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Hugh B

Live From The Gonsch

Not Not Fun

Live From The Gonsch showcases Sydney head (and O.T.I.S. label boss) Hugh Burridge aka Hugh B’s lesser known domestic dub mode, low-slung and low volume, tracked on headphones during hidden hours, often with his daughter strapped to his chest. The album’s eight cuts are built from rhythmic modular loops layered with snaky bass, swampy guitar, and occasional hazed vocals, dub-mixed to 2-track cassette through hand-built FX (Burridge runs a boutique delay pedal business). The mood throughout is loose, soupy, and slippery, shaded in echo and spring reverb, glimpsed through tall grass. The title alludes to Burridge’s recently retired Skylab radio show, “Mornings From The Gonsch,” which repped a spectrum of home recorded modes, from bedroom dub to hybrid new age to lost synth songcraft. Here he blends these muses into a woozy fusion all his own, dub-adjacent daydreams of time, money, stasis, and absence, hummed and half-heard beneath a bleached blue sky.

Class

If You've Got Nothing

Feel It

"The Artist works in a museum And that museum is rocknroll In a world of meme punk rockabilly grandads It’s the classicists that really have something to say. Straight lines, hooks, and a clear path to your heart. They might not be dbeat heart throbs But no one else can give you that feeling that you can hold on to a moment Like you are driving too fast down route 60 And it’s never going to end. In 20 years when you skulk the dark alleyways of wherever punk’s red fern grows, they won’t be talking about Dwight Twilley, the Looks, or the Nerves, they will be looking for a little CLASS." —Tobi Vail and Hayes Waring

White Poppy

Sound Of Blue

Not Not Fun

From the grey-skied isles and horse farms of British Columbia comes the second volume of Crystal Dorval aka White Poppy’s “Paradise Gardens” trilogy: Sound Of Blue. Originally conceived back in 2016, the album was then recorded, finessed, abandoned, resurrected, overdubbed, and finally mixed into nine refinements of daydream shoegaze and therapeutic pop, born from bedroom epiphanies and long winters of the heart. From slowdive reverie (“Apathy,” “Melancholic Serenity”) and color wheel psychedelia (“Time”) to spiral chorale (“Happy”) and finger-picked drift (“Wiser”), Dorval’s songcraft moves between escape and acceptance, tracing delicate melodies from undercurrents of loss, light, and solitude. It’s music for memory gardens and pastel horizons, dreaming of bliss and distance, but bound to the here and now: “Thinking about leaving here forever / thinking about leaving here for good / but I keep holding on for something / hoping that it could get better than this / what’s one more night?”

Alicja Pop

I'm Here I'm There / Not Gonna Be Dumb

Feel It

***Illustrious Memphian creative Alijca Trout (Sweet Knives, Lost Sounds, River City Tanlines) returns with a new single under her solo-slash-group venture, Alicja-Pop. Following in the haunting garage-pop reverberations of 2021's, "Howlin'", A-pop weave together a crisp double-A side of wistful r'n'r gold. "I'm Here I'm There" rides a driving rhythm beneath Trout's icy cool and confident layered vocals. Both propulsive and ethereal - stretching seamlessly to the flip, "Not Gonna Be Dumb", a euphoric dip into post-punk. Coated in synth and a piercing guitar lead, chants of "Time...it wa-a-a-aves you on" harmonize in a chilling finish to Alicja-Pop's latest slice of brilliance.

Ruin Lust

Dissimulant

20 Buck Spin

ON LIMITED BLACK / WHITE GALAXY VINYL!!! Having dropped their third album Choir Of Babel in early 2020 just before the world shut down, the forces of pandemic did not succeed in silencing NYC’s Ruin Lust for good. Though confined to their fallout bunker, the band, with martial fervor, began work on what has now, three years later, emerged as their fourth album Dissimulant. In the final phase of imperialist rot, Ruin Lust declares war against the festering delusions of a devolving species. The most withering aspects of modern death metal, grinding war metal and black metal’s more bestial tendencies compel this audial exorcism, poisoning the well like a bioweapon spread through open air, suffocating and contemptuous. By the time album closer “Chemical Wind” is done, all that remains are parched bones and desiccated shadows. Barbarically pestilent yet compositionally deliberate, Dissimulant casts a bitter pall and leaves an open wound on the death metal scene for 2023. A militant milestone in the Ruin Lust discography.

Leopardo

Solo Recordings 2019-2022

Feel It

"Tasked with creating the idyllic segues of Wes Anderson’s new reboot of The Shining, Romain Savary puts you in a box with a fox, a computer from 1998 and a bottle of port. It isn’t garden variety, it’s simply a garden; there are bulbous purples and meek yellow-oranges, and where they begin and end is anyone’s guess. It isn’t the pastoral Impressionism of the prior Leopardo LP, on which you can almost hear the sunshine, taste the mountain tops. Just as the Velvets often lived in the oblivion of sunbeams, Leopardo knows the finer things in life are quiet anticipation, rigorous conversation on a scenic drive, minneolas, gusts of wind. Like with the band Cheveu (remember?) you can’t help speculating on a film out of tunes like “Temperature”. There are people who enjoy reading Rimbaud on oceanic vacation as much as they like blowing lines off a washing machine in a Midwest winter basement, and this is for that type of lifer."—Brandon Gaffney

