Dreamy! Initially this struck us as being oh so very very adorable, but for those around here with a low tolerance for sugar its cumulative effect soon became too much. Their teeth started to hurt, and they fruitlessly tried to shield themselves in the metal section. Alright, that's an exaggeration! Simone White's voice is a little bit Regina Spektor and a little bit Sybille Baier and a little bit Rose Melberg. The production is seriously lux, with some of the nicest inclusion of brass instruments in a pop song we've heard in a long time. Everything is ultra soft and smooth. Hmmm, it's sort of Finchy too. Our only sticky point is that Ms White opts for a few lyrical trends that have become somewhat tired and overused, like uhh... anything about feathers! However, if you embrace your inner cute and twee darling self no matter what your age, this is so for you! Absolutely crushworthy!
Recently we remarked upon how the long-running stoner rock label Small Stone had been kicking our asses with some great releases of late (Obiat, Iota, etc.). Gotta say the same thing now about the MeteorCity label, another veteran stoner rock purveyor who in the '90s, were second only maybe to Man's Ruin as THE stoner rock label of the day. Well, it's 2010 and, despite a lowered profile, the re-activated MeteorCity has been killing it lately, maybe even moreso than in the good old days, with such recently highlighted here releases like Ararat, Village Of Dead Roads, Freedom Hawk, and Egypt... THIS list, we've got two more from 'em to rave about, Leeches Of Lore and WhiteBuzz!
WhiteBuzz hail from Germany and illustrate a controversial point. You might think that the sound a band is known for is THEIRS, they invented it, and anyone else that sounds similar are obviously influenced or are flat out copycatting. Well, yeah maybe that's sorta true. But you could also think of it this way: the SOUND exists already, band A just came along and "discovered" it, channelled it, made use of it. But rather than wait for band A to make another record 'cause you want to hear that sound again, what about if band B comes along and ALSO taps into that sound, and it speaks through them just as legitimately as it does through the "original" band? Nobody is copying anybody, both bands A and B are servants to that sound, it's just that chronologically speaking band A came first, band B later. Likewise, there could be bands C, D, E, etc., all "tuning in" to this pre-existing, eternal "SOUND". That's a theory anyway, and it makes more sense when the sound in question seems so darn cosmic. We might be making to big a point out of this, actually, 'cause while we were gonna say if band A = Om then band B = WhiteBuzz, we think you'll be able to tell 'em apart. For one thing, WhiteBuzz have a guitarist! But if you like the epic ritualistic psychedelic fuzzed out epics of Om, we're pretty sure you're gonna dig WhiteBuzz, complete with a similarly chant-like vocal style and lysergically spaced-out interludes amidst the blown out super heavy repetitive riffage on the 4 loooong tracks here (plus a fifth, shorter, unlisted bonus cut that sounds more like a tribute to the Melvins).
Has WhiteBuzz heard Om? Well, we'd bet they have, probably, yeah, but who know, could be the not-so-coincidental cosmic scenario outlined above too. Heck, these heavy invocations weren't invented by Om, or precursors Sleep, EITHER, exactly. They go back to Pink Floyd and Hawkwind and Black Sabbath... to Tibetan monks... to the first cultivators of cannabis... to pagan prehistory... You could probably hear sounds like this in temples on Mars or in ancient, imaginary Hyborea!
Basically, we're sure YOU'VE heard Om, anyway. And it's likely you like Om, too. If so, and you'd like some more Om-ishness RIGHT NOW, then check out WhiteBuzz. To be honest, original or not, we like 'em almost as much as Om themselves. The only thing that kinda bugs us about WhiteBuzz is, why do they spell white/whyte two different ways in band name and album title? But otherwise, we're quite happy with this release!
It's been a while since we've heard from Aussie heavies Whitehorse, but they've returned on this split with East Bay grinders Negative Standards, Whitehorse's contribution to the split a sidelong sprawl of downtuned miserablism, a song that takes WH's usual knuckle dragging tarpit doom sludge, and adds some insectoid black buzz, the swirling fast picked guitar weaving a strange backdrop to the band's monstrous lumber, bellowed vokills and caveman drum crush, the song droning and tranced out, devolving into a killer stretch of power electronics midway through, a field of garbled static and solid state feedback, before lurching back into action, slipping right back into an epic sonic trudge, that like past jams, sounds a bit like a more abject, slo-mo Godspeed, before returning to that opening black metal riff to finish things off.
We had never heard, or even heard of Negative Standards before, even though they hail from across the Bay, but they definitely make a good match for Whitehorse, their sound not doomy as much as crusty and grindy, opening with an extended intro of blackened ambience, and swirling FX, before launching into some fierce D-beat pound, lurching from crusty churn, to furious fastcore grind and back again, the vocals a seriously sick demonic rasp, the sound relentless, until the doomy midsong breakdown, the song slipping easily into slo-mo, downtuned creep, all knuckle dragging pound that evolves into some near Neurosis level epicry, before exploding into one final salvo of blasting, grinding fury. Things finish off with a short sharp burst of crusty grind, beginning with a brief blast of static/feedback power electronics, before exploding into some frenzied metallic crush, the relentless blasting crust, peppered with a few seconds of seriously spaced out doom midway through.
Killer artwork from Sutekh Hexen's Kevin Gan Yuen! But no download, sadly.
Kinda like Legendary Pink Dots meets Labradford.
The sweet, dulcet pipes of one Mr. Erlend Oye can now be heard in a pop band other than Kings Of Convenience! It's The Whitest Boy Alive!
And yes, the name is quite fitting. You might say that Oye's body of work to date has been unflaggingly, Milquetoastily vanilla, and Dreams continues in similar fashion. Oye is an impeccable songwriter and this is his most guitar based outing yet with totally tasty instrumentation laying the perfect bed for his sweet alluring voice. He even reminds us of a younger Arto Lindsay with his suave stylings and undeniable charisma. Or like Sam Prekop taking one foot off the sea and onto the dance floor. This record stands out in all of its smooth, creamy, soft and soothing glory.
While Erlend Oye is best known for his band Kings Of Convenience, there is something truly special that happens when he records under the Whitest Boy Alive moniker, cranking out some of the most infectious, breezy and immaculate sounding pop songs we've heard. His second album as The Whitest Boy Alive is just as potent as the debut we fell in love with a couple years back.
Breezing along somewhere between The Sea & Cake and The Junior Boys but somehow pretty much blowing both of those bands away in the way he creates songs that float with such ease yet have such solid impact, rife with sentiments that ring with such subtle truth. While it's not a surprise to have pop songs that deal with the nuance of human relationships and heartbreak, it is remarkable when those messages and simple vocal phrases are able to so simply and insightfully speak to universal truths. Oye truly has a way with words, but what makes Rules such a special record is that nothing ever feels forced or out of place, it all flows with such seamless perfection and allows you to skip and dance as your memory spins wildy off in a million different directions. There are so many songs here that have gotten totally stuck in our heads, but they are more than catchy, they are that rare kind of pop song that you actually WANT stuck there in your subconscious, perhaps never to escape. They're just that damn good!
