Drag City   Page 3

Jackie Lynn

Jacqueline

Drag City

***Not so long ago... in the long winter of 2016–2017. The debut of JACKIE LYNN. It was a year of bright lights and alien love, and an undercurrent of undisguised tension too. It fed the music, what can you say. Then suddenly one night, one gig was just the last. For awhile. Until now. Now it’s a new year beginning, and Jacqueline is the album of that year, bringing Jackie fully back in front of us, larger than life, her arms reaching out farther into the glittering darkness than before. Jacqueline finds Jackie Lynn down the road apiece, having broken in and out of the glare of American days and nights. A casino queen in Missouri now, a stranger in a short black dress in Odessa tomorrow—another track, another rich slice of the life for our femme long-haul truck driver. Each one flowing with the white-hot bursts of NEW as it unfurls itself around her. Jacqueline blooms expansively from the synthetic rhythms of her debut, blowing up their bone structure with bigger stakes in sight. Jackie Lynn, comprised of COOPER CRAIN, ROB FRYE and DAN QUINLIVAN of BITCHIN BAJAS and HALEY FOHR of CIRCUIT DES YEUX, approached the material as a group, drawing together the journey over time, inspired collectively to find the right notes, sounds and settings to open the landscape for Jackie—and alter it inexorably.

No Age

Goons Be Gone

Drag City

***Goons Be Gone, NO AGE's number 2 record for Drag City, kicks into gear, takes you out west and gets some dirt on it, with what’s possible their most honed in and direct record yet. A guitar/drums duo (RANDY RANDALL and drummer/vocalist DEAN SPUNT) with a penchant for self-recorded samples, No Age are mostly unconcerned with things like space or pause, and Goons Be Gone is gorgeously thick—a hazy, delirious expanse that’s both comforting and disorienting. Listening to Goons Be Gone, it’s hard to comprehend how just two people can manage to make so much noise while still sounding so subdued and mysterious—it’s easier to imagine Randall and Spunt spewing these songs underwater, bursting forth from some colossal California quarry rather than a tiny, stuffy art space a few blocks from L.A.’s skid row. Goons Be Gone is so cacophonous, so fertile, and so ripe with sound that parsing out the samples and effects and various layers of guitar is nearly impossible.

Batoh, Masaki

Smile Jesus Loves You

Drag City

***MASAKI BATOH's solo career continues to rise up with his 5th solo album, and second in the last two years, Smile Jesus Loves YOU. As long time listeners of GHOST and THE SILENCE are well aware, Batoh’s music is of the world and for the world... it exists as part of the conundrum of the world, for us to hear and form thought or feeling. We have no way of knowing it, other than to listen. The defiance of a fixed notion in Batoh’s world and music is made clear, as with the ambiguities of last year’s mortality meditation Nowhere, by the title of his new album. This shouldn’t be taken at face value. It might be a politically bitter statement. It might not be political at all, in this time of insane corrupt leaders who clearly believe in nothing except what they can use. It is a question for anyone who believes, or doesn’t believe. Listeners must come up with their own understanding, based on their own sentiment and where they find themselves in their evolving form. Following the mostly solitary activity of making Nowhere, Batoh has invited several guests to play with him for parts of Smile Jesus Loves YOU. Like family members, collaborators from The Silence and Ghost make guest appearances, including, for two songs, ex-Ghost and legendary percussionist HIROYUKI USUI (FUSHITSUSHA). For the journey of this new album, Batoh takes us a great distance, singing in Japanese, English, Spanish and Latin, including an amazing cover of...

Mulaney, John & The Sack Lunch Bunch

S/t

Drag City

***Emmy Award winning comedian JOHN MULANEY aims to recapture the magic of that bygone television era when children sang songs about their feelings with celebrity guests on funky outdoor sets with John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch, a television special that premiered December 24, 2019 on Netflix. Now, Christmas is coming again like never before, with physical LP and CD editions of the soundtrack! This includes a special peelable sticker on the cover of the LP edition, allowing children of all ages to pick at it! Who are John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch and what is this album? Well, John Mulaney is a 6 ft tall comedian with many credits and two awards and he was born on a humid August night in 1982. The Sack Lunch Bunch is a group of children ages 8–13, born after the turn of the 21st century, and they are each unique human beings with way more talent than Mr. Mulaney. With the brilliant musical chameleon and Emmy nominated composer ELI BOLIN, Mulaney and his co-writer MARIKA SAWYER put together some songs and then were joined by guests like DAVID BYRNE, Tony Award winner ANDRE DE SHIELDS, ANNALEIGH ASHFORD, SHEREEN PIMENTEL, and JAKE GYLLENHAAL from the movie Zodiac! The sonic result is this soundtrack album.