Single Bullet Theory

C. '79

Feel It

"My first image of Single Bullet Theory was a little oasis of attitude on a flatbed truck in an empty lot in conservative downtown Richmond, Virginia, during a music festival in 1977. I’d had enough of drunken preppies and good ole boys. I wanted a sound to match my mood. Single Bullet Theory was the right band for the moment. They didn’t sound like any band in town. They didn’t look like one either. The lead singer, alternating between guitar and sax, wore his dark hair Prince Valiant style, with a tailored white jacket and a large shiny saxophone pin on his lapel. They absolutely tore it up, and afterwards my ears rang for three days. The band had formed in 1976 from the ashes of Big Naptar, Crossbreed, and X-Breed, bands which had mixed cover songs and originals with a garage, punk feel. Their edgy style matched their origins in the bohemian art school culture of Richmond’s Fan District neighborhood in the 1970s, as a fresh wave of music flowed from New York and England brandishing an aggressive sound with a clever attitude to match. SBT took that sound further – loose, high energy and, with three guitars, loud. They made their name playing free warehouse parties and half-dollar cover shows at local bars. In early 1978 the band played at an art opening party for Andy Warhol at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the staid heart of Richmond. More than 6,500 people mobbed the place. This...

Fabricant

Drudge To The Thicket

Profound Lore

Bay Area technical death metal entity Fabricant leverages any musical tool for their riff and song fabrication. Speed, stillness, technicality, simplicity, consonance, dissonance—are all at play for the express purpose of telling the stories of humanity’s hubris, madness, and frailty. Fabricant glimpsed into this black vortex, extracted the raw materials of inspiration, and refined the chaos into the ten fully actualized death metal songs on their debut album Drudge To The Thicket. This album was Fabricant’s obsession: a forbidden riddle to solve. From its beginnings stretching as far back as their 2010 demo and to its ultimate end, this album inhabited the deepest recesses of their minds as an omnipresent consumer of thought. With the arrival of this debut, the band frees themselves of this thicket. The battle was hard-won, but the next ones inexorably begin. From new obsessions to delirium to the mundane, consciousness marches onwards, screaming out at all of existence for answers, only to feebly fall on deaf ears. Descend into the chaos with Fabricant.

Leimer, K.

Spall

Palace Of Lights

Write. Record. Break. Recategorize. Reassemble. In K. Leimer’s most recent work, he returns to his long-running interest in developing relationships in sound that are not composed, not planned, not under conscious influence or control. Phrases and patterns emerge from dense layering and editing; melodic elements are split apart, re-voiced and reset in successive contexts. A music of distressed fragments, Spall originates from acoustic, electric, synthesized, manipulated, torn, and piece-work audio that combines into complex, layered, and flowing pieces of unexpected turns and contrasts. Modified, melted, and shaped into shifting sonic environments that fuse the clear signal with the distorted, the recognizable with ambiguous, Spall is music mined from an abandoned quarry.

Gutteridge, Peter

Pure

Superior Viaduct

In the swirl of underground music emerging from Dunedin, New Zealand in the 1980s, Peter Gutteridge stands as one of the era’s most intense and shadowy figures. Despite being a founding member of The Clean and The Chills, Gutteridge would eschew indie-rock fame for the hypnotic and driving sounds of his later bands such as Snapper. Fittingly, it is Pure—Gutteridge’s lone solo album of intimate home recordings—that serves as the most revealing and celebrated release of his career. As Peter Jefferies writes in the liner notes, “That’s what’s so good about Pure. Not only the songs, but the name, the name for the recording. It is as pure as you can get. That’s the real deal, when it goes from nothing to something and he catches it on his machine.” Originally released on cassette in 1989 on Xpressway, Pure documents Gutteridge’s stunning use of 4-track as instrument. Featuring lo-fi pop gems and interstitial sketches, the LP combines densely layered keyboards and guitars, distorted drum machines and possessed-sounding vocals to create a truly singular work of undistilled artistic vision. While Gutteridge denied that he was the architect of the “Dunedin Sound,” Pure sits comfortably next to the most revered Flying Nun releases of its time. Shifting exquisitely from churning rattle to an airy ease without losing momentum, these twenty-one songs hold a lasting place in the canon of DIY music. Recommended for fans of Syd Barrett, Jim Shepard and early Fad Gadget. Includes drawing chosen by Peter’s family.

Consensus Madness

s/t

Iron Lung

***Seven scratchy punk gems channeling a thing in which disaffected youth and energetic misfits alike can rally against the snow-soaked blandness of the Illinoian city they inhabit. Running the gamut from the proto-punk mayhem of DV8 to the early hardcore toughness of The Effigies and from the sinister outsider art of The Tyrades to the comparatively sophisticated Plasmatics. A thrilling statement of middle-finger intensity and rule smashing iconoclasm. Consensus Madness skirts the edges of chaos and good taste, holding a mirror up to society’s ugly underbelly. “They’re good, bratty fun.”—Paul R.