We love how there are songs that take riffs from groups like Daft Punk and make them their own, while at the same time employing a subtle jazz aesthetic in some of the instrumentation that would fail so miserably in other hands but works so perfectly here. We could go on and on, but we'll stop by saying that this is for sure a major contender for pop record of the year!
Released on vinyl at the same time on Rural Isolation, we just got in a handful of copies from the eponymous album from the enigmatic JT Whitfield on cassette through Chondritic Sound! Here, we have another four tracks of industrial strength bad-vibes. The synthetic murk and tangled ectoplasm which Whitfield dubbed out on that the previous cassette continue here with the heavily thumped rhythms swapped for more of a ritualized, nocturnal set. At times, this has the feel of clandestine happenings by denizens of a subterranean community who have constructed dank hymns and electric chorales in the only cathedrals they ever knew - sewers, drain pipes, and cisterns. Much more akin to Lustmord's Heresy or Paradise Disowned, as a result, and excellent.
We missed out completely on the cd version of William Elliott Whitmore's installment of the Latitudes series. We maybe got one or two copies way back when but those are long gone. So we figured we oughta list the vinyl version since we managed to get a handful of these. And if they're anything like the rest of the Latitudes lps, they'll be gone in a flash, so act fast.
We've never actually reviewed any of WEW's records proper, the only one we've listed is the collaboration he did with Erase Errata's Jenny Hoyston, which we dug a lot, his raw raspy voice complimented hers perfectly. But we had yet to get a good listen to him on his own, but man does this guy have a voice. Hard to believe that voice comes out of a tattooed 30 something white guy. Bluesy and deep, raspy and raw, ragged and soulful, the arrangements just guitar or banjo, super simple and stripped down. The songs are intense, and emotional, the voice saying as much with it's tone and timbre as with the actual lyrics. We definitely need to hear more from this guy.
Like all the Latitudes lps, packaged in that instantly recognizable black and white diecut 12" sleeve, pressed on red vinyl. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, we have less than ten...
A little while ago we listed a cool comp called Living In A Shadow, devoted to the underground Down Under lo-fi-noise-rock-weirdness scene as documented by the label Vacant Valley, run by the drummer of aQ fave shoegazers Bunyip Moon. Now Vacant Valley brings us a 7" ep by the band with one of thee most awesomely ridiculous names from that comp. The three new tracks of "death wave noise rock" found here from this five-piece are full of churning, chiming minor key melodies arranged for a pair of spidery, seasick guitars and a thuggish rhythm section, supporting an onslaught of throat-ripped vokills (female) that sound practically black metal, DSBM even. A bit like Deaf Wish meets The Body, maybe, and totally rad. More, please.
Thank gosh for the good ol' British Broadcasting Corporation and shows like "Top Gear", "Saturday Club," and of course "The Old Grey Whistle Test." Rather than simply play their records, the BBC put bands in their studios to cut live versions of their hits for airplay (due to Musicans Union rules that kept pre-recorded music almost entirely off the air). Because of this, today we can enjoy incredible archival releases of live Beeb sessions by the likes of The Beatles, Hendrix, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and now, The Who! From the years '65 (when the band actually had to audition for a spot on the radio) through '70, we get 25 "historic, unreleased" cuts including their goes at the Radio One jingle. Needless to say, highly recommended!
We first discovered French electro-grind-metal-psych-whatthefuck duo Whourkr a year or two back when we got their debut record, Naat, which totally blew us away, it sounded like a malfunctioning metal record and a freaked out techno record, all scrambled up together, tangled up and spit out, a skittering, skipping, looped, grinding chunk of electronic metal weirdness. The vocals would howl, but then get processed and looped and would become something else altogether, the drums and guitars were so gnarled and stretched and twisted up, that the band could explode into flurries of rapidfire mathematical grind, way faster and more complex and convoluted than any human could possible play. It was a total headfuck. Like the fastest freakiest grind, made even faster and freakier, but with a little techno thrown in for good measure. Remember the Drum>MachineGun compilation, of insane drum machine driven grind? Whourkr makes that stuff sound so so tame in comparison.
We tried and tried to track down copies for the store, but never had any luck, and then we heard that Crucial Blast would be releasing the NEW Whourkr, so we waited and waited, and now it's finally here, and it's totally different than the first one (or at least how we remember the first one), way poppier and more melodic, like the band are now actually composing songs instead of throwing all the sounds in a blender to see what comes out (not that we don't dig that too!), it's way poppier, catchier, but still totally and utterly freaked out and glitchy and fucked up beyond belief.
Chugging guitars and shrieked vox are chopped and spliced into a hyperspeed deathmetal Melt Banana, all the sounds constantly shifting, the tempo changing, the rhythms colliding and hiccuping, occasionally coalescing into full on grooves, other times splintering into bursts of electronic freakouts, and there are serious hooks happening too, it doesn't seem possible that music like this could be listenable, let alone catchy, but it is. Big time. We'll be the first to admit, that the other Whourkr record was difficult listening, brutal and to many ears annoying, and yeah, the same might be said for Concrete as well, but the band are so much better now, in terms of composition and songwriting, that once you're immersed in their fucked up and freaked out soundworld, it becomes surprisingly easy to acclimate to the rapidly and constantly shifting sounds and rhythms, in order to enjoy the songs themselves. Plus the vocals seem to play a much larger role, not just howls and shrieks, there are plenty of clean vox, soaring almost operatic, low AND high, wrapped around frenzied riffing, wound up into spiralling psychedelic freakouts, or like the instruments, chopped into crazed stutterscapes.
Take the track "Santo", with its deep crooned vox and acoustic guitars, sounding almost like Circle, the electronic effects very subtle at first, before the track lurches into full on doom, the voices and guitars just slightly glitched, eventually giving way to gorgeous delicate piano, only to be obliterated by the next track "Skovsnails", a little burst of drums, and a crazy clipped main riff, it almost sounds like some insane DJ remixing Orthrelm, the song stutters and lurches and hiccups, totally frenetic and relentless. The record dips its toes into all sorts of weird sounds, loping moody electronic downtempo, albeit a little fractured, head spinning hyper grind, shot through with unlikely pop hooks, glitched out death metal, soaring slow building post rocky drama, and more Melt Banana-esque grind pop, but nothing here sounds thrown together, or hodge podge, this is a baffling collection of sounds, but one that is meticulously composed, performed and recorded, and for those in the market for something truly demented, insane, extreme and heavy, not to mention out-there, and pretty much entirely unlike anything you've ever heard before, be next to impossibly to top Whourkr. Definite contender for metal record of the year, even though calling it a metal record is selling it WAY short. Regardless, absolutely recommended.
