Ryan Pollie is gearing up to release his second album as Los Angeles Police Department, also called Los Angeles Police Department (just like the first), and so far we’ve heard “Grown” and “The Plane 2” from it. Today, he’s shared another new song called “If I Lied,” and it’s a plaintively-strummed and twangy song that sees Pollie playing with different perspectives (he says it’s “the story of a train hopper in denial of how he’s mistreated the love of his life – unsure if he’s losing her or if he’s lost her already”), and it’s a sorta pathetic but desperately sweet plea to engage in a conversation: “There are still so many things to say that day/ And if I walk, then you might run away, no way,” Pollie sings with a backing drum that sounds like the rumble of the train tracks.
There are many echoes of rock’s greatest women in Miya Folick’s new Give It To Me EP. “Trouble Adjusting” is basically a Hole song. “Woodstock” is literally a Joni Mitchell song. Folick can smolder like Sharon Van Etten and wail with the startling fury of Corin Tucker. Yet once you’ve beheld the LA musician’s latest recordings you won’t mistake them for anyone else. The EP leaves a profound impression even before you read the fascinating tidbits in her bio (raised Buddhist, reluctant former basketball player, met her band on Tinder). An in-your-face intensity animates these songs — a sense of deeper passion and higher stakes. Folick has grown from an enjoyable singer-songwriter with adventurous tendencies into an artist whose every disparate creation seems to be summoning elemental forces. When she screams, “Give it to me!” you feel compelled to comply
It’s tough to keep up with garage rock’s wunderkind Ty Segall. Between his steady release schedule of LPs, raucous side projects like Fuzz and GØGGS, and collaborations with fellow songwriters Mikal Cronin and Tim Presley, it’s as if a season can’t pass without Segall dropping a new record. And that’s not even taking his cassettes, splits, and EPs into consideration. Fortunately, Segall’s bottomless well of creativity, production savvy, and boundless fascination with the various niches of the rock world makes every new release an occasion to celebrate. Suicide Squeeze Records is proud to offer the latest entry in Ty’s impressive canon with the Sentimental Goblin 7”. Side A features “Pan”, a fuzz-soaked proto-metal jam that links Beatles’ pioneering guitar dirge “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” to later lurch classics by Sir Lord Baltimore and Pentagram. In true Segall fashion, he switches gears on side B and conjures the erudite pop appeal of T. Rex and Bowie with the lush glam rocker “Black Magick”. Suicide Squeeze Records is proud to release Sentimental Goblin to the world on March 17, 2017. The initial pressing consists of 1000 copies on half blue / half yellow vinyl and includes a download card. The third pressing consists of 1000 copies on half pink / half purple vinyl and includes a download card. In a testament to his restless creativity and tireless work ethic, Ty also provides the artwork for the record.
Ty Segall reaches deep down into his deep bag of rocks and pulls out an uptempo dance number, an armload of guitars and a hardcore jam, urging us ultimately to jailbreak from the self-imposed thought prison we’ve all been raised in. No, tonight’s not the night, do it now! Denee Segall’s lead vocals hammer home “Meaning” with unbridled strength: “I see fear in freedom…” Is this what’s holding us back? Ask yourself, man!
Rock and roll for the black hole – reimagined rippers, for the misfits that 2017 couldn’t kill to blast under the shadow of the big boot and beyond the glow of the chemical horizon. This is driving music, and you’re the designated shotgun rider
Our tribute to Tom Petty – and the USA. Offered as a pay-what-you-want download.
ALL proceeds go to The Midnight Mission, an organization we’ve had the honor of supporting in the past… and one that was also supported by Tom. xoox
“Plum” is Wand’s fourth record. Yet it functionally serves as a new debut. Their first three albums saw the group, then a four-piece helmed by guitarist/vocalist/main songwriter Cory Hanson, producing wild and ecstatic, fuzzed-out psychedelic garage rock in the vein of Ty Segall and associated California bands. Wand erred to the more playful and gleeful end where Segall would lean into ecstasy and abandon,
For Plum, however, Wand sees the addition of a full-time keyboardist and a much more democratic approach to songwriting and development. This new palette brings with it a shift in arrangement and a fairly big shift in sound. The instruments are thinner now, the guitars less bustling with fuzz and distortion, the drums less rumbling and redlined.