Dank Goblins

Fruity Cigars

Iron Lung

***DANK GOBLINS' debut Fruity Cigars is a drowsy instrumental hip-hop collaboration featuring West Bay all stars LUKE SICK, FRANK MARCHI and ANDRES WADE with DJ EONS in the mastermind position. Using primarily live instrumentation and only a few samples for splash of color, Eons has crafted a wholly unique amalgamation of unsettling atmosphere and grimy beats chilled to bone with a creeping darkness that will leave you shivering with the paranoia of your future crumbling around you while the world around you get swallowed in the name of progress. ”Highly” recommended.

Hatred Surge

Horrible Mess 2005-2007

Iron Lung

***Pulverizing grindcore meets raging powerviolence perfection. Need we say more? Horrible Mess collects everything Hatred Surge recorded between 2005 and 2007. This is the first time these tracks have been available on vinyl since they were originally released.

LBB

Drippy

Iron Lung

***Turbarum is Latin for turba, meaning stir, disturbance, tumult, uproar or trouble. Ostraca are potsherds (a broken piece of ceramic material) used for writing. Almost all found in Greece are incised; in Athens they were used particularly in voting in ostracism. The sounds carved into the flesh of Drippy are about as easy to describe as training a dog to understand the intricacies of quantum physics. They are etherial and violent, welcoming and forbidden, attractive and alienating. Drippy is an journey to a new world fraught with unknown dangers and ancient treasures. Dig responsibly.

Luke Sick & Wolfagram

Garshas

Iron Lung

***The titans meet again in the second collaboration between Toronto's Wolfagram, who is steadily becoming a household name in the production game working with the likes of Falcon Outlaw, God Is War, garbageface... and Luke Sick, the most known unknown and epically prolific rapper from deep West Bay CA. A real west meets east kind of beast that rolls up and smokes neat.

P.S.Y.W.A.R.

Defcon

Iron Lung

***Furious militaristic hardcore that sounds like napalm falling on a bomb factory. Defcon twists the screws on a world where lasting peace is a fantasy and people are in constant battle with inner demons and external devils. At best we can hope for brief reprieves between clashes. Man will not survive this endeavor. In fact, neither did P.S.Y.W.A.R. as they are no longer an active entity. R.I.P.

Stress Positions

Walang Hiya

Iron Lung

***“I somehow missed that the Chicago hardcore punks C.H.E.W. broke up, but if we get Stress Positions out of the deal, I ain't mad about it. Stephanie Brooks now fronts the ex-C.H.E.W. dudes, but it's not a cut and paste job—where C.H.E.W. relied on speed and swagger, Stress Positions wide-screens the pit's psychedelic vista. There's a little more metal riffage and mid-tempo tension to maximize the intensity so that, once the band revs to hallucinatory level, the impact is devastating.”—Lars Gotrich

Great Falls

Objects Without Pain

Neurot Recordings

Read any article or comment thread about the Seattle noise-rock outfit GREAT FALLS and you're likely to see descriptors like cathartic, heavy, crushing, and unhinged. Maybe even psychotic. And sure, those are all apt: For over a decade, vocalist/guitarist Demian Johnston and bassist Shane Mehling (who also played together in the early-2000s noisecore band PLAYING ENEMY and the experimental duo HEMINGWAY) have honed their sludgy, overwhelmingly intense brand of heaviness, punctuated by delectably discordant riffs, terrifyingly low, thwacking bass lines, and mesmerizingly tight percussion. In the live setting, too, they’re notorious for a stage presence that is so aggressively confrontational and menacing that Mehling once broke his own arm mid-set. But the most striking aspect of GREAT FALLS, setting them apart from the murky sea of sludge metal and AmRep-inspired noise-rock bands, is their ability to paint a deeply, utterly human story through an all-out assault on the senses: an art the band has perfected on their fourth full-length album OBJECTS WITHOUT PAIN, out September 15 via NEUROT RECORDINGS. The album is not only their NEUROT debut, but also the first LP featuring drummer Nickolis Parks (GAYTHEIST, BASTARD FEAST), who joined the band prior to the release of their exhilarating, cacophonous 2023 EP, FUNNY WHAT SURVIVES. OBJECTS WITHOUT PAIN takes us on a bleak, purgative journey through a separation – a snapshot of the turmoil and indecision that occurs after the initial realization of someone's misery, and before the ultimate decision to end a decades-long partnership. From the foreboding intro...

Salmon, Kim & The Surrealists

Rantings From The Book Of Swamp

In The Red

In the Red Records will proudly present the U.S. edition of Rantings from the Book of Swamp, the freewheeling eighth studio release by Australia’s magnificent and unpredictable Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, as a two-LP. The Surrealists were formed by the Scientists’ singer-songwriter-guitarist Kim Salmon in 1987, betwixt the last two tours by the original incarnation of that pathfinding Perth-bred band. The Surrealists had been dormant in recent years, as the bandleader focused his energy on recording and touring with a reunited lineup of the Scientists featuring guitarist Tony Thewlis, bassist Boris Sujdovic, and drummer Leanne Cowie, who had recorded the career-summarizing 1986 LP Weird Love. (In 2021, In the Red issued Negativity, a new album by that unit, to wide acclaim.) In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown settled around the globeSalmon reconvened with bassist/baritone guitarist Stu Thomas and drummer Phil Collings, who had appeared on the Surrealists’ 2010 release Grand Unifying Theory, the group’s most recent record. As with that work, the new material was created live on the studio floor, and emphasized improvisation in both its structure and content. “The premise for this recording,” Salmon explains, “was that at its commencement the band members would come prepared with no other material than whatever ideas they might be able to individually bring. The lyrical content was all derived from my notebooks (Book of Swamp) from sketches I’d been jotting down over the last couple of years. There was to be no consultation about musical forms until the event...