And, for a limited time (next couple of weeks, until February 2nd 2010), we'll be selling this for a special $2 discount off the regular price, which would normally be $13.98.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
NEW ON MISSISSIPPI!!!!
They may specialize in reissues, funk and soul and blues and gospel, but the fine folks at Mississippi also dabble in more contemprorary sounds, The Spooky Dance Band (members of the late great Reeks And The Wrecks) and Sad Horse (members of the late great Fuck!) being the most recent, until now, and until Why Are We Building Such A Big Ship, which sounds exactly like it could be the title of a Mississippi compilation, but is in fact the name of a group, a BIG group, nine members, handling instruments like accordion, upright bass, banjo, bass drum, trumpet, French horn, sax, piano and euphonium. That should give you a rough idea of the sort of sounds these cats conjure up, and consider that this is a co-release with a label in New Orleans, so we're talking a sort of woozy, New Orleans style funeral jazz, or more modern references might be the Decemberists, or even a less rambunctious, darker more contemplative Pogues, that sort of jazzy, drunken, wandering minstrel sort of cabaret sound, the instrumentation makes the sound old timey, Dickensian even, the horns moan and bleat, the accordions wheeze, very playful, yet ominous and haunting, the arrangements are gorgeous, evoking cobblestone streets, and cloudy skied rain soaked afternoons, shuttered buildings, and rolling hills of brown grass and tumbledown structures. It's the music's very old timey-ness that somehow makes it a perfect fit on Mississippi, and while it may not appeal to the blues / gospel / archival vinyl reissue purists, it is pretty cool, and should definitely please fans into the Decemberists, Beirut, Neutral Milk Hotel, Slim Cessna and other outfits not necessarily at home in this time...
SUPER LIMITED of course. Super swank, silkscreened chipboard jackets, white, black, red and metallic silver on brown, includes a printed insert as well.
The ever-changing roster of the impressive ensemble known as The Why Because is graced with numerous music luminaries from around the Bay Area. The line-up for Music shapes, their third release, is a six member crew including folks from Anticon/Lex avant-hoppers Subtle and Themselves. The disc's five lengthy improvised tracks (recorded live back in 2004) explore the far reaches of jazz, postrock, psych/space rock and ambient experimentation. And they incorporate an even broader array of instruments with trumpet, saxophone and percussion taking prominence amid the Fender Rhodes, other keyboards, bass clarinet, guitar, bass and melodica. Music shapes commences with "Fenced Bird Takes Flight" a barren landscape of faintly blown horns and Spartan drumming. This gradually blossoms into a more fleshed out and sprawling journey with many mesmerizing and meditative stretches as well as more kinetic cyclical passages. Check out "Serpentine Tides" and "We Will Fight For The Things That We Love".
Note: This cd is dedicated to member Dax Pierson who was seriously injured in a tour van accident last year. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Dax Recovery Fund.
First things first, if you want one damn terrific song with one catchy soaring chorus with some really pretty backing vocals and some rockin' heaviness to boot, "Time Machine" by Whysall Lane is where it's at. Hey, sometimes all you need is one song! You'll be singing along and/or humming it during the day in no time. However this Bay Area based band deliver much more on their self-titled debut! This is the current incarnation of former Versus vocalist Richard Balayut's longtime personal project. Up until recently the entity named after a street in Detroit, MI was either a solo endeavor or had an ever-changing supporting cast, but now along with the solid presence of Adam Pfahler (Blackball Records bossman and ex-Jawbreaker, J-Church) on drums and Mikel Delgado (ex-Wussom*Pow) on bass and vocals, his formerly stripped-down songs have been fleshed out into rockin' full band extravaganzas -- dark and smolderingly brooding and peppered with occasional slightly proggy or postrock-ish excursions and sweetly heartfelt sentiments. As we touched on above when Delgado chimes in with her back-up vocals, they really complement Balayut's deep world-weary delivery (also check out their song "Half Life" for more dreaminess!). Recommended.
As promised last list, here's the second of the two volumes of collected wah-wah overload and heavy fuzz freakout from this legendary underground UK hard psych power trio, circa 1969-1972, who were doomy and proto-metallic, but also fairly melodic and bluesy and sixties-sounding (they do a version of Jimi's "Voodoo Chile" here, which fits right in).
There's seven more archival Wicked Lady selections here to delight deaf bikers everywhere, ranging from excellently titled opener "I'm A Freak" to the album-ending 22 minute epic "Ship Of Ghosts", each full of heavy fuzzed out chugging guitar to the max.
Imagine a rather darker, more evil sounding Blue Cheer and you'd be close. The nearly 10 minute "Passion" sounds a heck of a lot like something by early Pentagram (or Bedemon), you could almost imagine it's Bobby Liebling singing it. Also there are some lines in the lyrics that go: "Tell me you love me / And I won't throw your grandma on the fire", how nice!
The cd booklet includes lyrics, and liner notes (the same notes as found in vol. 1, The Axeman Cometh, though). And for your information, Guerssen has released this on vinyl as well, though we're still waiting for our copies to arrive.
A holy proto-metal relic here, folks. This is the first of two volumes (vol. 2, modestly titled Psychotic Overkill, we'll review next time) collecting the recorded output circa 1969-1972 of this heavy riffing underground UK unit, well known in the annals of hard psych fuzzarama. A classic power trio, featuring Martin Weaver (later of the Dark) on guitar, along with Bob Jefferies on bass and "Mad" Dick Smith on drums, Wicked Lady had a rep for being LOUD and causing violence. No surprise that Wicked Lady's axeman stateth in the liner notes that their fans were either partially deaf people or bikers! Or both!
Their sound was based on the basic British blues rock of the day, a la Cream, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, and so forth, with melodic vocals and a generally sad vibe, their songs sometimes relatively tame hippie popsike seeming - at first - before Weaver would unleash the hellish wah wah fuzz freakouts that whipped those poor deafened bikers into such a state.
Groovy, lumbering, loping, amped up and drugged out, Wicked Lady is the real deal, dated to us now, perhaps, but quite charming. You can't argue, ferinstance, with how after a gentle, folky beginning, the track "War Cloud" morphs from melodic to martial, a jackbooted march with wild soloing o'er top, kinda as if Trad Gras Och Stenar went (proto-)metal� such fuzz guitar jamming excess is to be found throughout, like Wicked Lady were the Earthless of their day.
