The problem with January is that you always fall in love with bands that released albums the year before after reading the other bloggers albums that would have made it to my best of 2017 list, So it was no surprise when I heard about San Francisco five-piece Locus Pocus and their self-titled EP, released last May 2017.
I’m a fan of shimmering, organ-punctuated psych pop and thoroughly enjoy melodic, trembling vocals, gravelly yelps and howls, and swirling, distorted flourishes. Locus Pocus is one of those bands that you hear and think to yourself, “I just stumbled onto something here”.
Recalling other San Francisco band, Cool Ghouls, and Grand Rapids’ and the wonderful psych darlings Heaters, Locus Pocus has been building a name for themselves in their hometown through their energetic live shows. Beyond San Francisco , their debut single, “My Girlfriend Won’t Dance With Me”, got considerable listens in mid-2017, with over 130,000 listens since its debut.
The remainder of the EP is equally infectious. Beginning with the Stuck, the songs worm their way into your brain. Equally kaleidoscopic and twisting, Hey Sundance and Muscle Man round out the four-song EP, building to a dramatic crescendo that will leave you wanting more.
The band released a second single, “I’d Be Your Woman”, last August, complete with a cheeky music video that finds singer Nate Budroe in a glittery black dress and dramatic cat’s eye makeup, hamming it up with the rest of the band – Kyle Chapman (guitar), Daniel de Lorimier (bass), Michael Kipnis (drums), and Daniel Markowitz (organ & Rhodes).
I’d say that discovering Locus Pocus in early 2018 is a pretty good one to have. Check out Locus Pocus’ debut EP on Bandcamp
Yo La Tengoare back with four songs from There’s A Riot Going On, their first new studio album since 2013.
Hoboken’s Yo La Tengo, are one of the longest-running and most rewarding indie-rock bands since the genre had a name, are up there with Tom Waits in the pantheon of artists who’ve never done anything except what they want. And like Tom Waits, fans are often rewarded regardless. They’ve got great records everyone agrees on (I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, …And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out) and great records even their fans can’t agree on (Summer Sun, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass). None of them could have been made by any another band.
The trio have also shared tracks “You Are Here”, “Shades Of Blue”, “She May, She Might”, and “Out Of The Pool” from their newly recorded new album a 15-track collection, showing off the gamut of their new record’s sound and style. As well as all the new noises, writer Luc Santé has penned a bio which sheds a bit more light on what to expect:
There’s a Riot Going On. You don’t need me, or Yo La Tengo, to tell you that. These are dark times, in our heads as much as in the streets. It’s easy to lose contact with the ground, flying through endless banks of storm clouds day after day. Confusion and anxiety intrude into daily life and cause you to lose your compass. There are times that call for anthems, something to lift you out of your slump and put fire in your feet. And then there are times when what is indicated is a balm, a sound that will wrap around you and work out the knots in your neck.
While there’s a riot going on, Yo La Tengo will remind you what it’s like to dream. The sound burbles and washes and flows and billows. If records were dedicated to the cardinal elements, this one would be water. There are shimmery hazes, spectral rumbles, a flash of backward masking, ghostly flamingos calling ‘shoo-bop shoo-bop’. You are there. And even if your mind is not unclouded – shaken, misdirected, out of words and out of time – you can still float, ride the waves of an ocean deeper than your worries, above the sound and above the Sound.
For Yo La Tengo this is a slow-motion action painting, and Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan, and James McNew did it all themselves, in their rehearsal studio, with no outside engineer (John McEntire later did the mix). They did not rehearse or jam together beforehand; they turned on the recorder and let things coalesce. Songs came together over long stretches, sometimes as much as a year going by between parts. You’d never guess this, since the layers are finessed with such a liquid brush. You’d imagine most of the songs had sprung forth whole, since they will enter your head that way. Within two listens you will be powerless to resist the magnetic draw of “Shades of Blue,” will involuntarily hear “She May, She Might” on your internal jukebox first thing in the morning and “Let’s Do It Wrong” late at night. While there’s a riot going on you will feel capable of bobbing through like a cork.
In 1971, when the nation appeared to be on the brink of violently coming apart, Sly and the Family Stone released There’s A Riot Goin’ On, an album of dark, brooding energy. Now, under similar circumstances, Yo La Tengo have issued a record with the same name but with a different force, an album that proposes an alternative to anger and despair. Their first proper full-length since 2013’s Fade, There’s A Riot Going On is an expression of freedom and sanity and emotional expansion, a declaration of common humanity as liberating as it is soft-spoken.