Sprout, Tobin

Demos And Outtakes Two

Persona Non Grata

Former Guided By Voices guitarist and co-songwriter Tobin Sprout presents Demos And Outtakes Two, a collection of unreleased demos, live recordings and alternate versions of songs from throughout his career. Including songs from his first solo album Carnival Boy (1997) to his latest Empty Horses (2020), it also contains two remastered songs from hard-to-find compilation albums, “Cryptic Shapes” (1998) and “Small Parade” (1997), as well as piano versions of GBV favorites “14 Cheerleader Coldfront” and “Atom Eyes.”

Woods

Perennial

Woodsist

***AVAILABLE ON LIMITED WHITE VINYL!!! “Woods are in bloom again, inviting you to disappear into a new spectrum of colors and sounds and dreams on Perennial. “Formed in Brooklyn in 2004, Woods have matured into a true independent institution, above and below the root, reliably emerging every few years with new music that grows towards the latest sky. Operating the Woodsist label since 2006 and curating the beloved homespun Woodsist Festival for the musical universe they’ve built, Perennial is the sound of a band on the edge of their 20th anniversary and still finding bold new ways to sound like (and challenge) themselves. “Perennial grew from a bed of guitar / keyboard / drum loops by Woods head-in-chief Jeremy Earl, a form of winter night meditation that evolved into an unexplored mode of collaborative songwriting. With Earl’s starting points, he and bandmates Jarvis Taveniere and John Andrews convened, first at Earl’s house in New York, then at Panoramic House studio in Stinson Beach, California, site of sessions for 2020’s Strange To Explain. With a view of the sparkling Pacific and tape rolling, they began to build, jamming over the loops, switching instruments, and developing a few dozen building blocks. “The album’s resulting eleven songs, four of them instrumental, are in the classic Woods mode—shimmering, familiar, fractionally unsettling—but with the half-invisible infinity boxes of Earl’s loops burbling beneath each like a mysterious underground source. From source to seed to bloom, each loop unfolds into something unpredictable, from the jeweled...

Sonny & The Sunsets

Self Awareness Through Macrame

Rocks In Your Head

“My parents were living in Bolinas when i was born. this was the early 70’s. there was alot of weaving, ceramics, banjo playing and this kind of thing back then. My mom said the other day she had developed a course, to be taught at the Bolinas community center, 'Self-Awareness Through Macrame'. i said ‘oh, thats interesting, do you keep in touch with any of the students?’ she said ‘no, no one signed up’. that made me laugh.” "This record was mostly made during the pandemic, in a few masked sessions. The songs came about organically with Josiah Flores, Ava Lynch, just playing around in the pandemic with no agenda. Tahlia Harbour and Rusty Miller appeared later on most tracks and then a few other friends sprinkled around towards the end." "Waiting came about watching my teen age son during the pandemic, waiting in his room for something to change. He was sewing a lot, making garments. I began to imagine he was sewing an outfit he would wear when he would leave this weird dystopian planet, when a UFO came down and helped all the teenagers escape the dumpster planet we’ve made. Shadows was also about the pandemic, and imagining our shadows to be our friends from another realm, always sticking by our side, up until death. City Life came out of moving to the country during the record. When I would visit the city it took on a new feeling, it felt more like a sci-fi landscape, and...

Shine Grooves

Watching The Breeze

100% Silk

Yekaterinburg musician Andrey Kurokhtin operates in intertwined capacities – producer, engineer, synth and drum machine technician, label boss (of hand-stamped “non-commercial music” imprint Hanagasumi), electronica shopkeeper – but his passions collide in the microcosmic reveries of Shine Grooves. Watching The Breeze collects 13 cuts composed across a decade of activity for an expansive portrait of the project’s signature chemistry of minimalist rhythms and whispered emotion. Woozy, windswept, and flecked with grit, the tracks zoom in and out of delicate flux, triangulating liquid acid, deprivation chamber house, and the outer reaches of dub techno. Hints of Kompakt, Basic Channel, and glitched radio transmissions flicker in its ether, but ultimately WTB maps a groove shinier and more scattered, lost blossoms from a life behind the lights, attuned to the invisible.

C.O.F.F.I.N

Australia Stops

Goner

Australia Stops was recorded in January 2023 at The Pet Food Factory studio with producer Jason Whalley (Frenzal Rhomb) behind the desk. A record that showcases a collection of diverse and gripping new works that highlight the band’s evolution into more melodious, 1970s Australiana and boogie rock and roll. Frenzied, high-voltage guitars, thumping rhythms, flowing melody and clever, captivating lyrics exhibit an undeniable progression in composition and songwriting, while still unmistakably the C.O.F.F.I.N that fans worldwide have come to worship. For those who are no strangers to the Australian highways, Australia Stops may be best recognized as words donned on the back of truck mudflaps. To C.O.F.F.I.N, Australia Stops are words that became a polysemous idea and observation on Australian society, culture, art, politics and progression. “When the city burns up you get out, when the flint hits shot you get down,” lyrics roared by Ben Portnoy, a look into “idle-Australia,” the government action (or lack thereof) to social issues and the overarching notion of fear of change in this country. While the theme Australia Stops poses political questions and ideals, it also synchronously shines light on the eminence of community, the healthy beating heart of art and music, the beautiful landscapes and divergent nature surroundings held dear within Australia. With this, Australia Stops is neither a fully positive or negative elucidation of the country. It is a celebration of the things the citizens are lucky to have, while always trying to encourage and inspire those around them...

