Last summer, Chicago’s Ratboys released its debut album AOID, though that simple statement betrays how much work went into it. The band was initially launched as an acoustic duo, with Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan slowly building a membership around their songs, which took five full years to congeal. Now, Ratboys are moving at a quicker pace, as evinced by its latest single, “Not Again, the video for the song below, which sees Ratboys garage jam—inside Chicago DIY space, Gnarnia—turn into a paint-balloon war. It’s a video that gets a little messy, but shows that Ratboys are still doing a great job of crafting county-inspired indie jams.
“Not Again”, is the new single from Ratboys – available digitally from Topshelf Records. Julia Steiner commented on the video for the latest single .Released April 8th, 2016.
Ratboys are
vocals/guitar – julia steiner
guitar – dave sagan
bass/drums – will lange
Since Jason Molina‘s death in 2013, there have been some memorable and intimate releases. In 2016, SecretlyCanadian released The Townes Van Zandt Covers (I’ll Be Here In the Morning/Tower Song). It came as no surprise that Molina should be drawn to these songs. His melancholic sad tones seemed well suited to those Townes songs who, like Molina, also battled with alcoholism.
The latest offering from Secretly Canadian may be a less obvious connection – The Black Sabbath Covers 7″. Although Molina was in the punk band Spineriders in the late ’80s and early ’90s this isn’t a return to those days, instead, the two tracks Solitude and Snowblind were recorded in the late ’90s, with just voice and acoustic guitar. He makes them both his own although they are no sooner started then they’re over – combined they come in at just under 3:30 minutes but this does allow the b-side to be adorned with an etching of a black ram by the brilliant Rhode Island artist and musician William Schaff.
When Jason Molina took on another artist’s song, he willed his own universe into it, his own personal and artistic mythology. Be it Conway Twitty or Townes Van Zandt, their blues were infused with Molina’s own entrancing blues. This pair of newly discovered, home-recorded Black Sabbath covers is no different. Molina, a through-and-through fan of metal (seek out his high school metal band the Spineriders‘ album if you haven’t yet) peels back the sinister and stoned elements of Sabbath, zeroing in on the loneliness and brooding. He takes “Solitude,” from 1971’s unfuckwithable Master of Reality — and one of Sabbath’s more mystical, near-proggy songs — and doubles down on the title. Molina extracts Ozzy Osbourne’s gorgeously cooed vocal performance and transforms it into a high and lonesome sound, a desert campfire howler. And on his cover of “Snowblind,” from 1972’s Vol. 4, it becomes obvious what a guitar hero Sabbath’s Tony Iommi was for Molina.
Melkbelly is a promising 4 piece noise-rock band from Chicago, They are known for their frantic arrangements, toothed melodies, and blaring live show this is the fun part, when a promising band seems to emerge fully formed, from out of nowhere, with a great debut album. Consider Melkbelly, the affably disruptive Chicago quartet of singer-guitarist Miranda Winters, guitarist Bart Winters (her husband), bassist Liam Winters (his brother) and drummer James Wetzel. Cramming what should be an unworkable heap of concepts and sounds into a deliciously volatile 35 minutes, Nothing Valley is a bracing blend of scraping noise and tender melody, not unlike the recipe used by Speedy Ortiz. Melkbelly emerge fully formed, from out of nowhere, with a great debut album. Melkbelly are an affably disruptive Chicago band comprising singer-guitarist Miranda Winters, guitarist BartWinters (her husband), bassist Liam Winters (his brother) and drummer James Wetzel. Cramming what should be an unworkable heap of concepts and sounds into a deliciously volatile 35 minutes,
Appropriately, it’s issued on the Carpark Records imprint Wax Nine, supervised by Speedy boss Sadie Dupuis. Nothing Valleycaptures the exciting details of the guitars and drums, yet leaves Winters’s voice just fuzzy enough to induce uncertainty
we’ve entered a new month and you know what the means: two more tracks from Sweet ’17 Singles. Listen to “With You” and “Just Because” . These Chicago garage-rockers Twin Peaks are currently releasing music as part of their ‘Sweet ’17’ singles club.
The idea is to launch a new single every month until the end of the year and since we’re near the end of the year, that means that there’s only a couple of tracks to fit in before the end of 2017. So for the month of November – the penultimate stop on their quest – they’ve released ‘With You’ and a B-side, ‘Just Because’.
‘With You’ is a jangly, summery number with a few quips and dark lyrics embedded in there for good measure (“you’re just so ruthless, you’re just what I need”). Meanwhile, ‘Just Because’ features drum machines and wolf whistling among its hazy stomp.
Earlier in the year, Twin Peaks also released a track for Amazon’s Songs of Summer playlist, ‘Who It’s Gonna Be’.