Everything has more space now, in an uncomfortably produced sense, allowing the songs to develop almost like the way The Beatles, Kinks, early Radiohead or ’90s-era Britpop bands did. Wand reveals here a similar sense of dreamlike melodies, something that was hidden behind the walls of distortion. To their credit, it spares them one of the most damning-with-faint-praise comments made of music in the garage mold that they worked in before, being that the aesthetic covered up typically bad songwriting. If nothing else, this record shows that Wand know the mechanics of songs, can construct memorable, deft and complex melodies, and can ornament and arrange those structures well.
There is the issue of cohesion, though. When these songs get cooking, they develop in similar directions: spare, thin guitar lines playing in counterpoint to one another, trapped somewhere between the King Crimson-isms of Slint and the psych-folk of the Byrds; drums and bass locked in simple motorik rhythm; keys bridging the gap between pure ornamentation and the central melodies. And, it must be said, when these tunes get cooking, it’s compelling stuff. The launching points span from Beatles-replay indie rock cliches to smart minimal post-punk to heady psychedelia, with little emotional logic to link the songs. Listen to “Charles de Gaulle” through to “White Cat” and try to find a common emotional thread. It isn’t there.
Which proves as frustrating as it does because when on tracks like “High Rise” (far too short at a scant two minutes for as fulfulling a riff it is!) and album standout “Blue Cloud,” Wand shows that this new configuration and songwriting approach can produce some exceptional song structures and incredible playing to complement them. This promising messiness is what makes Plum feel so much like a second debut rather than a fourth album, per se; given the fact that they took on a new second guitarist and added a whole new member in their keyboard player, not to mention totally shifting how they write and develop songs.
Plum ultimately is a record of a band finding their feet again. The bad news is it doesn’t come together and leave a fully satisfying record in their wake. The good news, however, is that they give themselves plenty of fertile ground here. “Blue Cloud,” as stated before, is easily the most successful song on the album. Record closer “Driving” is a Neil Young-style massive emotional closer, something I never would have imagined this band capable of before.
Psych-rock revivalists Allah-Las have long incorporated the shimmering guitar tones and sensuous pop hooks of the genre’s forebears into their own music, and they continue to wear their influences proudly with a new cover of George Harrison’s “Fish on the Sand,” .
The Los Angeles quartet recorded the song for their upcoming Covers #1 EP, the first in a series of EPs that will pay homage to their favorite classics as well as new tunes they discovered during recording sessions. Eschewing more obvious selections from Harrison’s early ’70s output — think All Things Must Pass cut “If Not for You” — the band chose to rework a track off the former Beatle’s more straightforward comeback album, 1987’s Cloud Nine.
“‘Fish on the Sand’ is an often overlooked gem from the Dark Horse’s Cloud Nine record and one that we felt could sound good produced with a more moody, B-side style,“ singer and guitarist Miles Michaud says. Indeed, the band strips the song of Jeff Lynne’s glossy production and re-imagines the track as a languid, late-’60s psych-rock exploration — not unlike The Beatles’ own work from the time.
There is so much to dig about the songwriter, where do we begin? The Los Angeles touring artist has made a name for herself in her band The Blank Tapesand we have a feeling she will explode into a larger musical consciousness with her debut solo album due out next year. She seamlessly weaves in and out of garage rock, dipping into ‘60’s pop, and even shows a small jazz sparkle that together, forms one of the hippest and most intriguing sounds we have heard this year. Sonically speaking, “Victim” transports us to a sun-drenched beach, but lyrically there is a personal meaning behind it. With the current state of the opioid epidemic and the recent death of her sister who struggled with addiction,
Bianqui felt compelled to write the track and donate 100% of proceeds to Harm Reduction Coalition. “I wrote this song when I started discovering how being emotionally co-dependent has negatively affected my life by creating a pattern of self-victimization. Now, to me, it represents the hope for addicts to escape from their cycle of addiction. I hope it serves as inspiration for addicts and their loved ones around the world that you can put your foot down and change—that you don’t have to be a victim, like my sister—and so many millions of others.
Suzie True are a, “sad girl three-piece pop band”, hailing from Los Angeles. While we’re pretty limited on their future plans, we do know they’re fronted by Bear Cats drummer Lexi McCoy and that’s enough of a reason to be pretty excited about them in our book.
This week the band have shared their debut single, Rat Kid, accompanied by a video shot by film-maker, and Lexi’s brother, Bobby McCoy. Lexi’s vocal, pitched somewhere between Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell and Diet Cig’s Alex Luciano, is accompanied by Dustyn Hiett’s propulsive drum beats, bright acoustic guitars and delightfully fuzzed out bass-lines. Early days, but if this slice of Californian indie-pop sunshine is anything to go by, Suzie True could just be our new favourite band.
The Fat Angel Sings 