Smug Brothers

In The Book Of Bad Ideas

Anyway

Since forming in 2004, Ohio rock band Smug Brothers have enjoyed a relaxed, almost nonchalant, approach to writing and recording, with most albums being minor Big Bangs - instant and electric. New LP In the Book of Bad Ideas, on the other hand, was a struggle against entropy - the disorder caused by plagues and departing personnel. Singer, guitarist, and songwriter Kyle Melton wrote the majority of the tunes in "bunker fashion" during the miserable pandemic summer of 2020, then slowly started recording them with bassist Kyle Sowash, lead guitarist Scott Tribble, and drummer/Smug Brothers co-pilot Don Thrasher in 2021. That November, his contributions partially completed, Tribble decamped the band due to a new job and new demands. The exit was amicable, yet left the group in a lead guitar lurch. Melton had little choice but to enter the ring and play solos on some songs. "That was both fun and frustrating," Melton admits. "Other than a handful of tracks over 15 years, I've not really done much lead playing with Smug Brothers. When Scott left, I was initially like 'Great. What now?' It took me a few weeks to psyche myself up to just go for it." Finally, belatedly, both In the Book of Bad Ideas and its sister EP Emerald Lemonade were finished in the spring of 2022. And against the odds, the two-year slog produced pleasantly surprising results. On In the Book of Bad Ideas, the band's typical, semi-60s sound - boasting biting leads and breakneck jangles...

Optic Sink

Glass Blocks

Feel It

***Expanding on the magnetic, minimalist post-punk frontier first chartered on their 2020 Goner debut, Optic Sink return with their second album, Glass Blocks. Hot on the heels of their recent EP on Spacecase Records, the Memphis trio of Natalie Hoffmann, Ben Bauermeister, and Keith Cooper ventured out to Lawrence, Kansas to record at the home studio of Caufield Schnug (Sweeping Promises). The resulting seven originals and a rendition of LiLiPUT's A Silver Key Can Open An Iron Lock, Somewhere define Optic Sink and their remarkable style with a clarity and power seldom realized in a studio setting. Hoffmann and Bauermeister command the high end of the mix with a gamut of perfectly dialed synth and percussive tones while Cooper's bass serves as rhythmic anchor. There's far more to dive into, whether it's the cold, driving beat of "Modelesque" or the minimal, percussive brilliance heard on "Glass Blocks". Perhaps the best part of the formula is the sheer amount of natural energy that gleams through the mix. Like a warm refraction of musical chemistry and originality, Optic Sink have struck gold with Glass Blocks.

Sloppy Heads

Sometimes Just One Second

Shrimper

Sometimes Just One Second is the second record by the Sloppy Heads. The fourteen tracks that make up the new record invite one to open their third ear to a world of kaleidoscopic slop-rock, by turns noisy, tender, layered, fast, slow, vibey, luxurious, concise, and over the top. With thirteen originals and one universe-folding cover of the Grateful Dead’s “New Speedway Boogie,” each represents a new and vivid musical adventure for the Sloppies, a trio consisting of Ariella Stok, Bill the Drummer, and Jimmy Jumpjump. It also represents a new milestone in a discography of low-key hand-made cassettes, CDRs, 7-inches, flexies, and compilation appearances. Having recorded their full-length debut Useless Smile (Shrimper, 2016) in their Headsquarters practice pad, Sometimes Just One Second represents the trio’s first extended trip with a proper studio and all its charms. Recorded and mixed by Gary Olson (Ladybug Transistor) at his Marlborough Farms in leafy Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, the three Sloppies are once again joined by auxiliary Head and spiritual advisor James McNew (Dump, Yo La Tengo), who glows across all fourteen album tracks. Formed in 2009 and gracing the stages of New York’s finest DIY rock palaces ever since, the Sloppy Heads are situated in their own personal underground, happily floating through a self-defined dream of an uncluttered and hassle-free musical life. CD front cover by immortal punk / psychedelic artist Gary Panter (Jimbo, Crashpad, Slash, Pee Wee’s Playhouse), and a back cover collaboration between Jimmy Jumpjump and Sesame Street / CTW animator Al...

