After a slew of tape releases and years of playing shows around the Pacific Northwest here is the vinyl-release of Collected Acknolewlegements from Table Sugar, a band that could only be described by our team of underpaid writers as ‘very good’. In the vein of other contemporaneous style-scramblers and re-thinkers such as Lithics, Household or perhaps even Gen Pop (shared members??) A ditty about friendship and collective / subjective experience in the current Olympia moment—a city where simultaneously everything and nothing goes on. Think maybe of the music of Twelve Cubic Feet or the ethos of a band like Morbid Opera or Delta 5, or really just think whatever you want. The new wave of the O-Town sound. Limited to 500 copies.
Indie rockers Swearin’ are due to release their first album in five years, “Fall Into the Sun”. In 2015, the band split and singer/guitarist Allison Crutchfield released her debut solo album, Tourist in This Town, last year. Following the release of their 2012 self-titled debut and 2013’s Surfing Strange, Swearin’ are back with perhaps their most riveting and urgent work so far. “After breaking up the band for several years, Crutchfield and co-singer-guitarist Kyle Gilbride, alongside drummer Jeff Bolt, have reunited for their third, and most fully realized, record to date,” “On eleven songs that blend the newly energized band’s Nineties punk foundation with classic rock riffs and newfound singer-songwriter sincerity, the band interweaves a multi-layered, moving narrative of hurt, aging, and reconciliation that draws its energy from the narrative tension between Crutchfield and Gilbride’s starkly different songwriting styles.
“Untitled (LA),” is a spunky and rousing slice of guitar-pop, “Grow Into a Ghost” is a punchy, fuzzy jab of punk. “Anyway” is an introspective, inquisitive acoustic ballad. And “Future Hell” is one of the most animated mid-tempo jams you’ll hear this year. The lyrics that make up Fall Into The Sun approach touching, intimate and nostalgic storytelling with such care and the peppy, dynamic riffs, earnest vocals and pounding rhythm section will keep you dancing all night long
Here’s Fogelnest on how the collaboration came to be:
Allison wanted to do two videos that were somehow connected to each other. I’ve always been a huge William Castle fan, and I thought it would be fun to shoot the “Grow into a Ghost” video using his Illusion-O gimmick. The “ghost viewers” people were given to watch his film 13 Ghosts in 1960 were nothing more than modified anaglyph 3D glasses. So, that opened the door to shoot the “Future Hell” video 3D, too. The red and blue glasses would connect the two videos.
It’s awesome Merge sent out 3D glasses to people who pre-ordered the album, but even cooler that you can pick them up at record stores. It’s like when they used to show 3D movies on TV in the ‘80s and you’d get your glasses at Wawa or 7-Eleven. The videos also look cool if you don’t have glasses, but hopefully people will be inspired to hunt down a pair for the full experience.
Bruce Springsteen’s ongoing live archives series finally landed on his 2002/03 Rising tour with the release of Helsinki, Finland June 16th, 2003. The show came nearly a year into the Rising tour and features classics like “Born in the U.S.A.,” “Prove It All Night” and “Badlands” mixed in with tracks from the Rising album like “Worlds Apart” and “Into The Fire” along with a cover of the rockabilly classic “Seven Nights to Rock.” It’s a bit of a surprising pick since fans never saw it as a particularly noteworthy show and the set list doesn’t contain any real surprises.
Fans have been clamoring for a Rising tour release ever since Springsteen began releasing vintage live recordings in late 2014, but technicals issues made it very difficult. “Rising” tour recordings were made on what was then a state-of-the-art DSD (Direct Stream Digital) system, the first to offer high-resolution audio in an easily transportable, multi-track recording unit,” reads a note on nugs.net by Erik Flannigan. “But 15 years later, the proprietary nature of the software and hardware elements in that system have caused what might best be described as forward-compatibility issues, making it challenging to restore the original recording files. Helsinki is the first successful result of ongoing efforts over the last several years to address the problems.”