Espers

S/t

Drag City

***REISSUED!!! ESPERS’ self-titled first release appeared in 2004, heralding an era in which there was a perception of back-to-the-roots in the underground; kids making new music that spoke strongly of folk traditions and psychedelia, in the process setting themselves apart from latter-day sounds and approaches. Espers didn’t shy away from this image, projecting a collective air, almost like a rural outpost, out of time and place in the urban environs of Philadelphia. The staid harmonies of MEG BAIRD and GREG WEEKS, the 6- and 12-string guitars and percussion of BROOKE SIETINSONS, the full-bodied arrangements rife with traditional and classical details and the regular intervention of acid-toned guitar leads formed, along with the mystic and melancholy cast to their songwriting, a galvanizing identity for them among other like-minded music players of the day. The second Espers album, The Weed Tree was released in 2005. It was a nearly inevitable endeavor for the group, made almost entirely of cover material, but the traditional folk songs—“Rosemary Lane” and “Black Is the Color”—were paired with songs by Nico, Michael Hurley, and even Blue Oyster Cult, making for an oblique run through eclectic aspects of the past that succeeded due to Espers’ thorough re-imagining of the material in their own image. The addition of current members HELENA ESPVALL on cello and OTTO HAUSER on drums and percussion upped the alchemy of the band to its most potent, making music that drew from tradition, but making it new at the same time. Espers, existing in between...

Espers

The Weed Tree

Drag City

***REISSUED!!! ESPERS’ self-titled first release appeared in 2004, heralding an era in which there was a perception of back-to-the-roots in the underground; kids making new music that spoke strongly of folk traditions and psychedelia, in the process setting themselves apart from latter-day sounds and approaches. Espers didn’t shy away from this image, projecting a collective air, almost like a rural outpost, out of time and place in the urban environs of Philadelphia. The staid harmonies of MEG BAIRD and GREG WEEKS, the 6- and 12-string guitars and percussion of BROOKE SIETINSONS, the full-bodied arrangements rife with traditional and classical details and the regular intervention of acid-toned guitar leads formed, along with the mystic and melancholy cast to their songwriting, a galvanizing identity for them among other like-minded music players of the day. The second Espers album, The Weed Tree was released in 2005. It was a nearly inevitable endeavor for the group, made almost entirely of cover material, but the traditional folk songs—“Rosemary Lane” and “Black Is the Color”—were paired with songs by Nico, Michael Hurley, and even Blue Oyster Cult, making for an oblique run through eclectic aspects of the past that succeeded due to Espers’ thorough re-imagining of the material in their own image. The addition of current members HELENA ESPVALL on cello and OTTO HAUSER on drums and percussion upped the alchemy of the band to its most potent, making music that drew from tradition, but making it new at the same time. Espers, existing in between...

Six Organs Of Admittance

Companion Rises

Drag City

***SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE is back after 3 years with a new record, new techniques in sound generation, and a new attitude. Companion Rises has a driving force only hinted at with previous releases. Manipulating the rhythmic DNA from songs such as the bass-dominated “Taken by Ascent” (on his last record, Burning the Threshold), BEN CHASNY has grown a new sound creature in his lab that is as welcoming as it is terrifying and as fun to listen to as it provocative and intriguing. Methodologically, Companion Rises sometimes recalls the early-mid low-fi work of Six Organs, with modern techniques swapping digital processes in for the analog ways of the early days, and algorithmic programs creating the rhythms rather than Ben’s overdubbed hand percussion. Also like those early records, Companion Rises has Ben creating all the sounds, doing all the recording and mixing the entire record himself. But do not mistake this as some sort of return to an older sound. One listen and it is obvious that this Six Organs of Admittance release is all in the present. Sonically, Ben’s songs are bursting with ideas, harmonically rich, gorgeously arranged; often presenting two versions at once, overlaying electric and acoustic treatments that interlock like two shards that form a single key. Thematically, many songs on Companion Rises seem to navigate a similar Stellar-Gnosticism that 2012’s Ascent explored, but with a completely different set of stories. Whereas Ascent was locked into a narrative concerning a sentient Jupiter, Companion Rises presents a handful...