Kelly, Nora Band

Rodeo Clown

Mint

Nora Kelly Band’s first full-length album Rodeo Clown roams the range of country-inflected styles–slow burners to foot stompers—but a theme ties it together. The painted smile of the clown, says band leader Kelly, is something she can relate to in some ways she likes–and others she is working to overcome. “We all know that a clown’s role is to act goofy and make their audience laugh, but underneath we have no idea how they are really feeling. I can relate,” shares Kelly. “I can be too much of a people pleaser, too worried about putting others at ease even when I’m not smiling inside. It’s something I’m working hard to move past, and a lot of the songs on this album reference, in some way, that journey I’m on to break those habits and stand up for myself.” Kelly is quick to point out that just as many songs on the album are joyous and fun, embracing her authentic inner clown who laughs and winks at life’s absurdities. “In my previous punk band, DISHPIT, we’d do crazy stunts in our performances, like walking the drummer through the crowd on a dog leash or spraying them with fake blood. I played all sorts of characters in the lyrics of those songs. And you’ll meet a bunch more in the Nora Kelly Band songs.” From blazing bangers to mysterious moments of beauty and intrigue, the ten songs on Rodeo Clown offer a winding ride towards an inner horizon. Nora Kelly lyrics suggest...

Corker

Falser Truths

Feel It

***From a city quickly gaining steam as a minor post-punk mecca, Corker emerge from the Cincinnati underground with their debut full length, Falser Truths. Corker are the proverbial fly in the ointment—soaking up every glorious facet of the past while swirling new thoughts and sounds into one highly engaging debut. Corker were first introduced to popular consciousness with 2021's A Bell That Seems To Mourn on Cincinnati's own Future Shock Recordings, headed by Dakota Carlyle (Crime Of Passing, The Drin, The Serfs). Following several tours of the Midwest and surrounds, Corker began recording Falser Truths in 2022—the same year Feel It Records transplanted their operations to Cincinnati. What seems like an almost-inevitable partnership began with Feel It issuing the 'Lice' single just as 2023 arrived. Paired with eight additional tracks recorded and mixed just over the Kentucky line at The Lodge with John Hoffman, Falser Truths is not only intelligent, but bold, charismatic, and free. There's little restriction to Corker's formula—whether they're lifting latent fingerprints of the post-punk past, rendering landscapes of Industrial wasteland, or bending rhythm and tone with Krautish ambition—the end result is resoundingly original. Genre purists be damned! Corker stand apart from their contemporaries on Falser Truths—an album realized by a fresh set of eyes and ears, driven far beyond the earthly bounds of now.

Sprain

The Lamb As Effigy

Flenser

Since its formation in 2018 by like-minded Calarts students Alex Kent (guitar, vocals), April Gerloff (bass), and Sylvie Simmons (guitar), as well as the recent addition of Clint Dodson (percussionist), Los Angeles-based quartet Sprain has honed its signature flavor of experimentalism to a razor-fine point. Gradually moving from twisting conventions in its early works of minimalist slowcore to now transcending the confines of genre altogether, Sprain’s evolution over the past several years has encouraged the band to embrace a sound true to its muse. With its latest record, The Lamb As Effigy or Three Hundred And Fifty XOXOXOS For A Spark Union With My Darling Divine, the band has translated this intent into an ambitious work that pairs its resplendent scale with uncompromising honesty towards the band’s artistic and conceptual essences. The most extraordinary of art isn’t created without its fair share of trials, of which Sprain faced numerous during the recording process of The Lamb As Effigy, with the sum and circumstances of them nearly sealing the album’s fate in limbo. With obstacles including session reschedulings as a result of a line-up change and a major studio electrical failure at the last possible moment, a mixing process that demanded the organization of several years of material across four separate studios, and the recording of the actual songs pushing the members of Sprain to their own physical limits, there were several times where the band considered scrapping the whole thing altogether. But Sprain persevered, applying the knowledge and willpower...

Jacob Aranda

War Planes

Speakeasy Studios SF

Jacob Aranda is a Mexican American Bay Area singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, luthier and member of Bay Area psych-folk group Tarnation. His new album War Planes is his second solo album. Aranda’s first solo full-length album, Great Highway (2018), was described by critics as “timeless” (KWMR), “full of beautiful, mellow countryscapes” (Bay Bridged), and “charming, warm and melancholic, with elements and influences that range from classic country to Southwestern-influenced folk” (Sound Thread). Born and raised in a Latino household in rural Illinois, the culture of Aranda’s upbringing and the necessary resourcefulness of rural living birthed in him an artistic desire to express himself through music. While his first album was an expression of hopelessness and longing, War Planes is fundamentally an album about healing intergenerational trauma and doing so through art. The album feels like a next chapter with elements of rebirth and reflection. Songs of hope, such as “Sing A Song, Say A Prayer” and “Glass Building” demonstrate movement forward, while tracks such as “Dream Of Mexico” and the title track “War Planes” represent a way to look back into underlying issues and the inherited trauma that had once made Aranda feel so alone. Produced and engineered by Desmond Shea (Tarnation, The Court And Spark) at SF’s legendary Hyde Street Studios, War Planes features the talents of friends and Tarnation bandmates, Paula Frazer (bass, vocals), David Cuetter (pedal steel), Sam Berman (drums), Patrick Main (piano, vocals), and Meryl Theo Press (vocals). Also joining the sessions were musicians Alisa Rose...

