Today, UK psych rockers TOY announced the release of their fourth album. With the announcement of the new album, the band also released a video for the lead track “Sequence One”. It is a perfect mix of psych and kraut rock. You can also listen to the two previously released tracks via Bandcamp .
The album is offered in a few different variants, so make sure to check out all your options before you buy. I went with the Tough Love variant that is limited to 300 and comes with a bonus LP of remixes. Rough Trade has 200 copies on white vinyl as well as a ‘Dinked’ version limited to 700 that you can grab from various UK distros . There will also be an indie store exclusive on blue vinyl, limited to 1000.
‘Sequence One’ taken from the forthcoming album ‘Happy In The Hollow’ available 25th January 2019.
Three years after their seminal album “Painted Shut”, Philadelphia’s Hop Along returned with their third Saddle Creek-released LP, Bark Your Head Off, Dog, their most cohesive release to date. Few vocalists can evoke the emotion thats packed into Frances Quinlan’s delivery, and it’s on full display on early singles like the epic “Not Abel.” Quinlan’s songwriting has become more self-aware and outwardly present to the mechanisms of the world around her, and Hop Along is as tight a unit as you’ll hear on record.
Hop Along – How Simple From the album Bark Your Head Off, Dog
Hop Along, who are playing across the UK and Ireland next month, and they’re super treble lush. The video gives a moreish taste of their live show too.
Nov 11th | Nottingham, UK @ Rock City
From the album Bark Your Head Off, Dog – Out Now
Band Members
Frances Quinlan (vocals, guitar)
Mark Quinlan (drums)
Tyler Long (bass)
Joe Reinhart (guitar)
By titling their fourth full-length You Won’t Get What You Want, Daughters send a crystal-clear message. The quartet once again follow the same internal compass that guided them to blur the lines of fickle heavy music sub-genres in the first place and quietly ignite a cult fervor typically reserved for grindhouse phenomena. In fact, the best way to describe the philosophy and the sound of the quartet is simply: rock ‘n’ roll.
The bludgeoning Rhode Islanders have blown our ears and left us breathless, back from the dead to unleash their-highly-evolved grind on the world anew. maintaining and expanding on their intense trademark sound with an explosive sonic-takeover, their music is now a thing of calculated chaos. the record delves into some seriously haunting and neo-gothic John Carpenter stylings alongside its relentless industrial dirge-ing. its exhilarating and quite unlike anything else – like Swans got mangled with napalm death’s speed-death in a sonic world invented by nine inch nails. on acid. mad. “after an eight-year-long hiatus Daughters reach their peak” 9/10
The first new music in eight years from DAUGHTERS
Daughters new album, You Won’t Get What You Want, in stores October 26th By titling their 2018 fourth full-length and debut for Ipecac Records, You Won’t Get What You Want, Daughters send a crystal clear message. The quartet—Alexis Marshall [vocals], Nick Sadler [guitar], Jon Syverson [drums], and Sam Walker [bass]— follow the same internal compass that guided them to blur the lines of fickle heavy music sub-genres in the first place and quietly ignite a cult fervor typically reserved for grindhouse phenomena.
In fact, the best way to describe the philosophy and the sound of the quartet is simply: rock ‘n’ roll.
Band Members
Alexis Marshall
Jonathan Syverson
Nicholas Andrew Sadler
Samuel Moorehouse Walker
E-mail is cool and all, but Antarctigo Vespucci‘s (Chris Farren and Jeff Rosenstock) PERFECT new album, Love in the Time of E-mail, is the best! . Don’t believe the hype? Check out all of these highly regarded and totally real press quotes: “A POWER POP MASTERPIECE FROM START TO FINISH” ALL OF THE PRESS COMBINED, BASICALLY
“THESE LYRICS CONTAIN INCREDIBLE EMOTIONAL DEPTH AND MATURITY” – CHRIS FARREN’S THERAPIST “ANTARCTIGO VESPUCCI IS THE MOST POWERFUL POWER POP BAND SINCE MY OLD GROUP, THE BEATLES” – PAUL MCCARTNEY
BEST BAND EVER” – ANTARCTIGO VESPUCCI
“CHRIS HAS DONE IT AGAIN” – JEFF
“JEFF HAS DONE IT AGAIN” – CHRIS
In 2013, Chris Farren faced an uncomfortable certainty: his band was breaking up. For the last eight years, the one constant in his life had been Fake Problems, the indie punk group he had started as a teenager and successfully steered for almost a decade. In that time the scrappy group of Floridians had put out two albums on LA label SideOneDummy, toured all over the world, and even landed a few songs on TV. But now, that was all over. Not knowing what else to do, Chris went to New York.
The idea was to collaborate, to find writing partners, something the musician had never done before. After a few days in the city he ran into his friend Jeff at a party. At the time, Jeff was fronting the band Bomb the MusicIndustry!, a Brooklyn-based punk collective that Fake Problems had often crossed paths with on tour. The two decided to give writing together a try.