Yo La Tengo have a busy year ahead of them, with a huge run of North American and European live dates booked for spring/summer.
Tracklist:
You Are Here
Shades of Blue
She May, She Might
For You Too
Ashes
Polynesia #1
Dream Dream Away
Shortwave
Above the Sound
Let’s Do It Wrong
What Chance Have I Got
Esportes Casual
Forever
Out of the Pool
Here You Are
There’s A Riot Going On is out 16th March via Matador Records.
A double-album sampler of the Charisma label’s 1971-1972 output, “Charisma Disturbance” is a veritable behemoth and no mistake. Just a glance at the participating artists renders further comment all but superfluous Genesis, Peter Hammill, the Nice, Rare Bird, Van Der Graaf Generator, and the Incredible StringBand are more than mere giants of the U.K. underground of the age; they also represent peaks to which British prog has been attempting to return ever since. This album’s unstinting trawl through some of their most adventurous pages — “Return of the Giant Hogweed,” “Killer,” “Sympathy,” and so on — is simply the icing on the hyperbolic cake.
Charisma Records itself was never less than the consuming passion of one man, founder Tony Stratton Smith, but it is to his unending credit that he neither tried to mold his artists toward any single vision, nor impress upon them the need to shift more product. Several of the artists here would go on to enjoy huge success Genesis, of course, but also Lindisfarne and Clifford T Ward — but “The Money Game,” as one of the album’s highlights calls it, was never the be-all and end-all of the label’s release policy. And so 20 tracks rattle past with an idiosyncrasy and imagination that shares no common ground beyond the Mad Hatter who so aptly dominates the label design itself, and if you don’t discover at least a handful of bands to run out and discover — even all these decades after the fact — then you deserve to listen to track seven for the rest of your life. Altogether now, “Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam.”
Side 1 –
Sinfonia Of London* Conducted By Joseph Eger Sonata Pian E Forte
John Neville -The Unanswered Question
The Nice -Intermezzo ‘Karelia Suite’
Peter Hammill -German Overalls Side 2 –
Alan Hull -Money Game
Bell & Arc -She Belongs To Me
Monty Python -Spam Song
Lindisfarne -Lady Eleanor
Bo Hansson -Flight To The Ford
Lindisfarne- Fog On The Tyne Side 3 –
Capability Brown -No Range
Rare Bird -Sympathy
Audience – I Had A Dream
Clifford T. Ward -Home Thoughts
Van Der Graaf Generator -Killer Side 4-
Music From Free Creek -Getting Back To Molly
Graham Bell -Too Many People
Jo’Burg Hawk- Dark Side Of The Moon
String Driven Thing -Regent Street Incident
Genesis -Return Of The Giant Hogweed
Listening to Bonny Doon’s self titled debut album “Bonny Doon”feels like something akin to sitting on a porch swing in the heat of the summertime, watching your neighbours strike up the barbecue, as the late-night sun sets behind houses. Or something like that. What I’m saying is that it’s a good time. Ambling, tender, weird, nice, real listen.
The band Bill Lennox, Bobby Colombo, Joshua Brooks, and Jake Kmiecik took some time to put together a track-by-track of the record, which is out via Spunk Records.
1. “Relieved”
Bill: Wasn’t sure if this one was just a humdrum strummer when I wrote it but I remember playing it for my friend while she was on LSD before I ever brought it to the band. She has the best taste in music so when she said she liked it I was pretty stoked. At the time I was living with people who collected lava lamps so I turned them all on and turned all the other lights off in the house and we listened to Slowdive most of the night. Hopefully that neon glow comes through in the album version.
Jake: The lyrics of this song and the warmth of the instrumentation always make me think fondly of the way time passes and the friendships this band has formed, and how there’s beauty and comfort in that.
2. “Summertime Friends”
Josh: This is a song that we’ve played five or more different ways, and recorded three times now. It’s been an up-tempo punk jam, it’s been really sparse, stoned and warped with everything being run through an echoplex, and here we do it in pretty straight forward style and just try to have fun with it. I think it was one the last songs we tracked for this record. Our friend Fred Thomas, who engineered a lot of the record, plays drums on it and Jake slid over to piano. It had previously appeared on a tape with a slow and dreamy quality, but Fred suggested we try it like this and we did it a few times and that was it. It has kind of a gang vocal quality because we just did them live in the room.