Other recent Springsteen live releases include Chicago 9/30/99, London 6/5/81, Los Angeles 7/7/78 and New York 11/8/09. Nearly every tour from his long history has been spotlighted at this point, though they’ve yet to feature a show from the 1988 Amnesty International Human Rights Now! tour or anything from his pre-fame days in Steel Mill or the Bruce Springsteen Band.
Bruce Springsteen has spent the entirety of this year focusing on his Broadway show, which wraps up December 15th.
We are very excited to welcome to the Milk! Records family the incredible Tiny Ruins from Auckland, New Zealand.Tiny Ruins have released two EPs and two albums, the most recent 2014’s acclaimed, Brightly Painted One. In late 2015 songwriter and guitarist Hollie Fullbrook recorded a collection of songs in Brooklyn NY with drummer Hamish Kilgour of The Clean, resulting in the EP Hurtling Through. This was closely followed by the release of Dream Wave – a 7″ single recorded/produced by renowned filmmaker (and Tiny Ruins fan) David Lynch.
Hollie Fullbrook doesn’t waste her time, and by extension, She doesn’t waste yours either. She has never released a song that didn’t sound as smart as it seems effortless. Some people can just command attention. And that’s why we’re excited to be working with her. If the above descriptions don’t make clear, her songs are amazing – anyone who likes the skill demonstrated by The Go-Betweens and Julie Byrne is at risk of Tiny Ruins fanship. We put out a song, “How Much,” recently, and we’ll have more to announce soon.
Tiny Ruins will be touring as a four-piece in the UK and Europe this August with some brand new music coming very soon.
On Avery Island is the debut and penultimate studio album by American indie rock band Neutral Milk Hotel. It was released on March 26th, 1996 by Merge Records. “On Avery Island”, is an inscrutable concept album, a chronicle of an insular world told in a remarkably universal language. A fuzzy masterpiece of experimental lo-fi recording, the album wraps its ragged pop songs in ribbons of loops, marching-band squawks, and Casio noodling; the opener, “Song Against Sex,” is as much a manifesto as a kickoff, a self-propelled marvel hopped up on rapid-fire wordplay and a stunningly ramshackle melody punctuated by bloated trombone moans. Throughout the record, Jeff Mangum’s wheels threaten to fly off at any time — his songs are cryptic and crazed, his ideas fast and furious, and together they force the home-recording concept out of the basement and into a brave new world.
Neutral Milk Hotel has its origins in the small town of Ruston, LA. Jeff Mangum has always been Neutral MilkHotel’s central figure, and he’s used that moniker for everything from his own solo excursions to marching band-like musical happenings.
A week after Tom Petty‘s expansive American Treasure boxset arrived, Universal has announced plans to release a career-spanning best-of collection dedicated to the late rocker that boasts a pair of unreleased recordings.
Out today! “For Real” the previously unreleased song from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Throughout his storied career, Petty did everything with authenticity—putting the music and his fans first. It is this sentiment that Petty sings about in the poignant and autobiographical song “For Real”, featured on “The Best of Everything”.
The Best of Everything, due out November 16th, features 38 of Petty’s biggest and “definitive” hits culled from throughout his career, ranging from his work with the Heartbreakers and Mudcrutch to his solo albums and spanning from 1976 to 2016. The Best of Everything also contains an essay on Petty penned by Almost Famousdirector and Rolling Stone writer Cameron Crowe.
The newly remastered greatest hits compilation also includes two unreleased songs: An unearthed track titled “For Real” and an alternate version of “The Best of Everything,” a song off 1985’s Southern Accents that also lends its title to the best-of collection; the alternate version features the song’s never-heard second verse.