It was only the next day, as Chris was walking up the three flights of stairs to Jeff’s apartment, guitar in hand, that he realized the two of them barely knew each other. Fake Problems and BTMI had toured together once, half a decade earlier. Every few months they’d play a show together, and hang for a few hours. But was that a close friendship? Up at the top of the stairs, listening to Chris come up the narrow stairway, Jeff was having similar thoughts. What if the collaboration was a disaster?
Something clicked that first day. Though neither musician had written collaboratively before, they planned another session a few months later. During that time, they made Antarctigo Vespucci’s first EP, Soulmate Stuff (an album whose name should put to bed any lingering fears). Written and recorded over a few days in a 3×6’ shoebox, 2014’s Soulmate Stuff was a natural combination of the Springsteen-like excess of Bomb the Music Industry! and the bubblegum melodicism Chris had cultivated in Fake Problems. Six months later, Antarctigo Vespucci self-released their second EP, I’m So Tethered. A year after that, their first LP, 2015’s Leavin’ La Vida Loca.
Shortly after Chris came to New York knowing his band was ending, Bomb the Music Industry! played their final shows. Like Chris, Jeff had spent the better part of a decade on the group, and had arrived at the end of an era. Throughout 2015-2017 both musicians launched successful solo careers: Chris’s defined by “pure power-pop goodness” (AV Club), and Jeff’s leading to Pitchfork calling him “one of punk rock’s greatest, most effusive living songwriters.”
Which brings us to today. After three (let’s say “eventful”) years, Antarctigo Vespucci have returned from the 3×6’ closet with Love in the Time of E-Mail, their first album for Polyvinyl. While by this point there is something of an established Antarctigo sound, Love in the Time of E-Mail finds the group expanding their sonic palette in exciting ways, reaching out further to unabashedly embrace all their poppiest instincts.
“I wanted to see you, to see if I still wanted to see you,” Farren sings, quoting Jean-Paul Belmondo on the insanely catchy “Breathless on DVD.” The mid-album track might get its bridge lyrics from Godard, but with its shimmering synth pads and Tom Tom Club-esque chorus, its lineage is equally New Wave pop as it is French New Wave cinema. On single “White Noise,” the tightly wound verse leads seamlessly into a chorus of “Can’t get you out of my head, I’ll listen to white noise instead,” a chorus that, between playful blasts of speaker fuzz, will stick with you for days. Elements like these are littered throughout Love in the Time of E-Mail, some flying by so quickly you might miss them on the first pass. And while the raw material for songs like “Another Good Thing,” “So Vivid!,”or the restless “Freakin’ U Out” could have easily fit on a solo record by either musician, the studious pop flourishes here bring them to new heights.
It may have all started on a whim in a cramped apartment, but like the friendship at its core, Antarctigo Vespucci has blossomed into something much more. And like the non-existent explorer they’re named after, Antarctigo Vespucci chart a map of something at once new and familiar: missed connections, texts lingering on “read,” and the words that go unspoken. Maybe it’s just a passing feeling. Or maybe it’s…Love in the Time of E-Mail!
“Freakin’ U Out” is taken from Antarctigo Vespucci’s new album, Love in the Time of E-Mail, out October 26th, 2018.
Find it now at your favorite local record store or online and then catch the band on tour this fall in a city near you!
Following the release of 2014’s Alix, Generationals decided to forego the traditional approach of writing, recording and releasing music in one large batch in favor of putting out singles as soon as they were completed, which resulted in a slew of standalone tracks throughout 2017 and 2018.
Now, for the first time, these singles (along with an exclusive track) will receive a physical release via State Dogs: Singles 2017-18.
Pre-orders are live, including a limited edition vinyl pressing, along with CD and digital options. Order now and receive 8 tracks instantly! The entire collection drops on December 7th.
Portland-based popsters The Minders began their existence two decades ago in Denver, aided in the studio by Apples In Stereo leader Robert Schneider and skirting the outer rings of The Elephant 6 Collective that begat Neutral Milk Hotel. While lead Minder Martyn Leaper shared a lot of the same ‘60s loving DNA with those groups, he had a firmer grasp on the particulars that most with the help of his perfectly tart vocals and knack for an instant earworm hook. With the rights to the first Minders album back in his control, Leaper is re-releasing Hooray For Tuesday for the first time on vinyl with the addition two unheard versions of the title track: a re-recording by the current iteration of the band and a demo from 1996. The woozy, candyfloss spirit of this music still sounds like lost broadcasts from the bubblegum pop era, a sensation amplified through it being pressed to wax. The bonus cuts suffer a bit as the second side of my copy was cut a little off-center so they sound too warped to really enjoy. Until that point, the music offers nothing but pure delight.
