Archive for the ‘CLASSIC ALBUMS’ Category

WET – ” You’re Not Wrong “

Posted: June 25, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Wet - "You're Not Wrong"

Brooklyn’s Wet prepare for the release of their second album ‘Still Run’ on July 13th, with the first track ‘You’re Not Wrong’.

Boston trio Wet: plaintive, pop and glassy, ephemeral balladry, like some emotionally cathartic mirage informed by soft rock and R&B. They perfected this sound on “Deadwater,” the best song on their 2016 debut Don’t You. It’s quite pretty and often powerful. “You’re Not Wrong,” is the latest track to be previewed from their sophomore album Still Run, is almost certainly one of the jauntiest song in Wet’s discography. The song was produced by Rostam Batmanglij, whose own solo debut album featured Wet singer Kelly Zutrau. It’s a throwback to early rock and R&B, powered by a crisp backbeat, nifty bass, plinking piano, and occasional flashes of strings.

Like all Wet songs, “You’re Not Wrong” is quite pretty. Unlike most of them, it has a skip in its step.

HAPPY RHODES – ” Ectotrophia “

Posted: June 25, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The first authoritative compilation of American dream pop artist Happy Rhodes, whose singular songwriting and four-octave vocal range emanated from the pastoral confines of upstate New York in the 1980s. Her melding of classical music influences with synthesizer and acoustic guitar, and her enchanting and idiosyncratic singing, are favorably compared to heralded English chanteuse Kate Bush. Fans of such artistic pop music would be remiss to overlook Rhodes’s similarly remarkable and otherworldly sonic transmissions, traversing tales of dreamers, outsiders, lovers and other lovely and terrifying creatures born of a wellspring of wild creativity and bold imagination. Affectionately remastered from the original tapes, Ectotrophia gathers essential songs from Rhodes’s mid-’80s salad days, many written when she was just a teenager—wildly ahead of her time and unafraid to bare her soul to regional audiences, the ectophiles who’d eventually coin an entire subgenre of pop music in her honor. Dive deep into ecto, with the woman who started it all.

Happy Rhodes’ classical-tinged, Kate Bush and Queen-influenced music was mostly issued only on cassette in the late ’80s and ’90s by the tiny label Aural Gratification, and it found a ravenous audience among a small group of fans that splintered off from a Kate Bush Usenet forum and created their own email list, “Ecto” — named after Rhodes’ fourth album — where they discussed not only Rhodes but other artists whose sensibilities they felt kindred to hers (e.g. Bush, Peter Gabriel, Jane Siberry, and others). Ectotrophia is out June 29th from Numero Group as a double vinyl or single CD.

The MOUNTAIN GOATS – ” Summer “

Posted: June 24, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The Mountain Goats began life in a Norwalk employee-housing studio apartment that had awesome deco tiling on the bathroom floor but little more to recommend the place as a living space. Still, you take what you can get, and it was ridiculously cheap. In this room, equipped with a dual-cassette recorder, John D. started setting some of his poetry to music, using a guitar he’d gotten for a few bucks at a nearby strip mall music store. His idea at the time was that eventually his day job would be “poet.” Young men have all kinds of crazy ideas about what they’re going to end up doing for a living.

After a while the songs became more like songs than poems set to music, and John started playing them for his friend Rachel, who as it turned out, played bass. John and Rachel toured the eastern U.S. & Europe once, the midwest twice (if “Chicago, Columbus and Madison” count as “the midwest”), and played San Francisco a few times, and they recorded two albums and a couple of EPs. Then John graduated from college and moved to Chicago, and the Mountain Goats became Mainly Just John, except for a couple of European tours where John’s friend Peter Hughes played bass. In 2001, though, 4AD called up and asked if the Mountain Goats wouldn’t like to make records with them. John called Peter. They hit the studio.

As a duo, the two toured at a pace that can fairly be called “relentless” from 2002 until 2007. They made records: Tallahassee, We Shall All Be Healed, The Sunset Tree, Get Lonely. They took to recruiting drummers from their opening acts to play the last few songs with them. And then they met Jon Wurster, and the three took to the road in support of Get Lonely, from Fairbanks, Alaska to Hobart, Tasmania, and a few points even further south. They enjoyed playing together so much that when it came time to repair to the studio again, all three went in. In 2008, the three recorded Heretic Pride, and in early 2009, The Life of the World to Come.

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Band Members
John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Jon Wurster and Matt Douglas

DRINKS – ” Hippo Lite “

Posted: June 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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For their sophomore LP as Drinks, Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley (a.k.a. White Fence) absconded to the South of France, holed up in an old stone house, and spent their days sleeping through the heat and recording come nightfall. Without distractions like Wi-Fi and civilization, the pair lived in their own little Shangri-La, and Hippo Lite, the album born of it, conveys the intimacy of two artists free to make whatever sounds they please. The insular nature of the recording process lends an honesty to the album, like children playing away from the watchful eyes of adults. And Hippo Lite is playful; “Real Outside” pairs household object percussion with tangy blurts of guitar, and “Greasing Up” sounds like a campfire lullaby. More than anything, Hippo Lite is a document of intimate creativity, of what happens when you can build a fort with someone you trust and live in shared merriment.