A sampling of our 2017 releases to stream (or download for ONE MEASLY DOLLAR!) ~ More great stuff packed up for 2018, so be sure to subscribe to our newsletter over at: troubleinmindrecs.com
Angel Olsen and her band made it clear they’ll be very comfortable opening for Arcade Fire later this year. They began with “High & Wild” from 2014’s “Burn Your Fire For No Witness”, expanding from a roots-rock ramble to a gnarly climax built around a bluesy power chord riff. From there they launched directly into “Shut Up Kiss Me,” a song that grips you as urgently as its subject matter demands, from its bracing rock ‘n’ roll cadence to Olsen’s howling, bellowing, tour-de-force vocal performance. Two more straight-up rockers followed, with “Acrobat,” the hushed intro from Olsen’s 2012 debut “Half Way Home”, serving as a bridge to the set’s less visceral but even more compelling second half.
Olsen spent her last three songs unfurling three tracks from the back half of My Woman in sequence. There was “Sister,” the eight-minute epic that serves as the album’s centerpiece, building slowly from a low-key Roy Orbison-via-Velvet Underground ballad into the kind of glorious guitar symphony I wish Wilco was still writing. There was “Those Were The Days,” a song that imagines what Bonnie Raitt’s attempt at dream-pop might sound like, extended into a beautiful series of peaks and valleys. And there was “Woman,” another eight-minute swoon that begins as a weepy country ballad before going full Joplin and, ultimately, taking its sweet time descending from the mountaintop. These songs gave the audience a chance to sit back and appreciate what Angel Olsen’s band members bring to the table. It’s one thing to burn through some rock songs with power and fury, and it’s quite another to make such lengthy excursions surge and soar.
Angel Olsen performs in Chicago for Pitchfork Music Festival 2017
With Untouchable, Kelly has raised the stakes even more than his previous album “Goes Missing”, now fully embracing some of the more outwardly power-pop sensibilities he’d hinted at in previous records.
Kelly has become synonymous with L.A. fuzz-punk contemporaries like Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin, and has played in projects with both men. What’s remarkable about Kelly, though, is his confidence in his voice, and it’s a primary focal point throughout Untouchable. Kelly’s vocals are amped up to the forefront, a move that makes for more memorable, hummable moments, as is evident right out of the gate on LP opener “Broken Record.” The song’s slow-burn guitar progression is just monotonous enough to invite Kelly’s meandering melodies to enchant the vibe, as he sings “I took to making circles round the world/every time I run through/I take to making circles round some girl/Like a broken record I hear myself put it in a tune.”
Continuing onto the fantastic “Real Enough to Believe,” Kelly homes in on a perfectly proportioned ‘60s pop format, fully welcoming the dreaded “derivative” song. Rather than being careful to avoid direct aural influences from his favorite styles of music, Kelly embraces the nuances of decades of rock ‘n’ roll and reinvents it in his own smorgasbord of cool. “Real Enough to Believe,” against all odds, rivals the brilliant standout track “Be What You Are” from Goes Missing, a feat that once seemed near-impossible.
Untouchable revels in a generally lo-fi mix that sits well with the record’s found-sound ambiance, in another nod to Kelly’s nomadic muses. “That’s When It’s Over” writhes in a mid-song homage to “Hey Joe,” with Kelly’s scintillating guitar solos saluting both Hendrix and the wormy noodling of the Dead. Perched in the thick of the album’s more thoughtful tunes, “That’s When It’s Over” is a juggernaut of energy that perfectly splits the record into two parts. The song’s breakneck riffing explodes with a full head of steam, chugging along atop motorik drums and Kelly crooning, hooting and hollering to a repeated refrain of “In the heart of her heart, she don’t care.”
In its more tender moments, Untouchable unloads heavier pseudo-ballads like the titletrack. With little more than a reverb-y acoustic guitar and a plunky bass backing, Kelly lets his gorgeous voice take even more of a central role, stripped of the blistering leads that permeate most of the album. “Will It To Be” follows suit near the end of the record, a twisted ballad that finds Kelly cooing “I’m holding back now/but I’m getting closer/I am pretending I don’t need to know or even care at all.” The song’s moody, Velvet Undergroundian darkness comes through despite its Fleetwood Mac facade, with rhythmic instruments set deep and foreboding under Kelly’s fluttering melodies.
The magic moments found on Untouchable speak to Kelly’s swaggering confidence—as if that weren’t perhaps alluded to enough in the album’s very title. As a result, the ambitiousness of his work seems increasingly more destined to join the canon of timeless pop from which The Cairo Gang’s songs find their roots.
The spiny tingle of excitement, the building anticipation of ritual! Chord progressions in the key of the heart! Star-crossed breakthroughs and guitars cross-talking with a bejeweled ennui throughout interrelationships .
The Fat Angel Sings 