Hamerkop

Remote

Drag City

***HAMERKOP is a pair of Baltimore-based sound nerds: ANNABEL ALPERS, the composer, singer and instrumentalist formerly of New Zealand’s BACHELORETTE, and ADAM COOKE, a Baltimorean drummer/audio engineer with credits that include Beach House, Wye Oak and Future Islands. Together, they have created a song-cycle that contrasts the often-mundane (yet often satisfying) everyday world with that of the idealized, longed-for fantasy, to find the spaces in between these things, the place where we all feel good about our existence. Hamerkop’s debut, Remote, started as an exploration of the sonic beauty in Alpers’ collection of field recordings from her homeland and travels around the world. Looped and sampled, they became a set of instrumental sounds of their own, and when played live in a multiple-speaker, surround-sound experience, their effect was transporting. The finished album blends these expansive sounds in choral layers of synths and vocals, with a kaleidoscopic, almost psychedelic quality, all of it anchored by Cooke’s Kraut-minimal drumming. Remote is a natural progression from the criminally-underrated Bachelorette catalog—seeking catharsis through the contextualizing of personal texts into lush songscapes, using the chill of synth-pop to mask the fallible human soul hidden behind it. Far away from her native New Zealand with a new life and family in America, Annabel strove to find elements of her old identity in new environs, building songs out of sonic scraps from remote places, as if she were sewing a blanket in which to wrap them all.

Bonnie Prince Billy

I Made A Place

Drag City

***BONNIE PRINCE BILLY's first album of new original songs since 2011's Wolfroy Goes To Town. “This whole record is intensely inspired by the 50th state. In fact, for a while there the working title of the record was 49th State of Mind, after the mid-20th century Hawaiian music record label optimistically and ultimately erroneously called 49th State Records. The songs likewise are influenced by certain Hawaiian musics, mainly the recordings of Johnny Lum Ho and Edith Kanaka’ole; also by the recordings of Jake Xerxes Fussell; by the songwriting of John Prine, Susanna Wallumrod and Tom T. Hall; by the neo-Zydeco cassette compilation Trail Riderz Vol. 1; and by the desire to have some songs that might be learned on the fly at get-togethers at my friend David ‘Fergie’ Ferguson’s house. As these songs were worked on, in the night, my wife would wrap her pregnant body around mine while I sang the songs over and over and over. They’re the first music that our daughter heard. The arrangement and production of the record come dominantly from the players themselves and the very circumstances in which the recording of this record was undertaken. DANNY KIELY played bass on this, as he had done on Wolfroy and Best Troubador and the Babblers tour as well as Funtown Comedown and many other musical adventures. The mighty mighty MIKE HYMAN plays drums, NATHAN SALSBURG plays the lead guitars, JOAN SHELLEY sings along, and JACOB DUNCAN brought the power with his sax, his flute, his...

Om

BBC Radio 1

Drag City

***The mighty OM recorded live on BBC Radio 1, Maida Vale, May 13, 2019. Four tracks spread over four sides of 10-inch vinyl—"Gethsemene," "State of No Return," "Cremation of Ghat I," and "Cremation of Ghat II."