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BAT FANGS – ” Bat Fangs “

Posted: June 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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In the four years since Ex Hex released their debut, lamenting over the lack of a follow-up has become something of an indie rock pastime. The good news is that Mary Timony, Betsy Wright, and Laura Harris finally do appear to be hard at work on one, but as it turns out, we may not have needed the whole gang to satiate the craving for more. Wright, having teamed up with drummer Laura King, has gifted us with Bat Fangs, a record that is far more than just an interim Ex Hex release holdover—it’s a total beast unto itself. Riff-saturated, loud, and fearless, the album flies by (get it?), over before you want it to be, an unpretentious blast of old-school bar rock.

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NC/DC superghouls Bat Fangs pick up where Roky & the Aliens blasted off– cranking acid-soaked 80s hard rock for the living and the dead. Making heady heavy music for third eyes and stiff upper lips, Betsy Wright (Ex Hex) shreds ‘n’ howls over Laura King’s (Flesh Wounds / Speed Stick) deep-thunder drums. 

HONEY – ” New Moody Judy “

Posted: June 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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released last September on Wharf Cat Records, HONEY’S sophomore long player New Moody Judy builds on their debut’s “hard edged slice of rock noise” to create an album full of the pummel and swing, rave-ups and comedowns, and ferocious riffs and rhythms previously known only to those who have witnessed the power-trio’s live set. Equal parts concision and brute heaviness, this is the sound of perfect rock and roll music – music that’s always on the edge of spinning out of control.

From the first single, “the pugnacious ‘Dream Come Now’ a barnstormer every bit as fiery as the album artwork” to the tight jam giving way to a thrilling cascade of riffs that fuel the rush of ‘Hungry,’ HONEY give everything to the music on this release to deliver their most sonically diverse effort to date. As thematically cerebral as it is musically visceral, New Moody Judy is one of the rare albums that offers as much brain fodder for the lit majors as it does instant gratification for the guitar-heads.

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Featuring former members of Pyschic Ills and Amen Dunes, Honey are mainstays of Brooklyn’s thriving music culture. Over the past 5 years they have shared the stage with the likes of Dead Moon, J. Mascis, Sheer Mag, The Men, Destruction Unit, and more and have become a household name for everyone fiending for the raw authenticity that, thankfully, can still be found in NYC at the intersection of punk and rock and roll.

SAINTSENECA – ” Pillar of Na “

Posted: June 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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We’re thrilled to announce our new album Pillar of Na which will be out August 31st on ANTI- Records.

The first song “Frostbiter” and had this to say about it: “For Saintseneca, fatalistic gloom blends seamlessly with a kind of playful sprightliness: Zac Little’s songs often simmer in a sad swirl of death and esoterica, but his deadpan ruminations are buoyed by the sounds of exotic instruments, candy-colored pop hooks and many points in between.”

I think of this song as a big tree trunk in the woods where people carve their messages – initials, jokes, “I love you” hearts… It is a work of accumulation. A little space absorbing traces of its environment over time. Every mark corresponds to a different story. Some of them are mine. Some belong to others, yet feel all too familiar. – Zac

Also! We’re touring like crazy. The full US tour has been announced with UK, Europe,

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Releases August 31st, 2018

Zac Little: vocals, guitar, 12 string, baritone,
mandola, bouzouki, synth, bells
Jon Meador: synths, vocals, piano, mellotron,
various keyboards, guitar
Matthew O’Conke: drums, aux percussion,
vocals
Steve Ciolek: guitar, vocals, 8 string bass,
hammered dulcimer, marxophone
Caeleigh Featherstone: bass, vocals,
hammered dulcimer
Mike Mogis: synth, guitar
Maryn Jones: vocals
Susanna Gilmore: violin
Elizabeth Furuta: violin
Brian Sherwood: viola
Paul Ledwon: cello
Megan Siebe: cello, violin
Carlyn Hendler: flute, piccolo flute
Miwi La Lupa: bass trumpet
Leticia Wiggins: flute

STELLA DONNELLY – ” Thrush Metal ” EP

Posted: June 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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The Thrush Metal EP originally came out last year, self-released by the artist on tape and digitally. Stella Donnelly quickly became one of Australia’s buzziest young singer-songwriters and now Secretly Canadian release the EP on Vinyl. Boys Will Be Boys is the standout track. Atop delicate, singsongy acoustic fingerpicking, Donnelly confronts a man who raped her friend and takes to task the accompanying victim-blaming. “Why was she all alone? / Wearing her shirt that low / And they said boys will be boys / Deaf to the word no,” she coos in the chorus, a slight vibrato flaring up at the corners of her lovely voice.