The eight tracks found here (DIY recorded in the band's dingy rehearsal space, 'cuz they were about playing live, not making records, but wanted to remember how the songs went!) are all gonna be of interest to those into the likes of Randy Holden's Population II, High Tide, Stray, '70s Pentagram, Iron Claw, T2, Negative Space, and other obscure late sixties / early seventies purveyors of heavy psychedelic riff rock. This is the first time Wicked Lady's music has been legitimately released on cd (and Guerssen has pressed vinyl too, which hopefully we'll have soon), with the participation of Martin Weaver himself, who contributes liner notes, telling the whole Wicked Lady story - and he's got some stories. Though he does dispel the rumor that he broke a window and stole his first guitar - instead, apparently, he built it himself. Full lyrics are also included in the booklet.
As an earlier, bootleg edition of this on the cult Kissing Spell label put it in a back cover blurb: "60 Minutes Of Wah Wah Hell"!
Sometimes we just have to pinch ourselves to make sure we're not dreaming, and that Japan's EM Records and all the crazy stuff they somehow find and reissue is actually real! Seriously, it's hard to believe, EM dig up such obscure things that are just so AQ-perfect, so darn weird. We have whole sub-genres of stuff in stock here at the store all because of EM - steel pan funk, psychedelic surf soundtracks, singing saw music! And quite a few one-off items that pretty much represent new genres in and off themselves. Like this one, which EM almost too tamely describes as "Obscure evil psycho machine-funk from '80s Washington D.C. Psychedelic madness!".
From the moment Wicked Witch showed up in the mail, we were ensorcelled. Heck, this pretty much had us with the cover, featuring a Vice magazine Dos and/or Don'ts worthy photo of a mysterious, ridiculously bad ass lookin' African American fellow wearing shiny black leather and spikes, sporting a knife in a scabbard attached to one of his boots. He's got his hands on his hips, his eyeballs are colored in red, and we sure wouldn't want to mess with his rad dudeness. But even that strange, sinister image couldn't have prepared us for what this actually sounds like... Which is, to us, ARIEL PINK PLAYING FUNK!! It's that damaged, that lysergic, a one-man outsider take on the druggiest moments from early '70s Miles Davis and especially Funkadelic, like "Wars Of Armageddon" off of Maggot Brain ferinstance.
The first track of this anthology, "Fancy Dancer", a 7" single from 1985, drops the listener right in at the deep end, a dense miasmic phantasmagoria of percolating off-kilter grooves, funky vampings, and creepy, low-end synth buzzings and growlings, further made freakier towards the end of its 5 1/2 minutes with a dose of wild psychedelic electric guitar soloing. Damn. Don't even know if funk is the right word for this. How about "glunk"? 'Cause it's got such a melty, gooey viscosity to it. The credits tell us this appeared on a 7" single from 1985, with all instruments and vocals by Richard Simms (he's the cover star, he's Wicked Witch, and he's apparently quite a character!). Next, track two, "Erratic Behaviour", is maybe even more murky and chaotic, a mixture of echoing, babbling voices and tick-tocking drum machine, set loose amidst swirling electronics. It comes from another 7" single, circa '83, as does the similar track three, "X Rated", which adds some "sensual" guest female sex-freak vocal exhibitionism over the lashing beats, bass throbs, and general dementia. But it's at least as spooky as it is sexy...
Then, track four, "Vera's Back", suddenly shifts things into another realm, delving into Wicked Witch pre-history. Written and produced by Simms, this track was originally released in on a 12" in 1978 by a band he was in (on bass and vocals) called Paradiagm [sic]. It's twelve minute workout of shredding jazzfunk fusion, with over the top chops, a la Return To Forever, with violin and echoing vocals and proggy changes galore. It's a lot "cleaner", less distorted and drugged out than Wicked Witch's later bizarre cauldron bubblings, but still pretty crazy, some of it like Goblin on speed!
The next three tracks bring us back to the more unusual funk (or glunk?) stylings of Rick Simms solo in the '80s, with two takes (one instrumental, one vocal, though both have vocals, the latter just more n' nuttier of 'em) of a track called "Electric War", from a 1984 Wicked Witch 12", and then, for a finale, the disc comes full circle with a previously unreleased, extreme remix of "Fancy Dancer" done in '86. Again, weird, dense, DIY outsider grooviness. Yep, CHAOS: 1978-86 is aptly titled. And we're still astonished, dunno how EM does it. Who digs deeper? You couldn't make this stuff up, we know, but we're still pinching ourselves. Maybe Wax Poetics will do a feature on Wicked Witch one of these days... we can only imagine what became of Simms, perhaps institutionalized in some asylum for the Funkily Insane. In the meantime, you can pour over the photos included herein.
FYI, the above review describes the programming of the cd version, EM's lp of this has a slightly different running order and in fact some different tracks! The vinyl edition omits the "Fancy Dancer" remix and the "Electric War" vocal version. But, its "Erratic Behaviour" and "X Rated" are both remixes different from what's on the cd. And, there's a whole 'nother previously unreleased cut on the lp, "Under Your Spell", eight and half minutes long, from 1986! So we can't tell you which format to choose. Either one, or both, are highly recommended!
The fact that there's a movie called Wicker Park is almost as bad as the fact that there was a movie a few years ago called "The Mission". And the fact that Josh Hartnett is in it doesn't make us any more likely to see it. Nor surprisingly does the amazing blonde on the cover who we assume is Hartnett's love interest in the film. Probably the most fascinating thing about this soundtrack is that it definitively marks the fact that WE, US, you and me, our generation, people JUST LIKE you and me, have infiltrated the motion picture industry and the advertising world and are using the music you or I would pick for a movie or put on a mix tape. Kind of cool. But also kind of creepy. Nick Drake or Tortoise on a car commercial? What about a major Hollywood motion picture, starring a current hearthrob featuring *rare* and *unreleased* tracks from...Death Cab For Cutie, Broken Social Scene, Postal Service, Snow Patrol, Mazzy Star, the Shins, Mates Of State, Mogwai and on and on. It's actually a pretty awesome soundtrack / mix. Worth it just for the Postal Service's awesome version of Phil Collins' "Against All Odds"!!