O'hagan, Sean

Radum Calls, Radum Calls

Drag City

***Radum Calls, Radum Calls is SEAN O'HAGAN's second solo album. His first came out in 1990, titled High Llamas—how’s that for paths taken and not taken! It’s clear we simply can’t know what the future brings. So, nearly 30 years down that once-was road, 10–12 albums of the extreme pleasures that HIGH LLAMAS song craft and sonic obsessions have provided, here’s Sean again, with his second solo album. You may venture upon how it will sound, but you will delight instead to discover that Sean continues to modify, adjust, turn and amend aspects of his unswaying beliefs to produce sound fresh and new. In the past decade, there have been two High Llamas albums. During that time, Sean’s day job has largely been in the studio, arranging and producing with other outfits—most recently, Mount Kimbie, Fryars, James Righton from Klaxons and Hockney. With other young talents on his wish list! The ways of the new generation are reflected in the mix of Radum Calls, Radum Calls, with bold latest obsessions side by side with the grand old traditions. As the parts old and new rotate inevitably back and forth in cyclical perfection, we are reminded of the beauty and craftmanship of the old cuckoo clocks; an ingenuity of cogs and gears to express perfect time as entertainingly as possible. Threaded in with exquisite melodies are hard-punching drumsounds, low rumbling synths, and a bright dubby reverberance applied to percussion. In moments of this coincision of old and new, Sean’s goal is...

Waterhouse, Russ

1 Minute 2 Midnight

Drag City

***It’s been several years since RUSS WATERHOUSE participated in new music-making as part of the duo BLUES CONTROL, now on an open-ended hiatus. Their four albums (plus one collaborative record with LARAAJI) are much-heralded sonic journeys, processing observations on community and environment to produce a diverse set of instrumental modes. In the past couple years, Russ' solo work has coalesced as the relationships that had created Blues Control fell apart, making almost unconscious commentary on a disillusioned state of mind. This brought him back to the noise idiom that he’d started with, making cassettes as RHEUM in the early aughts. Last year’s cassette release, Amaro, recorded live and mostly improvised, was a relative expression of desolation compared to the verdant collaborations of Blues Control, but a evolution of his earlier work. 1 Minute 2 Midnight rides that forsaken vibe into waves of anger and frustration over lack of agency, emoted via encroaching overlays of noise and mixed with an ear for small details scattered among the big sounds, then patterned into two long-form pieces. Packaged in the spirit of classic avant-garde albums, with enigmatic gold foil printing on the cover and a deceptively utilitarian layout on the reverse, 1 Minute 2 Midnight captures an often blistering, finally cathartic passage through dark territory.

Mackay, Bill And Katinka Klejin

Stir

Drag City

***Fresh off his acclaimed solo album Fountain Fire, BILL MACKAY is back to harmonic atom-splitting with all six of his guitar strings in this new collaboration with cellist KATINKA KLEJIN, STIR. Bill is an avid collaborator and over the past seven years, he and Katinka have used live performance to build their chemistry into a surprising, organic density, with sharply-etched colors drawn from avant-rock, folk, jazz classical and experimental music. It is at once an unlikely and perfect pairing as both musicians are known not only for their chops, but for their creativity, curiosity and range. Together they form a fluid, intuitive, dialogical and improvisational pair. Stir is centered on a series of MacKay's compositions, partially inspired by Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf. You can try following along with the book, but don’t expect any Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz-type moments. This is a concept unhindered by the conceptual, but it has a beautiful through-line to its organization. The repetition and expansion of themes borrows from the chamber music world, while the distortions, free play, and edge of much of the work clearly draws from the duo’s friends in noise and the avant-garde.

Smog

Knock Knock

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  After all these years, who’s there? Why, it’s BILL CALLAHAN, the super-sexy solo singer, driving though the front of our house once again in his 90s vintage vehicle—the SMOG-mobile! And what’s he got there in the passenger seat? Hey, it’s the 20th anniversary half-speed master vinyl edition of the Smog classic, Knock Knock, by (we’ve been over this) Smog! Placing this LP on your turntable, you find yourself drawn ever-deeper into the sound—and it’s not just the eternally-stunning co-production from Callahan and JIM O'ROURKE it’s the incredible focus brought by the half-speed mastering work done at Abbey Road, bringing out the highs, lows and yes, even mids that OG fans of this album have taken for granted for too many years. The fresh fullness of the sound now stands as a tribute to the ol’ familiar Smog sensation of being somehow completely unfamiliar!

