Sleeping States is the ongoing work of one Londoner named Markland Starkie whom some of you might be familiar with from his other band Kaito. Sleeping States is definitely a bird of a different feather. There The Open Spaces recalls the sensitive loner bedroom indie pop recordings of the '80s and '90s, but obviously more hi-fi. Starkie layers his sweet voice and hushed guitar with a gentle ruffling of dissonant plumage. It's a softer application of noise than that heard in Kaito, but it does offer a similar effect of hazy, off-kilter dreaminess. His lilting warm vocals often drawing easy comparisons to Rufus Wainwright and Ron Sexsmith. Yes, very nice! We'd definitely recommend this to fans of El Perro Del Mar as well as those of Grizzly Bear's Horn Of Plenty album. In fact, Starkie's tune "Rivers" just happens to be a favorite of Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste.
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.
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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...
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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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!
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.
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.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
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.
SORRY.
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!
Newly reissued! The four guys in Sloan have always had distinct songwriting styles, but the differences seem much more pronounced on 1998's Navy Blues. And its not as even a split of songs between the four this time -- although there's plenty of tunes penned by Chris Murphy and Patrick Pentland (both solo and in tandem), this album disappointingly has only two Jay Ferguson songs, but surprisingly three written and one co-written by the usually more elusive Andrew Scott. The overall sound though is still very Beatles and Big Star influenced, but filtered through '70s freewheelin' rock. Chris Murphy conjures the glammy rock flamboyance of Kiss on the album's lead-off track "She Says What She Means". Jay Ferguson follows that up with a drastically contrast in the shape of his candy-hued perky number "C'mon C'mon", then Patrick Pentland tumbles right in between the two with "Iggy & Angus" complete with Thin Lizzy sounding guitars. Andrew Scott shifts the band's gears into a more 'grown-up' (Chicago-ish?) feel with funky keyboards and horns... and that's all in the span of the first four songs!
Sloan continue their Canadian pop rock reign with Never Hear The End Of It. The whopping thirty songs long running time might seems a little excessive and overwhelming, but we're not complaining. They pace the album well and keep the energy and focus up-up-up from start to finish. They don't tire and neither will you! With each subsequent album, Chris, Patrick, Jay and Andrew somehow keep things both bright'n'fresh and comfortingly familiar. They get increasingly polished, but never to the point of slick. Their four distinct voices deliver the swoonworthy boyish harmonies and their dual guitar attack launches out the electrifying riffs, embedding irresistible hooks at every turn. Absolute power pop nirvana for sure! Soooo good!
One of our favorite Sloan records EVER. Hell favorite records period. Not sure why this never got the sprawling gushing review it so richly deserves. We'll remedy that one of these days, but for now, buy this. You won't be sorry.
A new Sloan record is big news around these parts, especially since the two resident Pop freeks at aQ count Canada's Sloan among their all time pop favorites! But the interesting thing about Sloan, is that every record, bar one or two, are definitely growers. We talked about this in the review of Action Pact, about how somehow all of the past Sloan records are on such constant rotation, even years later, and the songs so firmly lodged in our heads and hearts, that a new record can't help but disappoint. At least at first. Like every Sloan record so far, all it took was a handful of listens, and suddenly Parallel Play slipped effortlessly into Sloan's pantheon of perfect pop. They have a sound that is so distinct, the voices, the harmonies, the sounds of the guitars. A good example was when we were driving the other day, flipped on the radio, and heard two seconds of crunchy guitar, and immediately, we thought "Why is Sloan on NPR?" And whadda you know? It was indeed them. And weirdly enough, hearing Parallel Play in that context, helped win us over as well. Even though these guys are so talented, and write such amazingly catchy songs, you still don't hear them on the radio. So hearing that sound, THAT sound, all we could think was what a revelation Sloan must be for someone who had never heard them.
And so it remains. The sound incredibly varied, since the four members share songwriting duties, and thus vocal duties, and each of them can handle whatever instrument is left vacant, bass, guitars, piano, drums, after a while, Sloan fanatics definitely pick their favorites, but fuck it, they're all great, and Parallel Play is no different, right out of the gate, the band kick it off with the crunchy power pop anthem "Believe", a should-have-been hit single if we've ever heard one, and from there on out it's pure Sloan, a sound that could really be no one else, slipping from super bouncy pop, to stripped down rockers, to brooding ballads, and all the various stops in between.
As good a place to start as any for Sloan newbies, but we'll always be partial to Twice Removed and One Chord To Another. Another fantastic record from one of our all time favorite pop groups EVER!!
It happens to me every time. I can't wait to get the new Sloan record. I excitedly throw it on when it finally arrives and... I hate it. Seriously, every time. Myabe hate is too strong a word. But I am definitely disappointed and seriously bummed. So I
Reissued 1993 debut from a fave band of ours! A brief synopsis of 'way back when': in grunge rock's heydays these then slightly grungey four Canadian lads got signed to Nirvana's label DGC. To put it mildly, back then their music butted heads with the grunge scene and with the label's expectations/demands, and continued to do so as time went on. Long story short, they got dropped from the label. Much to the chagrin of their non-Canadian fans and the misfortune of their potential new fans, this effectively putting a deadbolt on their stateside catalog... until now. Yes folks, it's time to restart you Sloan engines, and get 'em revvin' and rollin' all over again. This is *the* album which contains *the* stand-out song ("Underwhelmed") that started it all for these Canadian power pop/rock dynamos. The very Sonic Youth-y Smeared offers just a glimpse of the clever lyrical twists, fantastic pop hooks and harmonies that were to come.
It's been years now that we've been singing the praises of Canada's Sloan, easily one of THEE best power pop bands EVER. And certainly one of Cup and Andee's favorite bands ever. And while we'd always suggest that Sloan newbies start with Smeared or Twice Removed or One Chord To Another, we'd absolutely stand behind each and every one of their records. And while we often find that some of 'em are slow growers, we realized that it might be because we're always anxiously waiting for a new Sloan record, and all that time we're listening to the one before it, until it becomes our favorite and so the cycle continues.
This record though, is kinda crazy catchy right out of the gate, "Follow The Leader" is some seriously hook filled organ driven power pop, and immediately sticks in your head, fuzzy and jangly, with some cool unlikely instrumentation, and that immediately recognizable Sloan melodic sense, and it's also weird, beginning the record as they often do with some strange sonic something, whether it be a fake live audience, or a snippet of a different song, and here they even mess with the end of the song, starting what does in fact seem to be an entirely different song during the last 30 seconds, sounding totally melodically unrelated, until it sort of seems to tie back in, but instead it just becomes the next track, another killer catchy jam. String laden, super melodic, and again jangly and hooky as hell. And so it goes. Of the last few Sloan records this one is definitely the least in need of repeat listens to lodge itself in the pop center of your brain. If you're a fan you already own this. If you're not, but you've got a pop sweet tooth, give this a try, and for goodness sake, grab those other three Sloan records. Odds are you'll become obsessed, as most Sloan fans do, and need em all. We can only do so much proselytizing, needless to say, Sloan is one of the only bands whose records get played all the time by the popnerds around here, all their records, all the time, STILL. And we've been listening to this one like crazy since it came in. Which is really the best recommendation we can think of.