3. “What Time Is It in Portland?”
Bobby: A hokey question as a starting point for a spiraling ramble about change, this song seems kind of indulgent upon reflection. And maybe also because it frames it like something that happens all around me while I comfortably play the role of static observer. That’s not really how change works, but it can feel that way and it’s tempting to cast it like that. I am really happy with how this version came together. I wrote it before we started the band and it was one of the songs we tried out when Bill convinced me that I should also sing. Originally he was the only singer. We always called the guitar breaks Jimmy Buffett leads, though I don’t know his music well enough to know if that’s apt or wishful thinking.
4. “Lost My Way”
Bill: We all played in punk bands before we started this band so a large part of how we approach music is informed by that. We still kind of consider ourselves a punk band in many ways and this song is an example of how it is hard to let that go. One time we got too stoned and decided we’d play it half speed at a show, not sure how it was received. I really love the extended jam at the end. We play it different every time now but I’m happy with the way this version was captured. We were listening to a lot of krautrock at the time and Bobby and I saw Faust play around the time we recorded this. The singer kept reprimanding the audience for looking at their phones while they were playing and they had a guy playing a giant oil can as a drum pretty much the whole set. It was great.
5. “I See You”
Bill: This song was a roadmap for us in a lot of ways in that it helped us begin to find our voice. It was the first real song I ever wrote and when we played it together it just felt natural and like we all understood the feel and vibe of it. It was the first song we played at our first show. It’s on our first 7″ and it’s the first single on this record.
6. “(you can’t hide)”
Bobby: A lot of songs on this record were approached and recorded multiple different ways, and this is just a fragment of a different arrangement of “You Can’t Hide,” as captured by a blown out room mic. There is maybe a strange logic to including unfinished instrumentals filtered through clipping room mics when we had so many songs to choose from (we probably recorded about 25 for this record), but I think of them as little windows into the process and I think there’s beauty in those moments of unpolished spontaneity.
Josh:Bobby and I spent countless hours processing things through an echoplex on this record. That tape echo was a huge part of our sound and process for experimenting with songs during tracking and mixing. This one has the echoplex oscillating wildly over the whole track, as well as processing both guitars and the drums. A lot of things we do maybe don’t make the most sense but we are all about trying to get emotional impact out of our songs, however that happens.
8. “Never Been to California”
Jake: This song, at least at the time of writing and recording, felt very reflective of Bill’s songwriting process. It deals a lot with a sense of place and ruminations on where one resides, both physically and spiritually. The “blue bridge” mentioned in the first verse is a reference to the Ambassador Bridge which can be seen from the house Bill and I lived in at the time. It connects Detroit and Windsor, Canada. This song was also an exercise in a more country-esque side of our sound, a taste that brought the four of us together in a unique way.
9. “Maine Vision”
Josh: This one came as a vision in Maine, while we were standing on a rock overlooking an inland bay of the Atlantic. The melody just popped in Bill’s head and he started going “neh-neh neh-neh neh-neh neh-neh neh-neh neh neh-neh-neh” so we went back to the cottage we were staying in and jammed it out. We had just finished our first tour and drove from NYC up to outside of Portland to meet up with Bobby’s brother and relax in Maine for a few days. We are always trying to make Bonny Doon as sustainable as possible for our lives and mental health, and band retreats to cabins in beautiful places is a big part of that. There was a heavy kraut influence on this one, the one-minute track on the record was cut from an eleven-minute jam.
10. “Evening All Day Long”
Bill: I like the way this song rolls along and I love bobby’s guitar playing at the end, it’s bouncy and playful and has a sense of humor that I dig. Neither of us consider ourselves “good” guitar players but I think we’re both big fans of each other’s playing. The guitar mirrors Bobby’s lyrics too, there are jokes with a sort of existential campiness tossed in there to lighten up what could just be a straightforward sad song.
11. “(crowded)”
Josh: A longwave instrumental. There is a lot left out in the mix of this one, like all the words for one thing. It’s one of those songs that we kept adding to and adding to try and get it to feel right, and then ended up stripping everything away and just using the instrumental. It’s actually just the mic on Bill’s guitar amp and all the other instruments bleed through it. Bobby ran it through an old chorus pedal to give it a little extra movement. There’s a series of Velvet Underground bootlegs called the Guitar Amp Tapes, which are just a tape recorded in the back of Lou Reed’s amp. I could listen to those all day, they just have the feeling.