Silence, The

Metaphysical Payback

Drag City

***THE SILENCE has descended upon us once again. In the two years-plus since their previous album, Nine Suns, One Morning, their leader MASAKI BATOH recorded and released his solo album, Nowhere—but from the first chimes of hazy guitar arpeggios that open Metaphysical Feedback, we are transported right back to the unique rock and roll space that The Silence conjure whenever they plug in and come together. Their group craft continues to expand, but in perfect line with their previous albums. Also as with their previous three albums, The Silence use the sound of analog recording as an essential complement to their approach, using the famous Studer 24-track machine at GOK Sound in Tokyo, where so many legendary sessions have gone down. Drawing from all phases of golden age psychedelic progressive folk-rock, The Silence make new music in the new century from an almost blinding collection of inspirations. Their deep songs have all manner of lyricism, unexpected chords and tempos, and instrumental breaks from acid guitars, rasping saxophone, drums and bass.

Major Stars

Roots Of Confusion Seeds Of Joy

Drag City

***Playing material arranged for a sextet fronted by a trio of guitars, MAJOR STARS have developed a habit of rehearsing regularly and repeatedly, then showing up to record with the material fully conceived and ready to roll—and Roots of Confusion Seeds of Joy was no exception, with most of the songs (except “Out In the Light”) being run through a thousand times or so before coming to the studio and getting tracked in a day and a half. Their triple-guitar alignment has a fiendish way of affecting one’s depth-of-field, and while it is easy to describe what Major Stars do in terms of bombast, this shortchanges the tactile components of the band—a song like “Dawn and the Spirit” is an epic workout of no mean complexity, and the layers of guitars throughout are arrayed to explore aspects of melody and progression in the songs, not to saw and solo mindlessly away! The aggressive, transporting aspects of this music tend to grab listeners by their lapels and slap them around a bit, so if perceptions of sonic architecture are lost in the melee, well, that’s kind of the goal anyway.

Gantry, Chris

Nashlantis

Drag City

***The annals of Nashville, the 20th century’s immortal Music City, are filled with lore of the legends, as well as tales of the one-shots, the lesser-knowns and the delightful obscurities: singers, writers and players who had a moment, were a step away from stardom or just stood in the same room with the men and women whose names we know. Like the outlaw he defines himself as, CHRIS GANTRY doesn’t really fit in any of those boxes—and 50-plus years since he wrote his first and biggest hit, he’s still writing and singing, having lived to tell the tale of his serpentine but ultimately joyful path, a “Life Well Lived.” Now in his mid-70s, Gantry is still a consummate performer and an inveterate writer, appearing in performance as a lusty, genial man, grateful to have drunk of the experience he’s had, transcendent in that experience and ebullient in the moment of singing it. Nashlantis is the ninth record of Gantry tunes to be released since Chris moved to Nashville in early 1960. Then, he fell in with like-minded others: Shel Silverstein, Kris Kristofferson, Eddie Rabbitt, Vince Matthews and Mickey Newbury—guys working day and night to break into the business, writing and singing their way through the chaos of their youth. It was an intoxicating environment—everyone with his own vision, and Chris’s cosmic stirrings setting him a little apart from the rest. Recorded in Nashville with the legendary engineer ROB GALBRAITH, Nashlantis features 11 mesmerizing Gantry performances. Features guest harmony vocalists EDITH...

Segall, Ty

First Taste

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork.  It’s a year and a half since the release of Freedom’s Goblin. A winter of rain has buried the recent times of drought. Contradictions are rife. First Taste is an introspective set after the extroversions of Freedom’s Goblin—yet just as steeped in party beats somehow, even as TY SEGALL trails through his back pages, reflecting on family, re-encountering pasts, anticipating futures. First Taste is arch, full of high-energy jams, with a thing in each mix always insistently different. Ty’s song design’s all over the place—not even a surprise anymore—but unlike the freewheeling feast style of Freedom’s Goblin, these twelve numbers form a tightly revolving cycle of song and sound that focuses thoughts.

Purple Mountains

S/t

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received an 8.5 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork.  PURPLE MOUNTAINS is the new nom-de-rock of DAVID BERMAN (SILVER JEWS). Purple Mountains is also the name of what will be known as one of his greatest albums—full of double-jointed wit and wisdom, up to the neck in his special recipe of handcrafted country-rock joys and sorrows that sing legendary in cracked and broken hearts. The songs are produced impeccably by Woods’ JARVIS TAVENIERE and JEREMY EARL, buffed up like a hardwood floor ready to be well-trod upon for an evening of romance and dance. The songs of Purple Mountains are a potent brew, stitched together from lifetimes, knitting the drift of the years with the tightest lyric construction Berman’s ever attempted. Honesty is archly in the air, but lines of incredible bleakness somehow give way to playful distraction and the hiding of surprises for close listeners.