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Stella Donnelly is a stunning new singer songwriter talent. Powerful songs sung with a powerful voice. Listening, and watching with interest.

T HARDY MORRIS – ” Dude, The Obscure “

Posted: June 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Considering the weight of the ideas T. Hardy Morris is exploring on his new record Dude, The Obscure, it feels like his airiest work yet. Following 2015’s twangy Drownin’ On a Mountaintop, Morris is shedding some skin and getting at something a little rawer and more heartfelt. Dude, The Obscure soars and floats, at once dreamy and heady, even when Morris is rocking out (as he is prone to do). Questioning his place in the world, and striving to stay present in an ever more chaotic world, Morris digs deep on this album and seems to have found his own bliss in the process

A cheeky play on famed English author Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude The Obscure, Dude, The Obscure sounds like a stoner’s spaced out tagline. And in many ways, the album gives us that vibe of getting so deep in your head to where it’s murky and dark, until you ultimately come out the other end feeling more like yourself. On “The Night Everything Changed,” Morris gets nostalgic for good times on the road and feeling connected to others by the memories we share. Recounting faraway cities, missed planes, and wasted money, Morris weaves a sweet, sublime thread made even more magical with the glide of steel guitar. “When the Record Skips” is a dark, heart-thumping ode to the idea of a legacy and what gets left behind. And though “Be” opens the record, it feels most like a culmination for Morris. It’s the album’s stunning peak, and a moment of reckoning as Morris strips away all the clutter that keeps him from moving forward.

Hailing from the artsy Southern enclave of Athens, Georgia, Morris hasn’t lost his twang, but this time around, his sound is elevated and meditative. He creates a big sound on Dude, The Obscure, with swooning arrangements that live somewhere above us and that compel us to look upward and reach for them to try and catch just a little bit of that sweet enlightenment within them.

From the album ‘Dude, The Obscure,’ available June 22nd

LERA LYNN – ” Lera Lynn Plays Well With Others “

Posted: June 23, 2018 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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This week the new releases are plenty hot. Lera Lynn, Jeffrey Foucault, and T. Hardy Morris break new ground with their new records, building on careers that started out promising and haven’t let us down one bit along the way.

Lera Lynn, and her songs that owed as much to heavy-lidded space-rock and psychedelia as to country music: think the Black Angels meets Bright Black Morning Light, but with insistent grooves. It was a fine blurring of styles and I got really into her record Resistor . On the new “Plays Well With Others”, Lera Lynn once again cuts her own path. Unlike many duets and guest star-oriented records, many of the songs on Plays Well With Othersare originals, co-written for this collection and then tracked live. There’s a wide sonic and emotional range, too, making this half-hour duets record an engaging album in Lynn’s discography.

The most memorable songs hearken to earlier musical eras. Lynn and John Paul White’s (previously of The band Civil Wars) cover of “Almost Persuaded” strips the David Houston song down its Opry-esque core, giving it the straightforward swing of a 1950s honky-tonk radio staple. Appropriately, Nicole Atkins duet “In Another Life” captures the crestfallen romance of early rock ballads. A straightforward, poignant hook of “In another life/you’re mine” rides a progression that would have been right at home at another spot of the 1950s radio dial.

Lynn also explores the twilit soundscapes that made Resistor such an intriguing listen. For one, Plays Well With Others opens gradually with haunted atmospheric swells courtesy of a bowed double bass, leading into her Peter Bradley Adams duet “Same Old Song,” while the Andrew Combs duet “Breakdown” moves with a familiar up-tempo sinuous grace. And on Lynn and Shovels and Rope’s cover of TV on the Radio’s “Wolf Like Me,” they transform the driving, twistedly danceable indie-pop number into a shambling Old Weird America tale. When the three sing “we could jet in a stolen car/but we wouldn’t get too far/before the transformation takes/and the bloodlust tanks/and the crave gets slaked/my mind has changed/my body’s frame/but god, I like it” over patient folk-rock, it alters the listener’s perception of the song’s metaphorical werewolf. Rather than bounding feverishly through a neon landscape in search of warm flesh as the wolf does in the TV on the Radio original, Lynn and Shovels and Rope’s werewolf is a patient, calculating beast — and it’s almost more frightening for it.

And sometimes Lynn just feels like having fun, such as when she and JD McPherson gleefully howl “I don’t want nothin’ to do with your love.” On Plays Well With Others, Lynn and her collaborators are obviously enjoying themselves immensely. Fortunately for the rest of us, they brought some excellent new songs into the world in the process.

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