This Portland musician’s fizzy, DIY pop style has cult status written all over it, Portland artist Mo Troper is a songwriter and DIY home taper in the tradition of R. Stevie Moore, Gary Wilson, Half Japanese and The Frogs, not to mention the whole Elephant 6 scene (Olivia Tremor Control in particular). He cranks out records at an alarming rate, full of very short songs that are crammed with catchy choruses that feel tossed-off, perhaps unfinished, but are often more sophisticated than they first seem.
If you’re new to the weird and often wonderful world of Mo Troper, “MTV” is as good a place to start as any, presenting 15 eccentric pop nuggets in 30 minutes, with only one song crossing the three-minute mark. A student of the classics (he covered The Beatles’ Revolver in full last year), Mo is an all-consumer who is not afraid to steal and presents well-travelled melodic styles in his own unique, often clever way. Some songs pass clever and proceed straight to novelty (“The Only Living Goy in New York” is a title Weird Al probably thought of and rejected) but it’s hard to deny the popcraft and hooks on songs like “Waste Away,” “Play Dumb” and “No More Happy Songs.”
released September 2nd, 2022
Produced by Mo Troper.
All songs written by Mo Troper (ASCAP Funny Uncle Virgil_, with the exception of “Waste Away” – written by Mo Troper and Nick Pounders. All Songs performed by Mo Troper with the exception “Play Dumb” – featuring Asher McKenzie on drums, Ben Burwell on bass, and Jackson Machado on guitar.
Jangly Scottish cult band of Sarah Records fame continue to make swooning guitar pop on their eighth album, Glasgow’s The Orchids have been making heartfelt, jangly indie pop for more than three decades, releasing records most famously on the legendary indie label Sarah Records. It’s been a while since they’ve released an album eight years, in acrual fact
But they are back with their seventh album titled “Dreaming Kind” due out September 2nd via Skep Wax (the label run by their former Sarah labelmates Amelia Fletcher and David Pursey of Heavenly/The Catenary Wires).
The band, which still includes frontman James Hackett, guitarist John Scally, drummer Chris Quinn, along with keyboardist Ian Carmichael, have managed to stay remarkably, satisfyingly consistent over the years, only making records when inspiration strikes them. “Dreaming Kind” definitely feels inspired, with windswept and winsome songs set to arrangements that swing between jangly and delicate, and lush and jazzy. Some songs, like “I Never Thought I Was Clever,” are both. If you wished that bands still made swooning, heart-on-the-sleeve guitar pop a la Aztec Camera and The Blue Nile, The Orchids are waving to you saying, “we’re right here.”
The Orchids were musically one of the most interesting Sarah bands and certainly developed far more on that label than any band. Starting with a melancholy guitar pop sound on “Lyceum” and contemporaneous singles, they moved on to become more keyboard and sample/effects-based for their second and third albums, “Unholy Soul” and “Striving For the Lazy Perfection”, developing a more electronic sound, possibly as a result of their producer, Ian Carmichael, who was a member of dance band One Dove.
Bob Mould has always worked best in power trio mode. After his iconic Minneapolis punk band Hüsker Dü fizzled out 1988, he spent a few years as a solo artist, releasing the well-regarded, acoustic oriented “Workbook” in 1989 and the louder but less successful “Black Sheets of Rain” in 1990.
Released from his contract with Virgin Records and inspired by Nirvana’s “Nevermind”, Mould found himself wanting to make noisy guitar pop again. He recorded demos which led to him signing to independent labels Creation Records in the UK and Rykodisc in North America. Recruiting bassist DavidBarbe and drummer Malcolm Travis to help record the album, he ended up forming a new band and while at at diner in Athens, GA, looking at the table’s container of sugar packets, they came up with their name.
With their roaring, punk-injected guitar pop sound, Sugar were definitely a more natural fit with a label of noisemakers like Creation (home to My Bloody Valentine and Ride) than Rykodisc (who were mainly known for being the first CD-only label).
“How ironic that after years fronting the hugely influential but desperately overlooked Hüsker Dü, Bob Mould’s first project with new band Sugar, 1992’s “Copper Blue”, would become the most commercially successful project of his career… it was released just as the seeds sown by his former band were bearing bountiful fruits in the post-Nirvana alternative nation, which provided ample explanation for its phenomenal success. But Sugar were well deserving of their success, regardless of time and place.
In any case, Sugar’s classic debut album, released September 4th 1992, is one of that year’s best, with Mould’s signature mix of rippers (“Changes,” “A Good Idea”), pop songs (“Helpless,” “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”) and even a little prog (“Hoover Dam”). “Copper Blue” was actually more of a hit in the U.K than across the pond, reaching No10 in the UK album charts and getting named the Best Album of 1992 by NME; the record really caught on with American alt-rock radio and MTV in 1993.