Kearney, Brandan

On Cinema At The Cinema Reader Vol. 1 - 2010-2018

Drag City

***A deluxe, hardbound, episode-by-episode guide to every aspect of the On Cinema Universe, from the flagship show to all the incarnations of the hit spin-off action series, Decker. Incisive commentary and analysis of the show made famous by its incisive commentary and analysis. Includes rare On Cinema, Decker, and Dekkar documents, photographs, and ephemera. Sure to thrill the rabid fanbase and introduce rabid neophytes as well! Compiled by BRANDON KEARNEY with Forewords by hosts TIM HEIDECKER and GREGG TURKINGTON. 8.5" x 11" / 284pp.

Callahan, Bill

Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received an 8.5 Best New Music from Pitchfork.  As you listen to Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest, a feeling of totality, of completeness, steals over you, like a thief in broad daylight. Of course it does —you’re listening to a new BILL CALLAHAN record! The first one in almost six years! What more do you need to complete you? Or perhaps, after all the time, the obvious needs to be made just a little more explicit? First, it’s a different kind of record. Bill’s now writing from somewhere beyond his Eagle-Apocalypse-River headspace, and Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest is very much its own beast. The songs are, by and large, shorter, and there are more of them. It took almost all of the previous three albums to add up to that many. Plus, twenty’s a lot of songs! But again, it goes a lot deeper than that. Moving gradually from reflections upon the old days in “Ballad of The Hulk” and “Young Icarus” to the immediacy of the present moment in “Watching Me Get Married” and “Son of the Sea”, Bill traces the different life lines, casually unwinding knotty contradictions and ambiguities with an arresting stillness. The sense of a life thunderstruck by change infuses Shepherd In a Sheepskin Vest—the songs wander from expressions of newfound joy and great contentment to other snapshots, considerations of the not-joy that we all know. Unsettling dream-images and mythic recollections are patiently received; the undertow of the...

Cave

Psychic Psummer

Drag City

***REISSUED ON VINYL!!! Welcome to the season of the Psychic Psummer—the 2009 full length studio album from Chicago's CAVE. Major momentum expertly crafted and embracing maximum minimalism, repetion, Can cloud-bounce & full on heavy chant. Like driving a train full speed off a cliff only to discover that the train can fly and you'll live forever if you stay inside.

Donovan, Mike

Exurbian Quonset

Drag City

***From sunshiney, smog-filled streets to an avian-strewn state of ur-nature, MIKE DONOVAN’s seen his share of the world, making records and playing shows all over the past 20 years with, chronologically, THE ROPERS, YIKES, THE HOSPITALS, SIC ALPS, TY SEGALL, THE PEACERS and most recently, himself. Time goes by and just seems to get faster as it goes. In June of 2017, MIKE led THE PEACERS sophomore effort, Introducing the Crimsmen, into the world. On 4/20 of ’18, his own sophomore solo release How to Get Your Record Played In Shops hit down. And now, a hot 23 months after the inauguration of the Crimsmendom, a third long-player in the time-frame arrives, as MIKE D whisks us away to his remote Exurbian Quonset. Exurbian Quonset sticks up like a fork in the road—it was drawn together as Mike prepared to be the last man from the old gang to leave SF, where he broke so many rules and new ground, working as a driver, a trimmer and a craftsman, cementing bricks into the foundation of the new centurion west coast rock and roll movement from his place alongside Thee Oh Sees over the past decade. It’s dedicated to the woman who married him and taught him both words in the title of the album—exurbian and quonset—and who he’ll whisk away with to somewhere just like the title. Mike's ouvre all the way down the line has been wedding silvery falsetto shiver-rock with sirens of noise, stand-up tin-pan pop singer performance...