Cowboys, The

Sultan of Squat

Feel It

***Everybody’s here, so let’s play ball! Tried and true rock n' roll stalwarts The Cowboys return after a brief hiatus with their delightful sixth LP, Sultan of Squat. This grounded yet adventurous new album marks the reunion of the original lineup, featuring Keith Harman (vocals/keys), Mark McWhirter (Guitar), Zackery Worcel (Bass), and Jordan Tarantino (drums). It is nothing short of a glorious return to form, a long player hoping to bring a smile to the ears of listeners. Sultan of Squat furthers the band's trajectory into themselves, polishing off thirteen songs filled with dubious characters, whimsical retreats, and even the odd love song. As with previous releases, The Cowboys refuse to make their bed in any single genre. Lead track, “The Sultan of Squat'' opens the album with an earworm salute to America’s pastime while lofting a lyrical curveball of dark, defeated humor. The boys kick it into high gear, playing with the finesse and dexterity ten years as a band instills. It's automatic - whether they're launching into classic Midwestern garage punk (“Raining Sour Grapes”), dialing things back to piano-driven power pop (“Token Drifter”), or western slide guitar pop-rock ballads ("She's Not Your Baby Anymore"), The Cowboys are simply incredible across “Sultan of Squat”. This could well be The Cowboys' finest hour as a group, and six albums in—that's no easy feat. The best of the Midwest is back under the bright lights, pouring collective blood, sweat, and tears into a sound equal parts then and now. LP includes...

Retail Simps, Tha

Live On Cool Street

Total Punk

***After countless hours of data driven market research it was determined that the wild success of the first Retail Simps album , “Reverberant Scratch” was 82.6% due to the cheeky and iconic album cover, as such the group was faced with a dilemma. Using focus groups funded by the Center for Odd Human Behaviour (COHB), the group surmised that the man pictured on said cover, none other than Montreal born chanteur Joe Chamandi, reminded the typical unsophisticated commoner of their ner’e do well uncle, and it is this sense of uncanny familiarity that drove people to purchase the record. Upon first needle drop it was revealed to house an abhorrent and obfuscatingly decrepit take on roots rock. Armed with this keen analytical knowledge, the band and their creative team harnessed the boundless marketability of the Trashmen, Dancing Cigarettes and 2 Live Crew to adorn their new disc with an equally palatable and deceptive frontal armour, provoking the straight laced garage rocker of yore to pay the price of entry. Once the branding and visual identity of this little package invited potential listeners in, they were met with incorrigible confusion. You see, after being pigeonholed by the punk paparazzi as a lowly party band, the Simps were tasked with driving home their knack for fervent versatility. This new record captures a group, in the clutches of maturity, boasting their emotional depth, triumphant chops and humble servitude to the trade of rock n roll clowning. Recalling the double speak of VU’s murder...

Vangas

s/t

Chunklet

Vangas has been a four piece based in Atlanta for a while now. Since they were all in high school, these friends have played their own music. Careening between moody, aggressive and melodic, Vangas have been a marvel to witness as they mature from teenagers into young men. Musically, they've become a force to admire. Live performances can vacillate between new jams and complete improv and all of it is lovely to experience. And here we stand, Vangas first vinyl full length. Four of these tracks were on limited lathe singles (also released by Chunklet), but for the first time, an outside engineer was allowed to mix and master Vangas' home recordings. Dan Dixon (Dropsonic, PLSPLS, producer of local acclaim) came in and whipped these tracks into the fury that rests before your feet. So behold. Vangas.

Osees

Intercepted Message

In The Red

“A pop record for tired times. Sugared with bits of shatterproof glass to put more crack in your strap. At long last, verse / chorus. A weathered thesaurus. This is OSEES bookend sound. Early grade garage pop meets proto-synth punk suicide-repellant. Have a whack at the grass or listen while flat on your ass. Heaps of electronic whirling accelerants to gum up your cheapskate broadband. Social media toilet scrapers unite! Allow your 24-hour news cycle eyes to squint at this smiling abattoir doorman. You can find your place here at long last. All are welcome from the get go to the finale…a distant crackling transmission of 80s synth last-dance-of-the-night tune for your lost loves. Suffering from Politic amnesia? Bored of AI-generated pop slop? Then this one is for you, our friends. Wasteland wanderer, stick around. Love y’all. For fans of Teutonic synth punk and Thee Oh Sees (who the fuck are they?)" —John Dwyer

Guided By Voices

Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

Scat

***ON LIMITED CLEAR YELLOW VINYL!!! Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia was Guided By Voices’ third album, self-released by the band in 1988 in a pressing of 500. While both of the band’s earlier albums exhibit strong songwriting and plenty of vision, it is here that the GBV sound really begins to coalesce. While Devil Between My Toes is rife with contrasts, variety, and dark psychedelia, and its follow up Sandbox is a cohesive ’60s-influenced affair, Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia marries the two approaches to outstanding effect. Unsurprisingly, recording began before Sandbox was even done pressing. These sessions would yield an aborted LP titled Learning To Hunt, but after personnel changes and second thoughts, Robert Pollard shelved most of the tracks, dismissing them as too similar to those on Sandbox. Fair enough, as many of Pollard’s more recent songs were simply on another level than previously. Here are the first of the classic Pollard slow-burners, often built on a simple melodic or rhythmic figure that circles itself ever outward, accumulating heft, variation, and inevitability as the song evolves into something unexpected yet inevitable. It’s the aural equivalent to watching a butterfly grow out of its cocoon. A few things are unique to this particular LP. Original powerhouse drummer Peyton Eric returns for nearly half the tracks, while engineer and lead guitarist Steve Wilbur shines at his brightest, resulting in some of the most thoroughly rocking GBV songs to ever be cut to lacquer, such as “Earful o’ Wax,” which simply explodes out of...