Sugar burned bright and hot, releasing “Beaster” (recorded during the same sessions as “Copper Blue“) a mere six months later, yet flamed out during sessions for their second album. Still, “Copper Blue” remains one of Mould’s best collection of songs. It’s a perfect record.
You can get “Copper Blue” and “Beaster” together as one deluxe double-LP set
Sugar – “Copper Blue” is the debut studio album by Sugar, released on this day (September 4th) in 1992.
R.E.M.’s debut EP, “Chronic Town”, was released on August 24th, 1982. It’s safe to say music was never the same, upon the release of the five-song record.
That’s because “Chronic Town” EP feels as if beamed in from another planet — a planet shrouded in murky atmospheres, Southern mysticism and post-punk eclecticism. There’s a faint psychedelic vibe running throughout, notably shading the jangly, Peter Buck riffs coiling through “Wolves, Lower” and the wistful grooves of “Gardening at Night,” while the taut tempos of “Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)” and “1,000,000” give the songs vibrating velocity. The nearly six-minute “Stumble” feels like deconstructed dance music, as repetitive guitar embellishments do battle with Bill Berry’s percussion bursts.
Beneath the surface lurks layers of sounds and effects; these add barely perceptible, but mysterious, texture. Yet with the cryptic Michael Stipe’s lyrics and vocals. Phrases leap from the music here and there, giving off the air of a faded watercolour more than a crisp portrait. This is particularly effective in “Wolves,Lower,” which features quizzical notes-to-self (“Suspicion yourself, suspicion yourself, don’t get caught”) and interesting arrangements. The verse is a call-and-response: a questioning chorus sings the phrase “House in order,” while Stipe follows with yearning, wordless crooning.
“Gardening at Night,” a song dating back to summer 1980 that is allegedly inspired by Buck seeing a man gardening while wearing dress clothes, is also a puzzle, as Stipe employs a vocal technique that’s gorgeous yet indistinct. And then there’s “Stumble,” which begins with a brief clip of Stipe laughing, saying “Teeth!” and then chomping his choppers. “Chronic Town” is such a compulsively listenable because listeners are compelled to try to figure out its secrets.
As per usual with R.E.M. in those early days, sessions for “Chronic Town” were quick and efficient. The band wasted no time getting back into the studio after the July 1981 release of its debut 7-inch, the MitchEaster-produced “Radio Free Europe.” According to the R.E.M. Timeline, the group headed to Easter’s Drive-In Studio during the first week of October. “The instruments were recorded on Friday, vocals on Saturday, and it was mixed on Sunday,” Buck recalled in 1983. “We didn’t have the money to take any longer.”
On October 3rd, 1981, the band tore through close to eight songs, some of which appeared on “Chronic Town” (“1,000,000,” “Gardening at Night,” “Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)” and “Stumble”), and others which would later surface on “Murmur” (“Shaking Through”) or as early B-sides (“Ages of You,” “White Tornado”). R.E.M. also cut an abstract, collage-like song, later dubbed “Jazz Lips” or “This Is Jazz (BlowNose),” that featured Stipe reading a 1959 magazine article above the cacophonous fray.
The EP’s lead-off track, “Wolves, Lower,” emerged after this initial session. The song was recorded twice in 1982, with R.E.M. tracking a fast version (heard below) in January, along with the take on “Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)” that made the EP and then re-cut a slower version in June.
Looking back in 2007 with writer Fred Mills, Easter had clarity on the “Chronic Town” sessions. “By now, I was a bit more comfortable with them so I threw in suggestions involving tape loops, backwards sounds, etc. and they loved it all. The sense that we were doing something good was really energizing. We even had the good sense and confidence to go back and re-do ‘Wolves, Lower’ at something less than the speed of light.
“Most of my sessions were so low-budget and rationalized according to the ‘Rules of Punk Rock’ that taking the time to reconsider something was really posh and unusual!” he adds. “It struck me that the band had actually gotten better — everybody sounded bigger and better and clearer, somehow.”
Still, around the release of 1983’s “Murmur”, Buck described a slightly more freewheeling experience saying the band made “Chronic Town” “for our own pleasure, as a learning process. We used lots of backwards guitars and weird sound ideas. We tried anything we’d ever wanted to try, so a lot of things on there are too busy. We didn’t edit ourselves the way we did on [Murmur].”
Part of that experimentation had to do with Easter and his love of Kraftwerk. In R.E.M.: Fiction: An Alternative Biography, David Buckley wrote that Easter was “always ready to try something more mechanoid in the studio. Part and parcel of this were to use rudimentary musical concrete techniques — any means to distort the fabric of time, or to layer slabs of ‘found’ elements.”