Three lengthy droning pieces from Richard Young's collaborative partner that were composed respectively for Korg synthesizer, Peruvian recorder, and didjeridu. The first two pieces are hypnotically beautiful and somehow incorporate the straining of effort which is a Wickham-Smith trademark. However, I hate to say it; but Wickham-Smith, a Scotsman whose previous work has always been interesting and often challenging, made a questionable decision to record with didjeridu - the now tepid sound of advertisers who insist on something 'exotic' to describe the Subaru Outback wagon.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Record number two from these East coast dream poppers, and like their self titled debut, it's another lush and luxurious collection of soft focus jangle, ethereal Mazzy Star like vox and wistful minor key melodies, all woven into dark billows on washed out melody and ephemeral grey skied drift. Like their cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game", this whole record evokes that same sort of brooding, haunting, swoonsome minimal shimmer, although this time around, the production is definitely more polished, giving these songs some heft, sonic and emotional, letting the sound blossom into mini jangle pop epics, adding all sorts of extra instrumentation, lush layers, and letting some of the songs get downright rocking. Where the first record had a definite nineties vibe, the Mazzy Star comparison is pretty much unavoidable, this new one also dips into the eighties, with tracks like "Dyed In The Wool" channeling the Motels or Scandal, through a more modern psychedelic garage pop filter, and the results are pretty divine.
Like the first record, repeated listens reveal more and more songs as being stone cold pop classics, and again, that new production, makes these songs more fuzzy and crunchy, giving them a dreamy dark power, but the band are just as adept sans studio magic, check out the stripped down "Thick As Thieves" a near acoustic brooder, that reminds us of Chelsea Wolfe's recent acoustic record, here multi tracked vocals are draped over downtuned guitar plucks and wheezing accordion, steel string strum and a shimmery prismatic drone, the whole thing a dreamy, druggy, psychedelic sea shanty, and maybe our favorite track here. But keep listening, and like all great records, more favorites reveal themselves. "Ballad Of The Golden Hour" is all shimmery fuzz pop bliss, while "Devil Knows" has a "Crimson & Clover" feel, all crunchy guitar and driving drums, but then a soaring swirly chorus reels it back into Widowspeak's more psych pop sound. "Sore Eyes" sounds like some classic rock should have been, Fleetwood Mac via Dum Dum Girls maybe, and the rest of the record unwinds in a similar fashion, equal parts classic dream pop and modern psychedelic garage rock, finishing off with another gorgeous brooding psych folk gem, the smoldering "Storm King", which like "Thick As Thieves", is currently vying for our top spot, on a record that's FULL of top spot contenders. SO great. Sweet packaging too, the cd comes in a standard jewel case housed in a die-cut slipcover, the lp in a deluxe full color gatefold jacket, and a download of course! We're listing the lp only for now though 'cause the cd is on backorder, boo hoo.
Yet another band from Brooklyn channeling the past, this female fronted trio though skips over the whole sixties girl group era and steers clear of the cheesy eighties MTV new wave vibe and lands squarely in the nineties, with a sound that's often a dead ringer for hazy dream poppers Mazzy Star, due in no small part to vocalist Molly Hamilton's warm sultry croon, as well as a lush, hazy washed out production. The instrumentation is pretty spare as well, the guitar a little bit twangy, a little bit strummy, the drums super simple, what sounds like just a kick, a snare and maybe a floor tom, laying down lazy shuffles, and minimal skitter, the songs swoonsome and sweetly melodic, a little bit wistful and minor key, the A side here "Gun Shy" wraps swaggery almost Morricone-ish guitars around those dreamy vox, and a crazy catchy hook, surprisingly propulsive and a little bit rocking, the guitar with a little bit more crunch/bite than you might expect, definitely a track that will have you playing it over and over.
And just to seal the deal nineties-wise, the B side is a cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game", which musically is darn near a dead ringer for the original, but with Hamilton's vocals in the mix, it sounds like Mazzy Star covering Chris Isaak, which is actually pretty great.
Sometimes the true test of a record, is how many times you can listen to it in a row, and the first time we threw on the new EP from East Coast dream folk duo Widowspeak, we ended up laying it nonstop for at least an hour. Every time it ended, all we wanted to do was start it over again. Like the Almanac full length before it, The Swamps, is dark and lush and luxurious, the opener, dirgey and swampy, stripped down and wreathed in weird FX and field recordings, but after that, it's back to that fuzzy, dreamy, drifty sound that has us so in love with Almanac. The vocals breath and ethereal, floating above acoustic guitars, minimal percussion, and soft swirls of gauze-y ambience. Hooks galore too, and impossibly lovely vocal harmonies. The slower tracks are definitely reminiscent of Mazzy Star, check out "Calico", all wasted and woozy, and darkly dreamy, a strummy, sun dappled dream-folk dirge. The rest of the ep splits the difference between jangly pop, and more laid back dirge-folk, culminating in the closing title track, which is a haunting backwoods ballad, lush and layered, the music a softly swirling, elegantly strummed backdrop for those angelic vocals. Dreamy. And we're gonna listen to the whole thing, again, right, NOW...
While we have been digging lots of weird and lo-fi pop that's come out in the last few years, there's been a shortage of the kind of dreamy and focused pure pop records that make us wanna swoon for days on end. Luckily that has changed with the debut full length from New York's Widowspeak. We were already pretty much sold when we first heard their 7" earlier in the summer, which featured one track from this record and a Chris Isaak cover(!), but we had no idea that this was going to be a band who would be responsible for maybe one of the best pop albums of the year, this their self-titled debut. From the opening moments of the records lead off track, "Puritan" to the album's closer, "Ghost Boy", it's a record we'll be listening to repeatedly for a long time to come.
Widowspeak take elements of Cat Power, Beach House, and Mazzy Star, but somehow put them together in a way that countless other bands, all of whom take those same points of inspiration, never seem able to reach. Waves of warmth, and an economical approach to songwriting come together to create songs that make us just want to sway and linger as we stare into the eyes of someone we love, sounds that conjur up the memory of the one that we wish was still by our side.
We also love how as bittersweet and love soaked the songs can be, there are still these awesome and surprising moments that totally rock out and show sound both urgent and passionate, again in a way that many others treading similar terrain are never able to quite capture either.
This is that rare record rife with musical moments that both give us goosebumps as well as inspiring much shimmying and shaking. We might just have ourselves a new favorite band!
At first we were really underwhelmed by the new Wilco. We loved the first few Wilco records, they were chock full of catchy hooky songs that would stick in your head like crazy. As the band got more adventurous and experimental, culminating in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the hooks took a back seat to the overall sound and the process, which was okay because the sound was so overwhelmingly alien and beautiful. So on first listen, we're struck with the same lack of obvious hooks, but also a decided absence of experimentalism. But like we said, that was on first listen. Closer inspection shows that the weird sounds and wild experimentation are still present, just sort of focused and contained within certain tracks. This record is surprisingly quiet and introspective, lots of just vocals and piano. But almost as surprising is Wilco's tendency to rock out towards the end of songs. Like Crazy Horse before them, Wilco let melancholy country ditties, build and eventually explode into a full on rock jam with wild chaotic drumming, peals of feedback and screaming guitar leads. Very exhilarating and a good balance to the minimalism of the rest of the record. The two standout tracks for those waiting for the 'weird parts' are track three, "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" which is based around a strangely proggy krautrock song structure. A definite head nodding NEU! rhythm with lots of scrabbling guitar and weird skronky atonal bleats. And there's the fifteen minute long track eleven "Less Than You Think", which is mostly a noisy, fuzzy ambient drone, equal parts feedback and what sounds like shortwave radio, building and building to an almost Merzbowian frenzy. Pretty cool. But as always, it's Tweedy's songs, that manage to shine through, no matter what sort of sonic detritus is piled atop them.