The Best Of Everything (Alternate Version) · Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
Leaving his well-mannered past as a roots rocker behind, Ron Gallo showed off a lean-and-mean sound and a lyrical style full of snarky wit on 2017’s Heavy Meta, and he’s dug in deeper with his second album from his eponymous band. 2018’s Stardust Birthday Party is dominated by no-frills melodies rooted in Gallo’s sharp, choppy guitar figures and the taut, efficient rhythms of bassist Joe Bisirri and drummer Dylan Sevey, which isn’t that far off from the formula on Heavy Meta. But this time out, the angles in these songs are a good deal sharper, and there’s a willful eccentricity to the keyboard overdubs and an eagerness to mess with the vocal and instrumental sounds that makes this album sound less organic and more exploratory than the debut. And if the thank yous to Alan Watts, Adyashanti, Eckhart Tolle, and J. Krishnamurti in the liner notes didn’t tip you off,
Stardust Birthday Party finds Gallo examining his own neuroses and looking for spiritual and philosophical truths as he bashes away at his electric guitar. While Gallo clearly isn’t above letting the funny side of his journey show on occasion, the tone of Stardust Birthday Party is ultimately serious and often urgent, and Gallo sounds ferocious as he charges through numbers like “Do You Love Your Company?” and “Party Tumor.” Unlike most musicians who are looking for the answers to life’s larger questions, Gallo isn’t interested in navel gazing so much as breaking through to the other side in the here and now, and while not everything he has to say sounds like he knows where he’s headed, he makes the search sound vital and compelling. Stardust Birthday Party is not always what one would have expected from Ron Gallo on the basis of his previous work, and for the most part that works in its favor; this is passionate and exciting music, thoughtful but never staid, and it shows Gallo to be an artist with some surprises up his sleeve.
On The Corner Where You Live is the latest album from Australian band The Paper Kites, a follow up to On The Train Ride Home which was released earlier this year. Produced by Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Middle Kids) the album builds upon the romantic, dusky mood the band perfected on Twelvefour (No. 1 debut on the ARIA chart) and includes standout tracks When It Hurts You and Deep Burn Blue.
New Album ‘On The Corner Where You Live’ is available now
Band Members
Sam Bentley
Christina Lacy
Dave Powys
Sam Rasmussen
Josh Bentley
Exploded View, the international music project of Annika Henderson, Hugo Quezada, and Martin Thulin has returned and taken flight with their second full length album, “Obey”. The album was recorded at Hugo’s and Martin’s studios in Mexico City with Annika visiting from Berlin. Leaving behind their raw, live recording process, and embracing overdubs and multi-instrumentalism, the band has crafted their most ambitious work to date. The four-piece that recorded the band’s self-titled debut album and Summer Came Early EP became three to create a more concise collection of songs.
Their motivation for creating together remains purely passionate and the improvisational spark the band is known for has morphed into the emotional flames of being close friends with a deep desire to make music with each other.
Revered indie singer-songwriter Chan Marshall a.k.a. Cat Power takes inspiration from well-traveled folk and blues musicians on Wanderer, her first album in six years (and tenth overall). The 11-track project will include the rumbling, soulful single “Woman” (featuring recent tourmate Lana Del Rey) as well as what Marshall promises are appearances from “longtime friends and compatriots.” In a statement announcing the LP, Marshall said, “Wanderer, the album, represents the course my life has taken in this journey going from town to town, with my guitar, telling my tale; with reverence to the people who did this generations before me … They were all wanderers, and I am lucky to be among them.”
Chan Marshall is preparing to release her 10th album under the alias Cat Power. While she’s known for her inventive covers (her latest triumph a take on Rihanna’s “Stay”), Marshall has remained an independent and innovative songwriter since debuting in the ’90s, recently influenced by big changes: motherhood, a six-year musical hiatus and a new label, Domino Recordings (her former label, Matador Records, passed on Wanderer). Despite a somewhat winding road since her last record, 2012’s Sun, Cat Power is poised to make a victorious return. If “Stay” and the record’s other two singles, “Woman” and the title track, are any indication, Wanderer is headed for husky pop glory.
Sonic and emotional economy tend to be Chan Marshall’s greatest strengths. Her albums as Cat Power sound like eavesdropping on intimate confessions bolstered by stark musical accompaniment. Even though Marshall has moved beyond guitar-and-voice compositions as her career has progressed—1996’s What Would The Community Think incorporated smoldering pedal steel; 1998’s Moon Pix featured contributions from members of the Dirty Three; and 2006’s The Greatest was brightened by horns—her overall aesthetic remains unvarnished sparseness.