Among the experiments: The bridge of “Wolves, Lower” contained both backward elements and a tape loop, giving it a back-masked, disorienting sound. Stipe also recorded some of his vocals outside, giving his vocals an intriguing (if somewhat intangible) ambience.
Although “Chronic Town” came together fast, the EP didn’t see the light of day until August 1982, owing to the fact that R.E.M. was working out terms of a contract with I.R.S. Records. This deal wasn’t necessarily on the radar when recording began — “Chronic Town” was actually meant to be released on a new indie label called Dasht Hopes, run by an Athens transplant named David Healey. However, life intervened, and R.E.M. also did demo sessions for RCA Records with producer Kurt Munkacsi in February 1982 before signing with I.R.S. in May. (Healey, however, is dubbed as “ex-producer” in the “Chronic Town” credits.)
The Orielles release their new album “Tableau”, a genuinely contemporary record which voyages far beyond the musical limits reached on their previous albums “Silver Dollar Moment (2018), Disco Volador (2020) andLa Vita
Olistica (2021). The album was self-produced in collaboration with Joel Anthony Patchett (King Krule, Tim Burgess). As well as the adoption of contemporary 21st century production, the Orielles used concepts from the world of art and minimalism in creating Tableau. Sidonie had researched the graphic scoring method of Pulitzer Prize nominated trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith. They also utliised Oblique Strategies – the playing cards designed to aide creativity created by Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt in the early 1970s.
The result is a double album that rewards serious immersion, as complex as it is diverse. Though Tableau is likely to challenge preconceptions, this is something the band suggest they have been doing for quite some time anyway. “All through our whole career we’ve had to prove ourselves so, so much” explains Henry. “You can’t disconnect the age and the gender thing either” adds Esmé, “People belittle your age because they see women in the band. Whereas lad bands, if they’re eighteen it’s apparently exactly what people want to see.” Being from a small town in West Yorkshire may have added to that also, but Sidonie counters that “being from Halifax has also been a blessing, it’s kept our egos in check.”
Perhaps more than any of this, though, “Tableau” is also simply the product of the unique telepathy between three singular musicians that have grown in symbiosis for over a decade now – simply the three of them in a room.
If you want a taster of how great the album is go straight to ‘Beam/s’ a gorgeous 7-minute-53-second piece of constantly shapeshifting celestial dream pop that heralds the truly extraordinary “Tableau“.
Ecstatic Peace Library are thrilled to announce Linger On by Velvets-obsessed music journalist Ignacio Julià.
This sumptuous new volume features interviews with Lou Reed, John Cale, Moe Tucker, Doug Yule, Nico and the most in-depth interviews ever granted by Sterling Morrison, as well as never-before-published photographs by James Hamilton.The book will be launched on the occasion of Sterling Morrison’s 80th birthday, this August 29th inside the historic and legendary Oak Room of The Algonquin Hotel in New York City with an exhibition of James Hamilton’s unseen portraits of The Velvet Underground curated by Willis Loughhead with Ecstatic Peace Library.
The author of Linger On is an internationally respected and trusted Velvet Underground chronicler; he is the Barcelona-based rock n roll editor Ignacio Julià, who also published books in Spanish and English on American post-punk band Sonic Youth. When members of The Velvet Underground toured in Spain Ruta 66 journalist Ignacio Julià was usually among their entourage, front row centre at curtain call, backstage after the gig, in attendance of afterparties and sometimes discovered in the band’s hotel rooms until lobby call.
Since 1985 Ignacio Julià has obsessively followed the band’s career, interviewing and wining and dining the members over the years, and publishing countless articles, intimate profiles and books in Spanish and English on The Velvet Underground. He is known among international Velvets fan clubs as one of the most dedicated chroniclers and archivists of studio bootlegs, live concert recordings, writings and poetry to the extent that even the band’s own members refer to his knowledge for fact-checking purposes.
The War on Drugs have announced a new limited edition deluxe box set of their most recent album, last year’s “I Don’t Live Here Anymore”. It includes the album on 2LP x 180g vinyl and cassette, a 16-page booklet with previously unseen photos, postcards with photos taken during recording, a poster, an exclusive embroidered patch, and a 7″ single with two unreleased songs: “Oceans of Darkness” and “Slow Ghost.” Both songs have been featured in the band’s live set lists over the last few years, but this will be the first release of studio versions.
The box set is limited to 5000 copies worldwide, and due out on September 30th via Atlantic Records. You can watch frontman Adam Granduciel unbox it with his long time guitar tech, stage manager, and co-art director Dominic East , along with live versions of “Oceans of Darkness” and “Slow Ghost.”
The Fat Angel Sings 