New double album from Jeff Tweedy of the late, great Uncle Tupelo, is better than their debut, we think. The first song, "Misunderstood", is anthemic in a pretty satisfactory stick-to-the-roof-of-yr-mouth kind of way and even quotes some lyrics from the late great Peter Laughner (of Pere Ubu fame) (whose record Take the Guitar Player for a Ride we carry, by the way). HOWEVER (please allow me to digress) this album is supposed to exist on LP but can we find it anywhere? NO! I swear, if major labels are gonna go to the trouble of throwing us crumbs by actually manufacturing vinyl, then they should really pull a few more of those strings they're holding, to make sure the stores who care about vinyl can actually get hold of it.
I think the best part about this movie is the serendipity involved. It was meant to be just your typical "making of our record" documentary. But during the filming, band members were dismissed, the band was dropped, the label that dropped them ended up paying for the record AGAIN and re-signing them, and the record went on to unbelievable commercial and critical success. Which all contributes to making this film, as well as the extra goodies, emminently watchable. Windy thought it was trifle too contrivedly arty, filmed in black and white, very stylized, but I think it really suits the music, and the mood of much of the film. What should have been this exciting joyous occasion, making the best record of their careers, was marred by depressing setback after depressing setback. But as we all know, that makes for good watching!! The film itself is beautiful and slow paced. Lots to take in, but easy to be lulled by the music and the scenery. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Helps that I do love the record as well. The extras are what make this essential. A documentary on the making of the film, the theatrical trailer, a bunch of funny outtakes, some really ridiculous stage banter ("Your Mom is cock!"), some annoying outtakes of Jim O'Rourke hamming it up, meeting with fans and a bunch of other stuff. But it's all the extra music that makes this a must have. 17 additional Wilco songs, some unreleased, some different versions of songs from the album, performed live, in the studio, even in Jeff Tweedy's home while the cameraman's phone keeps ringing. And if I rememeber correctly there's even one or two Uncle Tupelo songs! Also comes with a big booklet full of liner notes, photos and the film maker's diary. And a pretty good deal at 24.00 for 2 DVDs! For anyone who loved Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, or loves Wilco, or loved Uncle Tupelo or who just wants to see a cool movie about a great band making a great record.
Like many ol' rockers before them, Jeff Tweedy and co. have entered the 'double live album' arena with Kicking Television. It was recorded over four nights at the Vic Theatre in Chicago earlier this year, May 4th through 7th to be exact. Although they've done their share of adventuring and experimentation in the recording studio over the past few years, they prove here that they still kick plenty of ass as an easy-going live rock band. These recordings really captures the electricity of their live shows when the band and crowd are totally on and into it! An added treat is the formidable presence of Nels Cline on guitar -- always a pleasure. Included are many favorites such as "Shot In The Arm", "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart", as well as two of their Woody Guthrie covers "One By One" and "Airline To Heaven". The audience sure shows their appreciation throughout the shows, complete with singalongs! Definitely a fan pleaser!
Where the last two Wilco records found Jeff Tweedy exploring a wider sonic palette, especially with the addition of secret weapon, guitarist Nels Cline, Sky Blue Sky is for sure a retreat to the more straightforward side of his song writing skills. Sounding very warm and laid back with a strong '70s rock disposition, Sky Blue Sky sort of walks the fine line of the undeniable warmth and glow of The Byrds and Wings while sometimes slipping to the other side landing in Eagles territory. That's a tricky line to straddle and at moments we can't help but love the earnest delivery and heartfelt sound but there are those times where it does veer a little too much to the side of innocuous '70s rock for our tastes (Vice called it 'Dad Rock'). Not a bad record but for sure not our favorite Wilco by a longshot.
Where the last two Wilco records found Jeff Tweedy exploring a wider sonic pallete, especially with the addition of secret weapon, guitarist Nels CLine, Sky Blue Sky is for sure a retreat to the more straightforward side of his song writing skills. Sounding very warm and laid back with a strong 70's rock disposition, Sky Blue Sky sort of walks the fine line of the undeniable warmth and glow of The Byrds and Wings while sometimes slipping to the other side landing in Eagles territory. That's a tricky line to straddle and at moments we can't help but love the earnest delivery and heartfelt sound but there are those times where it does veer a little too much to the side of innocuous 70's rock for our tastes (Vice called it Dad Rock). Not a bad record but for sure not our favorite Wilco by a longshot. This deluxe edition includes a dvd with a documentary on the making of Sky Blue Sky.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
AND NOW HERE'S THE VINYL VERSION!!
Holy shit... Not only were we surprised (like everyone else) by the sudden appearance of a new Wilco Record, but also by just how goddamned great it is. We haven't been so taken by a Wilco record in ages, but Star Wars (is it really ok for them to call it that?) is like an awakening, finding Jeff Tweedy and the rest of the band at their most alive and exciting.
Beginning with a blast of noise, it's easy to imagine the more conservative, middle of the road, dad-rock fans of the band being a bit confused and/or annoyed, but it's glorious and leads us directly into a whole album filled with some of the most immediate and well crafted jams Wilco have yet recorded, probably their best collection of songs since A Ghost Is Born, and belongs right up there with that album, alongside Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in the best-of Wilco pantheon! Not just catchy and rockin', it also has an experimental bent with weird-out guitar moves that might perhaps fill a bit of the void left by the dissolution of Sonic Youth, and it's that knack for noisiness, woven into Wilco's masterful songsmithery, that makes Star Wars sound so exciting and fresh.
It's pretty satisfying when when a band you once loved, but that you kind of lost interest in, conjures up something mysterious and magical that immediately relights that fire, and hooks you all over again. We're beyond hooked on Star Wars and have been blasting it over and over since we got it.
From the opening sounds of "Art Of Almost" it sounded as if we were about to experience another game-changing Wilco album, on par with the seminal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Its krauty electronics and crunchy synths sounding more like something on a new Radiohead record then what Wilco's been doing over their last couple albums. Turns out that the whole album doesn't totally follow in that direction, in fact there isn't one direction at all to this set of songs as Tweedy and company mix it up making for a Wilco album that really feels like a broad reflection of the sounds and styles the band has explored over the years.