Detroit’sBonny Doon delivered one of last year’s most delightfully surprising debut albums early last year with the self-titled record. The band members cut their teeth playing in bands like TYVEK and Growing Pains, bands known for their rugged sound – but Bonny Doon shuffled out of that scene with a much more laid back heart-on-their-sleeves melodicism in the mold of Wilco or Ryan Adams.
The band’s Bill Lennox told us that Bonny Doon had already recorded their second album , captured in the beautiful Key Club on Lake Michigan. Today they have officially revealed details of the album, which is called Longwave, and will be coming out through their new label, Woodsist Records, on 23rd March.
As a glimpse of what’s to come on Longwave, Bonny Doon have released the song ‘I Am Here (I Am Alive)’. It continues in the same, instantly amiable tone that was so winning on the debut Bonny Doon, but over the course of its five minutes it shows off a more patient and meditative songwriting sensibility. It’s a definite broadening of their sound, which suggests that Longwave is going to be an involving and compelling listen.
Swami John Reis and Rick Froberg have been making noises together since high school. The mean swagger of Hot Snakes. Reis and Froberg are responsible for some of the most turbulent rock and roll of their, or any, generation.
Hot Snakes streamlined Drive Like Jehu’s complex compositions and emerged as bona fide downstroke warlords. They have made 3 studio albums of high-velocity, slash-your-face, piss-punk: 2000’s Automatic Midnight, 2002’s Suicide Invoice and 2004’s Audit in Progress. The band ceased activity in 2005 but reunited for a triumphant world tour in 2011, planting the seeds for what would further happen.
Now, after a 14-year hiatus from the studio, Hot Snakes have kicked down the door back into our lives with their new album, Jericho Sirens, due out March 16th from Sub Pop Records. The new album blasts out of the speakers with the furious “I Need a Doctor,” inspired by Froberg’s experience needing a doctor’s note in order to miss an important work function. “Yeah, I had to be quick on my feet,” says Rick. “Luckily a friend had a stack of stationary from Planned Parenthood and I used that to forge a note relieving me of my obligation”.
Throughout Jericho Sirens, Froberg commiserates with the frustration and torrential apathy that seems to be a fixture in our daily lives, while also reminding us that we have no fucking clue. “Songs like ‘Death Camp Fantasy’ and ‘Jericho Sirens’ are about that,” he says. “No matter where you look, there’re always people saying the world’s about to end. Musically, the album incorporates the most extreme fringes of the Hot Snakes sound (the vein-bulging, 78-second “Why Don’t It Sink In?” the manic, Asian Blues on speed of “Having Another?”), while staying true to longstanding influences such as the Wipers, Dead Moon, and Suicide on propulsive tracks such as “Six Wave Hold-Down,” one of the first songs written for the project during a Mummer Parade 2017 session in Philadelphia. Other moments like the choruses of “Jericho Sirens” and “Psychoactive” nod to Status Quo and AC/DC with Froberg admitting, “I still flip bird and ride my BMX on top of cop cars.”
Jericho Sirens was recorded in short bursts over the past year, mostly in San Diego and Philadelphia with longtime bassist Gar Wood,Jason Kourkounis and Mario Rubalcaba, both of whom drummed on prior HotSnakes releases but never on the same one. For Reis, reactivating his creative partnership with Froberg was one of the most rewarding aspects of the process: “Our perspectives are similar. Our tastes are similar. He is my family. And what more is there to say? My favorite part of making this record was hearing him find his voice and direction for this record. I came hard.”
In tandem with a full back catalog reissue series and the new album, Hot Snakes will return to the road in 2018 to incinerate the villages, and they’re already looking ahead to more music. Says Gar Wood, “There’re already 2 more records written and recorded. We wanted to come out with this one using the more mainstream sounding stuff to give people a chance to catch up.”
Jericho Sirens (Release Date: March 16th, 2018) Sub Pop Records, Catch the band LiveTuesday, January 30th Rescue Rooms, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
The Age of Atlantic is the second in a series of rock music samplers released by the Atlantic label in the UK. The compilation is credited to Janet Martin. Issued at a budget price of UK £0.99, ($US 2.00 approx in 2007), the album was for many an inexpensive introduction to new rock acts, and was one of the earliest samplers of “progressive” or “underground” music.