Wand

Laughing Matter

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork.  Almost two years on from 2017’s Plum, Californian scrap polymorphs WAND are prepared to launch their fifth, and newest long-playing record, Laughing Matter. By now, Wand is the shifting but unmistakable collaboration between SOFIA ARREGUIN (keys, vocals), CORY HANSON (guitar, vocals), ROBERT CODY (guitar), LEE LANDEY (bass) and EVAN BURROWS (drums). Laughing Matter is marked by the confidence and exuberance of a band that has lived, feuded, thrived and grown together through years of dedicated jamming, touring and recording, across western and eastern states, continents and mind-sets. In this world that insists we must increasingly rely upon ourselves, Wand listen to each other, and this is the sound. Swerving between out-of-focus parable, travel diary, pep talk, polemic, love song, and lullabye, Laughing Matter is a tough and tender album, its eyes on a lot of prizes. Where Plum held the tension of its five band members getting on their feet, the songs on Laughing Matter are concentrated and relaxed, even as they search for the right accusations to hurl at cynics and megalomaniacs.

Segall, Ty & The Freedom Band

Deforming Lobes

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. An all analog production of TY SEGALL & THE FREEDOM BAND recorded live on stage at Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles by STEVE ALBINI (via mobile unit onto two-inch tape!) and mixed with Steve in Chicago at Electrical Audio, Deforming Lobes witnesses the blunt-force traumpact of The Freedom Band in full effect, updating (and upending) numbers from Melted, Emotional Mugger, Twins, Manipulator, $ingle$ 2 and Self-Titled. From the start, the “Warm Hands” suite shows the growth of the group since recording the original version for the 2017 Self-Titled album—the jam has a new life all its own, and the band explores every song with similar unrestrained curiosity, never forgetting the collective experience they’re sharing. The feeling between audience and band at Los Angeles’ Teragram Ballroom on those January nights was its own special thing; here, the band is somehow even more front and center, making Deforming Lobes the first wholly original statement from The Freedom Band and bookending the Goblin experience with a fuck of an exclamation point.

Mackay, Bill

Fountain Fire

Drag City

***Fountain Fire isBILL MACKAY's second solo album on Drag City. The Chicago-based guitarist’s continued sonic journeys in conversation with himself follow a travel-worn map written in his own hand. Bill has followed the trail from familiar confines to unknown places, catalyzing a style equally enamored with the traditional and the avant-garde to make his most expansive and forceful music to date. You can hear it in the opening track; as the lava and lakes of “Pre-California” simmer to boiling, Bill assembles a bridge of guitars, layering beams of rumbling acoustic, distorted electric, and arcing slide parts. By leaping boldly from fixed points, he makes synergetic discoveries in mid-air. This is the MacKay writing style in its most evolved state thus far, following serpentine paths within the patterns, lunging in and out of tonality with instinctive flair and a stoic sense of inevitability, forging a sonic mosaic that breathes and grows organically as it fills the space of a song.

Stumpwater

Motel In Saginaw

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! They say every journey begins with a single step, or in this case its but a single song. More specifically, we speak of a lone warped 45 record, with one playable side. A few years back Galactic Zoo Dossier/Galactic Zoo Disk Svengali Plastic Crimewave stumbled on a colorfully-labeled 1975 Aurora, Illinois, private press single by STUMPWATER, featuring the tunes “White Washed Afternoons” b/w “Watcher’s Brawl.” Though only “White Washed...” played through fully, there was a VIBE here—rural folk rock that’d make David Crosby’s ’stache bristle; late-night, unwashed laments that quirky/heady troubadours like Tom Rapp, Gary Higgins or even poor, jaded Phil Ochs could groove on. . . . A search surprisingly yielded immediate results, as StumpWater was still active and gigging!? Peppering their concerts with CSN covers, StumpWater was still performing live, doing acoustic and electric sets, AND still playing their '70s originals. Crimewave interviewed the band members JOE GLOOR and DAN BERG (DAN HALIGAS sadly passed shortly beforehand), and got their story for his Secret History of Chicago Music column in the Chicago Reader. And then some earth shattering info was gleaned—StumpWater had an unreleased 1973 LP. Yep—and not only that, it’s a friggin’ concept LP about the characters populating a small town hotel (think Lee Hazlewood’s Trouble is a Lonesome Town, but not really) called Motel in Saginaw (a place ol’ Mike Nesmith seemed to know too). To say the homespun album was a revelation is putting it lightly—gorgeous tunes about death that’d...