Note: besides the limited edition deluxe double cd, there's also a regular single cd version, at $14.98. What's so deluxe about this? It's packaged in a sturdy slipcase, with a 52 page booklet, and the extra disc it comes with contains 4 bonus tracks. The vinyl version, meanwhile, comes in a thick gatefold and includes a cd version of the album as well (but not the bonus disc).
From the opening sounds of "Art Of Almost" it sounded as if we were about to experience another game-changing Wilco album, on par with the seminal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Its krauty electronics and crunchy synths sounding more like something on a new Radiohead record then what Wilco's been doing over their last couple albums. Turns out that the whole album doesn't totally follow in that direction, in fact there isn't one direction at all to this set of songs as Tweedy and company mix it up making for a Wilco album that really feels like a broad reflection of the sounds and styles the band has explored over the years.
Note: besides the limited edition deluxe double cd, there's also a regular single cd version, at $14.98. What's so deluxe about this? It's packaged in a sturdy slipcase, with a 52 page booklet, and the extra disc it comes with contains 4 bonus tracks. The vinyl version, meanwhile, comes in a thick gatefold and includes a cd version of the album as well (but not the bonus disc).
We have to be honest, Wilco's last outing Sky Blue Sky left us a little more then underwhelmed. And most of us had pretty much relegated Wilco to the unflattering status of 'DAD rock'. The songs just lacked that magic that Tweedy and company had built a career on. The disappointment of that record was no doubt due in part to the fact that it came hot on the heels of two of the most adventurous albums Wilco had made, A Ghost Is Born and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. So while there are no kraut-like moments or electronic dabbling on Wilco (The Album) it does find the band sounding more like classic Wilco, with full on irresistible pop moments that recall Summerteeth and that ready to be immortalized on classic rock radio feel of Being There. "You Never Know" should be a mega-hit single , if there's any justice. While we do still wish the band would explore more outer limits territory, truth is, at the heart of it all, Jeff Tweedy knows how to write timeless songs full of texture and a fleeting sense of memory and lingering emotion.
Gosh there's a lot to say about this record.
[1] THE MUSIC: The sonic trajectory Wilco seemed to be on with their last album, Summerteeth, led us to believe the new one would be even more perfect pop-like. But they've gone and thrown us a curve ball. That's right, this is Wilco's weird experimental record. OK, it isn't *that* weird; and if you're an AQ customer then you have far more experimental records in your collection, but it *is* unusual for Wilco. Like a mix between the doleful Giant Sand and the fanciful Latin Playboys (Los Lobos' weird experimental side project), this new Wilco record doesn't have half as many hooks as previous efforts. While it certainly has the tried and true strummed acoustic guitars, lyrical piano, sad fiddles, and alterna-country tone that the group is famous for, they make you wait and wait and wait for the hooks and the melodies, or else they bury 'em in a scattered, cathartic wash of melancholy. Jeff Tweedy, leader of the band and one half of the late great Uncle Tupelo, is a-wanderin' and a-thinkin' out loud and he's a-lettin' the songs write themselves, so they meander a bit, but it's ever so heartfelt. If you can handle the assorted odd sonic elements that pop up all over -- wooden bonks 'n clonks, piano plinks, toys, static and scrapings, feedback, stereo separation novelties, strange rumblings that threaten to overtake the music, etc -- then you'll like this record. (Rumor has it several members of Wilco *couldn't* handle the weirdness, and quit the band.) And even though the ubiquitous Jim O'Rourke mixed the album and you'd think he brought in all random noises, actually the band claims the record was way more weird *before* O'Rourke worked on it. Huh.
[2] THE EXTRAS: Comes with stuff you can play on your computer: a video for one of the songs, plus links to the trailer for the upcoming doc being made about 'em, plus special access to a hidden webpage that's only for folks who've bought the album.
[3] THE SAGA: Wilco's shortsighted major label Reprise decides that sales of 162,000 copies of Wilco's last album isn't enough, and they don't like the new album, so they want the band off the label. Wilco buys back the masters for less than it cost to record them, and sign with Nonesuch (who btw also signed Magnetic Fields). In a nice example of corporate stupidity, Nonesuch and Reprise are owned by the same corporation, so in effect AOL Time Warner paid for the album twice. Ha. Before they signed with Nonesuch, Wilco made this new album downloadable from their website, and thus it even showed up, without ever having been officially released, on a few rockcrits' top ten lists from 2001. Ironically enough, now that the album's saga has been latched onto by the NY Times and NPR, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will sell more copies than all of Wilco's previous albums, and someone at Reprise will get fired.
[4] CONET PROJECT ALERT: Hey all you fellow Conet lovers! Didja notice the title of this record? Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Yankee... Hotel... Foxtrot... Yes folks, this record was named after a track on the infamous Conet Project, the 4cd set that collects mysterious shortwave numbers station broadcasts. (We're kind of proud to have sold more copies of this than any other store -- 387 and counting!) And yep, there's a Conet Project sample buried near the end of the record. It's uncredited, which is kind of lame -- I mean if Wilco are such ardent fans of the Conet Project, wouldn't they want to turn other people onto it? Nor did we find Conet credit given on Boards of Canada's Geodaddi, for that matter, but the makers of Vanilla Sky did!
Sometimes Belgium's Sub Rosa label comes up with really unusual, unpredictable releases. This one's a good example. Which by the way is NOT classical music, but IS pretty wild. It's full-on, loud, noisy, partly improvised rock music, but with an extra extreme, um, "outsider" element. Sort of in the "special" tradition of The Kids Of Widney High and the Children Of Ala Costa, but much much more rockin'! We didn't bother to read the notes yet to learn all the background details, but we do know that the basic deal here is that the band is comprised of four developmentally disabled (to use a PC term) and untrained musicians, Johan Geenens, Linh Pham, Kim Verbeke, and Rudy Callant, organized by a fifth member, the ensemble's drummer and "artistic mentor" Damien Magnette, who himself is not differently-abled and has more musical schooling. He helps direct the group's activity and keeps the resulting energetic freakouts somewhat reigned and structured in with his tight rhythmic propulsion. Meanwhile, the other four (plus a couple guests) do their thing, whatever it may be, with all kinds of instruments, obviously enjoying expressing themselves. Proving that while they may be "mentally challenged", they are in fact musically challengING. It's pretty far out and in a way, glorious. There's what can only be described as crazy wailing vocals, freer than free jazz horn blats, distorted electric guitar skree, off-kilter keyboards, sampling, and krauty tribal beats... Imagine the primitive psychedelic jams of Ya Ho Wha 13 mixed with the most abstract avant garde efforts of electro-acoustic improvisers Supersilent. Definitely something for fans of Reynols, too.