Infinite River

Space Mirror

Birdman

“The band is comprised of four badasses of Michigan underground sound: Gretchen Gonzales (Universal Indians, Slumber Party, Terror At The Opera), Warren Defever (His Name Is Alive, ESP Beetles), Joey Mazzola (Detroit Cobras, Sponge, Sugarcoats), and special guest Steve Nistor (Sparks, Ural Thomas, Seedsmen To The World). The instrumental combo has already played in London, the Bay Area (where they accompanied some of Harry Smith’s “Early Abstraction” films), and to packed houses in Detroit. Their debut, Prequel (Birdman) released at the start of 2023, received many fine notices; this album was recorded at the same time and in the same home studio in Birmingham, Michigan. “Space Mirror is so good. Each unnamed track flows into the next. It’s subtle, often quiet, and beautiful, to be sure. But it’s expansive and hard to pin down. Part of the reason is that the Michigan way is all-out. You can’t get on the smallest stage here without fully committing. That’s why we not only gave you the single best album of the peak rock era (rhymes with “pun mouse”), but the mind-melding depths of Emeralds (to use two Ann Arbor reference points). This here is an Infinite River, after all: We have the perfectly crafted harmonic noise guitar stylings of Gretchen Gonzales. And the expert drone of Warren Defever on tambura and harmonium. Steve Nistor’s percussion veers from imperceptible to all-encompassing. And Mazzola is such an adept stylist that it’s easy to mistake his emotive slide guitar work here for a full-on...

Godthrymm

Distortions

Profound Lore

British epic doom metallers Godthrymm (featuring members once involved in such luminaries as My Dying Bride, Anathema, Vallenfyre, and Solstice) return with their new album, Distortions. The follow-up to 2020’s widely-lauded Reflections shows the Halifax-based quartet of Hamish Glencross (guitars / vocals), Catherine Glencross (keyboards / vocals), “Sasquatch” Bob Crolla (bass), and Shaun “Winter” Taylor-Steels (drums) elegantly expanding upon their sound and vision. With tracks like “Follow Me,” featuring former My Dying Bride compatriot Aaron Stainthorpe, “Echoes,” and “Devils,” Distortions advances Godthrymm into the hallowed halls of the genre they adore to death. “I absolutely wanted to create a much more layered and complex arrangement in the sound,” says Godthrymm’s Hamish Glencross. “Totally amping up the contrasts to the extreme—the light shines brighter, and the darker depths are vast trenches. There is a lot more harmony and melancholy for much of it, but also some slab-heavy riffing, too. We wanted a total progression in the production and more class and clarity in the sound, as opposed to Reflections, which could get quite dense in tone.” Distortions is the second part of Glencross’ Visions trilogy—the third part, Projections, is already in the works. Throughout its seven-track, hour-long expanse, Godthrymm’s sophomore effort delves deeper into the despondent march of post-pandemic singles “Chasm” and “In Perpetuum,” the latter released exclusively on Decibel Magazine’s Decibel Flexi Series in 2022. Glencross’ emotionally-charged vocals pair perfectly with his towering riffs and thoughtful, crestfallen harmonies. The rhythmic foundation of Crolla and Taylor-Steels is absolutely critical to Glencross’...

Lady Lamb

In The Mammoth Nothing Of The Night

Ba Da Bing!

A decade on from the release of Ripely Pine, Lady Lamb’s Aly Spaltro has created the definitive 5xLP box set to commemorate and expand upon her landmark debut. With the original songs remastered, Ten Years Of Ripely Pine also includes three LPs of newly recorded studio material, produced and arranged by Spaltro and mixed by original co-producer Nadim Issa. It captures the time, mood, art and ambition of Aly Spaltro in her early twenties, who had already accumulated years of playing and self-recording experience before laying down tracks for this giant of a debut record, and the sage wisdom of a decade’s experience.

Party Milk

Your Problem As A Mountain

Teenbeat

Party Milk is the duo of Mark Robinson and Trevor Kampmann. They have been recording together for almost two decades and this new albums contains 35 songs of pop experimentalism on one single vinyl LP. Mark Robinson was a founding member of the bands Unrest, Air Miami, Flin Flon, Grenadine, Cotton Candy, and more. He founded the seminal Teenbeat indie label while in high school in 1984 in Washington, DC. They have released music by bands such as Versus, Gastr Del Sol, The Feminine Complex, Stereolab, Luna, Tuscadero, and countless others. Trevor Kampmann began making music under the name See Saw in the 1990s on the Simple Machines label, and has since recorded over 12 albums under the name hollAnd. He has worked on countless recordings for bands such as Explosions in the Sky, Cat Power, The Rondelles, and Flin Flon (whose song 'Floods' became the theme for CNN's Anderson Cooper 360). Kampmann has collaborated with photographer Mark Borthwick and has produced music for avant-garde fashion designers Martin Margiela and Zero by Maria Cornejo. In 2011, they released an anonymous LP under the name Fang Wizard called “Pure Hex.”