The gatefold’s exterior was modelled in plasticine and, on its front, showed the logos or punning representations of the featured bands, whose album covers were depicted in the interior. The rear features the track listing scratched into a flattened layer of plasticine. The design is credited to Hamish & Gustav.
The track listing is wildly eclectic illustrating the diversty of Atlantic’s roster at the time. You get some fun rockers (Zep, Vanilla Fudge), some white boy blues (The Allman Brothers) and Prog (Yes, Iron Butterfly) and leftfield Americana (Dr John, Buffalo Springfield and Delaney and Bonnie).
Side One
“Comin’ Home” – Delaney & Bonnie (with Eric Clapton)
“Tonight” – MC5
“Black Hearted Woman” – Allman Brothers Band
“Survival” – Yes
“I’m a Good Woman” – Cold Blood
“Whole Lotta Love” – Led Zeppelin
Side Two
“Termination” – Iron Butterfly
“The Last Time” – Dada
“Communication Breakdown” (Page/Plant/Jones/Bonham) – Led Zeppelin
DESTROYER recently shared a new video for “Stay Lost”from their latest albumken, the 12th studio album released by the Dan Bejar-led group. Called “a user’s guide to the world” by Bejar, the imagery for “Stay Lost” depicts an aimless yet determined craftsman fabricating a world for himself.
ken is available now in the Merge Records store on CD, LP, and limited-edition deluxe LP, the latter of which is pressed on opaque yellow vinyl and includes a bonus 7-inch single on black vinyl that contains solo acoustic versions of two album tracks. You can also pick up the album at your local independent record store or through digital services.
Destroyer is the long-running solo project from The New Pornographer’s Dan Bejar. Destroyer’s 12th album ken showcases the evocative songwriting he is known for and we’re excited to welcome the band for a live set.
The full-band Destroyer tour is making its way across North America now! Get a sneak peek of what to expect with their recent appearance on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic.
Since debuting in 2008, TITUS ANDRONICUS has been conditioning faithful listeners to always expect only the unexpected, consistently zigging where others would zag and maintaining a steadfast dedication to fearless ambition. With the March 2nd release of the new studio album A Productive Cough, has executed the most shocking departure yet—but only if, as ever-mercurial singer-songwriter Patrick Stickles insists, “you haven’t been paying attention.” Watch the outstanding video for “Number One (In New York)” now, and visit a-productive-cough.com for more!
A Productive Cough is available for pre-order on blue-gray Peak Vinyl which includes a jukebox-inspired 7-inch of “(I’m) Like a Rolling Stone,” a track that does not appear on the physical LP except as part of the download, its nearly 9-minute length split across both sides of the single. Explore all pre-order options including an exclusive $10 t-shirt add-on in the Merge Records store (where all purchases come with a free temporary “Crass[-inspired] Tattoo” while supplies last), at your favorite participating independent record store, or via these digital music providers.
In this exclusive clip from the forthcoming “A Productive Cough” making-of documentary, Patrick Stickles explains the direction of the new Titus Andronicus album while the gang takes in the bucolic splendor of New York’s Hudson Valley at dusk. The complete sixty-minute documentary, directed by Ray Concepcion, will be released February 26th, followed by the release of the new Titus Andronicus studio album “A Productive Cough” on March 2nd from Merge Records. Learn More at :: A-PRODUCTIVE-COUGH.COM
The release ofA Productive Cough will be accompanied by +@’s first-ever “acoustic” tour of the US, which will find Stickles performing in a duo configuration with pianist Alex Molini. All dates feature direct support courtesy of Rick Maguire from Pile.
For her debut solo album “Lionheart”(out January 26th), H.C. McENTIRE found a creative catalyst in KathleenHanna. What began as an invitation from McEntire to have Hanna’s band The Julie Ruin perform at Girls Rock North Carolina’s 10th anniversary soon turned into a friendship and, ultimately, an artistic mentorship. “Quartz in the Valley”was the first song the two worked on together.
Revisit the lyric video for “A Lamb, A Dove” and you can pre-order “Lionheart” in the Merge Records store on CD, LP, and limited-edition white Peak Vinyl. In addition, we are offering the album bundled with a special screenprinted handkerchief created by McEntire, who will donate all profits from its sales to “Southerners On New Ground”.
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