A lot of it is surprisingly heavy, almost metal-brutal, but without grim intent, instead done with a spirited feeling of joyful abandon. There's also a few mellower moments too, of flute twitter and eerie wordless vocal choruses (as on track 6, which reminds us of Pocahaunted). And briefly, they come close to Maher Shalal Hash Baz style damaged "pop" territory (though we don't think MSHB has ever done any rapping, which MIGHT be what's happening on track 8). Yep, this sure beats a lot of the "normal" underground psych noise rock weirdo bands we sell here at their own game.
In various reviews here at AQ, we have described lots of music (mainly black metal) as "retarded", in a good way. Always in a good way. It probably would be uncool to say precisely that about this... but if we did, it again would be meant as a compliment, a very positive thing meaning that these are unique, primal, creative sounds not bound by boring conventions of genre or technique, played for the sheer, universal love of music-making. Not self-conciously trying to be hip or anything in particular beyond what it simply IS.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've been beyond excited in anticipation of this one. Wild Flag is the super group of our wildest dreams. Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss from Sleater Kinney along with Mary Timony from Helium and Rebecca Cole from The Minders. A few of us got to see them live at a super small show last year at the Hemlock and we were blown away by their immediacy, passion and energy. In other words it reminded us so much of what it was like to see Sleater Kinney, one of the best live bands ever in our opinion.
Luckily the songs on this debut capture that live energy, and give us one of the most punchy, catchy and rocking albums of the year. Carrie Brownstein does seem like she's the leader of Wild Flag as her signature guitar and vocal stylings are felt on just about every song. And damn, what can't Carrie do? After Sleater Kinney called it quits she found herself the 'it' music writer, with her great thoughtful music column for NPR's website, and then she mastered television comedy, starring in Portlandia with Fred Armistead, pretty much the funniest TV show to emerge in the last several years. But there is no doubt she missed rocking out and being on stage, and with Wild Flag her and her badass bandmates have tapped into that golden sound of impassioned indie rock with punk spirit that Sleater Kinney perfected in the '90s. On songs like "Glass Tambourine", Mary Timony takes center stage, her vocals, and even more unique and recognizable guitar stylings have been a long favorite of ours. Overall the sound of Wild Flag takes from the more poppy and driving moments of Sleater Kinney albums like The Hot Rock, All Hands On The Bad One, and peppiest tracks from their swan song The Woods. Blast this one loud, and make sure to see them live if you have the chance!
It's come to that awesome point where just seeing the Captured Tracks logo on a new piece of vinyl from a band we have no idea about is cause enough to throw it on right away and check it out. We actually didn't even need the Captured Tracks motivation with this one as we could tell the A side was a cover of one of our favorite Kate Bush songs ever "Cloudbusting", so the many Kate Bush fanatics that work here wasted no time in finding out what the sounds of Wild Nothing were all about. So while we set the bar pretty damn high when it comes to covering Kate Bush (we did think The Chromatics did a nice job with "Running Up That Hill") Wild Nothing for sure respect the song and the male vocals and lo-fi synths give it a really nice hazy feel. The flipside "Two Promise" might have us hooked even more, a total slow burning late night bedroom jam somewhere between a hazier Neon Indian and a a male led version of Nite Jewel. Dark, catchy and seductive.
Latest from these aQ fave dreampoppers, and while on past records these guys have flirted with new wave, they haven't gone for it full bore until now. And we're digging it. The opener might be the only exception, a gorgeous short, sharp blast of prismatic fuzz drenched, piano laced, distorto pop, hooks galore, sweet crooned vocals, swirling strings, cool synth melodies, a little bit of an M83 vibe, but more sun dappled and dreamy, with some crunch too, and yeah, a little bit of new wave, the sound is more like something you'd hear on Merge or Slumberland. But then "Ocean Repeating (Big-Eyed Girl)" gets all angular, and super new wavey, reminding us a bit of The Fixx (!), but much more fuzzy and poppy, more swirling synths, angular melodies, handclap rhythms, and a main hook that will get lodged in your head like crazy. "On Guyot" might be our favorite track here though. A weirdly spaced out sort of psychedelic kosmische kraut-groove, all simple motorik rhythm, swirling processed vocals, and shimming, glimmering synths, super spacey and dreamy, thick swaths of synth drone laced with buried melodies and slow shifting textures, wish it went on for way more than its six minutes.
The rest of the record returns to WN's woozy jangly new wave, from crunchy, fuzzy propulsive synth pop, to caffeinated synth soaked garage pop, to tripped out, angular new wave grooviness, replete with processed horns and all manner of keyboard blurt, until the final track, another more abstract drifter, this one all hazy and washed out, bleary and blurry and dreamlike, a twang flecked drift, drenched in echo and reverb, a soft focus finale, that finishes the record on a surprisingly dreamy melancholic note.
Housed in a eye popping, full color slipcase.
For some reason it's been hard to get this in stock for any period of time, which is a shame as it really is the kind of record we wish we could have been blasting all summer long. Wild Nothing make such breezy sun soaked pop, sort of along the lines of Beach Fossils but with much more of a shoegaze and dreamy feel.
Gemini is filled with such comforting songs that tap into '80s dreampop yet strip it all down to the essentials. We've been digging on how many new records have come out taking us to a Galaxie 500 kind of place but all taking us there in a different way (Cloudland Canyon, Altar Eagle, Lower Dens, etc.). Wild Nothing's songs aren't just about hooks or catchy choruses but instead they are about the swirling and sun soaked vibrations they create. Like if Swervedriver learned to get its feet wet in the ocean or if Pains Of Being Pure At Heart calmed down a bit and weren't so precious and instead were a bit more stoned and into the honey drizzled side of Jesus & Mary Chain. Makes us think of being in a car on a warm day with the windows down as college radio is blasting the good stuff and all that matters is the breeze brushing against our bodies and the scenery passing by and turning into seductive rushes of shapes and saturated colors.
Hot on the heels of their great debut full length that we've been playing to death, comes this new ep brimming with songs that are adding fuel to our Wild Nothing addiction fire. The title of the ep, Golden Haze, accurately sums up the sound here as well as the mood and vibe we find ourselves drifting off into when listening to these perfect '80s inspired dream-pop gems, that manage to keep a sharp focus while still allowing for plenty of shoegazing drift. They tap into so many of our favorite bands like Ride, Slowdive, and Swervedriver and just the right amount of sounds borrowed from groups like The Cure and New Order. And while so many other bands may share very similar influences, we've been taken with how Wild Nothing have been able to bring those influences together and create songs that already have a distinctive imprint and don't just come off as a lesson in nostalgia. Their songs make us want to be a passenger in a car with the windows down, wind rushing by with our destination unknown. So great!