Early critical success and productivity from the band, who relocated to Portland in the late ‘90s, would give way to an eight-year dry spell that almost signaled the end of the project. Unfazed, Leaper eventually pushed through that dark period and has continued to write and record vital music, with 2016’s “Into The River” re-establishing the band as one of Portland’s most influential acts
After signing with indie label Wichita Recordings, British rockers Indoor Pets have announced their debut album, “Be Content”, out next year but not until March. They shared a new single, “Being Strange,” which follows the release of their previous single “Hi.”
Previously known as Get Inuit, Indoor Pets sound a little like classic Weezer trying their hand at bubblegum pop, or Pixies dropping a pop-punk record. You’ll be surprised to know that frontman Jamie Glass’ voice isn’t manipulated with autotune and he didn’t suck helium from a balloon—those high-pitched harmonies are the real deal. If Indoor Pets were around in the ‘00s, “Being Strange” would’ve spread like wildfire in the U.S.—blasting out of car radios, shopping mall speakers and skate park boomboxes, and with a video all over MTV. That’s not to say that Indoor Pets don’t bring anything different to the table. You’d be hard pressed to find many bands naturally singing like Glass, unironically basking in candy-coated pop hooks while still shredding power chords.
Aoife O’Donovan, Sarah Jarosz and Sara Watkins are bound by a love for bluegrass, chamber music, jazz, storytelling and singing. Each of these three musicians, now united under the I’m With Her name, have performed at the Tiny Desk before. Sara Watkins was here with Nickel Creek (2014), Watkins Family Hour (2015) and The Decemberists (2011). Sarah Jarosz was here in 2013 and Aoife O’Donovan came along with Yo Yo Ma and Chris Thile as part of the Goat Rodeo project back in 2011. All three are brilliant players with an ever-shifting array of stringed instruments, guitars, ukulele, fiddle, mandolin and banjo. As I’m With Her, they know how to gather round a microphone and sing directly from their heart to yours. Purity is the brilliance behind I’m With Her.
The three singers who perform together as I’m With Her sound like sisters. It’s as if they’ve known each other all their lives and share common roots and musical memories.
The three songs they perform here come from the trio’s debut album, See You Around. It’s a sound made for the intimacy of the Tiny Desk and they all feel right at home.
Set List “See You Around” “Game to Lose” “Overland”
Musicians Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan
Whim is the stage moniker for indie-pop songwriter, Sarah Isabella DiMuzio. She first caught our ear at Fluff and Gravy Records a few years ago when she recorded a 4 song ukulele-based ep in our studio. She was 17 years old at the time and her earnest songwriter and propensity for writing unforgettable hooks was already apparent. Now at age 22, we are teaming up with her to produce and release a full-length LP, “Abuzz in the Abyss” due out in early Summer of 2019. The first song that we worked up and recorded was “Mouths” and it is first and foremost a callout song— a song Sarah wrote to call herself out for taking the silent observer position in too many situations where being vocal is imperative. In the days of social media where fake news and political opinions abound, it’s easy to feel like you simultaneously have a voice, and that it’s impossible for you to ever be heard over the clamoring masses. It becomes an existential pitfall when you either say nothing, or you say something and it turns out to be ignored.
Singer-songwriter Sarah Isabella DiMuzio, who records under the name Whim, is gearing up to release a new full-length LP on Fluff and Gravy Records sometime next year, which will be the follow-up to her debut album, 400 Days. The first song from the forthcoming record is a siren call that begs the listener to use their “mouth” and make their voice heard. “Mouths” surfaces as a bouncy, riffy guitar tune, but listen carefully, and you’ll find DiMuzio is making a strong statement on top of all that shine. It’s a catchy indie-rock anthem arriving just in time for the midterm elections, which is a great time to make one’s voice heard. “What is this silence about?” DiMuzio sings. ”’Cause we are the people who shout.” “Mouths” sounds like the spirited soundtrack to a bipartisan effort to encourage voter registration. DiMuzio reminds us that it’s okay to be a little unsure, as long as you use your voice when it becomes imperative to do so. “Everyone has doubts when they’re screaming out into the void,” she sings.
Steve Gunn has announced a new album, The Unseen In Between, with the arrival of its lead single “New Moon.” The Unseen in Between is Gunn’s first album since 2016’s Eyes on the Lines. “New Moon” grows gradually, layering instruments as it wanders toward its pinnacle: the final minute and a half-or-so of the track. Enlisting an upright bass and tremolo-heavy guitars, the track feels as though it’s meandering—with intention—instrumentally. This theme is present lyrically, as well, with the lines, “I see a glimmer / Across the wall / Through the mirror / Out past the streets / Beyond weather / To that place / No one seems to know.” Tony Garnier, musical director for Bob Dylan, provides the bass on the track and serves as a frequent collaborator on the album along with Meg Baird, who provides harmonies.
From Steve Gunn’s new album ‘The Unseen In Between’ out January 18th, 2019 on Matador Records.
