of fallen in with the new breed of noise pop lo-fi tweakers, but the Fresh & Onlys are way more about classic pop songs, their sound channeling vintage sixties pop, the early eighties LA sound, classic power pop, garage rock. The production is most definitely not lo-fi, the guitars are thick and loud and ring out, the bass throbs, the drums are simple and understated, the vocals are down in the mix, but not buried, there are plenty of harmonies, falsettos, cool little spidery guitar leads, the overall sound is just a tiny bit fuzzed out. We never noticed it before, but the band that we're most reminded of is the Leaving Trains, easily one of our favorite bands ever, criminally under appreciated for sure (Kill Tunes and Fuck are two all time stone cold classics). Tim Cohen's vocals are a dead ringer for the Leaving Trains' Falling James, and the sound too has that sort of punk rock morphed into fuzz pop sound. They also share lots of sonic elements with local pals Thee Oh Sees, that sort of washed out wall of sound classic Spector sound, plenty of fuzzy organs, strummed steel string guitars, reverby girl group back up vox, as well as some seriously garage guitar crunch all over the place. We dig BIGTIME!
Back with their sixth album, these local boys are still sounding pretty fresh - whilst also sounding so very comfortably familiar. House Of Spirits finds Tim, Wymond, Kyle and Shayde kicking out another set of sweetly wistful indie pop jams/gems, replete with the usual head-nodding melodies, guitar jangle and (soft) fuzz... This time 'round, it sounds like they've been listening to a lot of The Cure, early Cure, yep that's what we're hearing here, it's just a bit downer-moody, their once-apon-a-time garaginess gone kinda gloomy, Tim's lyrics suitably strange and spooky. But the F&O's still can't help but let some sun shine in, some of the time. Nice stuff, as usual, even if a bit different!
We just realized, these guys have recorded full-lengths and singles for the following labels: Castle Face, Woodsist, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones, In The Red, Hardly Art, Hozac, Agitated, Trouble In Mind, and (their current home) Mexican Summer, among others. Wow, could they possibly have MORE indie cred?
It's easy to forget that The Fresh & Only's are a new band as the songs they've been cranking out have the self-assuredness of a band who's been around for decades. Two new cuts of their garage pop sprinkled with enough punk spirit and weirdo undertones to make their songs always piques our interest. We hear a really cool Joe Meek influence in the sound of "I Saw You Seeing Me" proving that just because these folks are zoning in on some pure garage pop delight they haven't forgotten how to infuse nice touches of their wide range of musical influences into the mix. Can't seem to keep Fresh & Only's vinyl in stock too long, they're already flying out the door, so better grab one of these while you can.
What more can we say about these SF garage poppers that we haven't already? This here's another double shot of pretty much perfect pop music, less and less garage rock sounding with every release, conjuring up that perfect mix of a little bit 'now', fuzzy, reverby, crunchy, and a little bit 'then', lush harmonies, timeless hooks, wall of sound production, female back up vox... not to mention plenty of jangle and strum, ooohs and aaahs, and songs that stick in your head like crazy.
The A-side is all propulsive drumming, fuzzy organs, chiming guitars, some low slung Joy Divisiony basslines, and an almost new wave croon, dreamy falsetto back up vox, and of course everything wreathed in echo and soft focus effects, transforming classic sounding jangle pop into something slightly more swirly and psychedelic. The B-side is much more swaggery and groovy and surfy, with one of those riffs you know you've heard somewhere before, total old school classic Beatles-esque pop, weary heartfelt vocals, some tinkling xylophone style melodies, and the back up vox steal the show, wrapping the track in an irresistible almost ethereal sounding sixties girl group haze. So good. Any other band this prolific, close to 10 releases in less than 2 years, might be hitting some sort of saturation point, but with these guys, we still can't ever seem to get enough.
Another blast of fuzzed out garage pop from these SF noise poppers, this one short and sweet, two super hooky catchy jams, the first all old school garage rock (via the new breed of retro new wave pop garage weirdos), throbbing bass, tons of Farfisa organs way up in the mix, heavily reverbed vocals, a catchy chorus (and a pretty catchy verse as well), and a super twisted laughing vocal part.
The flipside is an Oh Sees style rocker, heavy on the fifties fuzz and the falsetto back up vox, all wound around a frantic beat, but with some cool unexpected angular atonal melodies. Probably pretty dang limited so don't dawdle, no idea how long these will last, which makes sense, a 7" is pretty much the perfect way to experience a band like the F&O's, little frenetic bursts of rocking pop perfection.
Comes with a download card too, so you can cram these jams onto your computer.
This latest from these prolific San Francisco indie popsters is perhaps a bit less garagey and fuzzy than some of their past works. Long Slow Dance is an apt title, for Tim, Shayde, Kyle and Wymond's brand of dreamy indie jangle here, soaring from softly crooned heartache to powerful euphoria. In fact, "Euphoria" is the name of one of the songs.
It's a record full of folky lushness that reminds us a bit of Fleet Foxes for sure. So fans of both bands ought to dig this. Each song is strummed and sung to moody, catchy pop perfection, destined to get stuck on 'repeat' if you give it a chance.
Another stellar outing from the F&O boys!