Batoh, Masaki

Nowhere

Drag City

***We come from nowhere and fade back there again, leaving the foggy dreams and obscure anxieties of this life behind when we go. Life is enigma, and with great respect for the vagaries of this truth, MASAKI BATHOH's Nowhere reaches out of the darkness, with strings of steel and voices echoing out of time. In the summer of 2018, Masaki Batoh held sessions at GOK Sound in Tokyo, with the goal of making his fourth solo album. With a pure folk singer approach, he started the recordings as a basic live performance of guitar with vocal, using only two mics. If more elements were needed, they would be added—but most important to him was to capture the performance as immediately as possible. GOK Sound is an all-analog recording facility, and once Batoh had added a few elements such as bass, percussion, harmony vocals, electric guitar, harp and a bit of mellotron (all played by himself in response to his basic performances) and added the necessary reverb, the world of Nowhere was rendered as deep and sparkling as he had hoped, consecrating the spiritual intentions of his songs.

Hamburger, Neil

Still Dwelling

Drag City

***In our time of America’s greatest dismay, it takes “America’s Funnyman” to show the way back to a little bit of love and a whole lot of classic entertainment. With vocal pipes alight and a full studio orchestra behind him, Neil Hamburger is Still Dwelling—and dare we say, better than ever, as he brings to new life some of the greatest songs of his era. Known around the world for timeless comedy routines, Neil’s no slouch when it comes to all-round entertainment, either—having sung his own songs and others in concert for many years, notably tackling the country genre to great acclaim on such albums as First of Dismay and Sings Country Winners. With Still Dwelling, the Hamburger touch is applied to a veritable potpourri of 20th century songwriters, from Frank Loesser to Lennon & McCartney, from Andrew Lloyd Webber to T.S.O.L. Don’t forget about Ann & Nancy Wilson, either—talk about Heart! This ambitious project began with a handful of popular standards that Neil and his accompanist of choice, ERIK PAPAROZZI performed regularly on the road. These numbers allowed Neil to sing his truth, relieving the unending pain of all his trials. This music flows through the speakers, from Neil’s heart to ours.

Tim Presley's White Fence

I Have To Feed Larry's Hawk

Drag City

***LP BACK IN STOCK!!!  A new morning is shining through the gauze outside the window—an eternal morning, a next-day-of-life moment that’s always occurring, if you take the time to notice. TIM PRESLEY's WHITE FENCE, informed by the extreme polarities of punk rock and psych, brings forth songs like no others. Two years on from his solo missive, the sense that something has cratered and someone has walked away, somehow alive, is heavy in the air. With I Have to Feed Larry’s Hawk, Tim Presley meets White Fence, and together, they move on.

Pearls Before Swine

Balaklava

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Released in late 1968, the second PEARLS BEFORE SWINE record continued to deliver music with a preternatural sense of what the youth of America wanted to hear. One Nation Underground had been a surprise hit when released in 1967 by the hipster free-jazz indie label ESP, receiving an incredible organic response, with continuous underground radio play and sales. Coming from obscurity in Florida into a position of speaking to people everywhere, TOM RAPP and his bandmates felt emboldened to embark upon an evolved piece of record making. The music of Balaklava strips away the manic, post-garage band diversity of the first album, instead grounding the production around Tom Rapp’s guitar and singing, with the touches of instrumental color all the more dramatic and striking. Producer RICHARD ALDERSON utilized breathy sweeps of reverb, sound effects, tape manipulation and spoken word recordings along with an array of instrumental overdubs including banjo, marimba, organ, clavinet, flute, English horn and strings (played by the band along with New York jazz session players BILL SALTER and AL SHACKAMAN, plus THE FUGS' LEE CRABTREE and legendary saxophonist JOE FARRELL, with SELWART CLARKE and WARREN SMITH contributing string arrangements) to reach for the universal space sought in Tom Rapp’s meditative, existential songs.

Pratt, Jessica

On Your Own Love Again

Drag City

***BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!!! Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork. JESSICA PRATT’s self-titled 2012 debut has been much-murmured about in the time between yesterday and today. People respond to the austere, pristine clarity of the performances, the gentle strength, marveling at how much comes from so little: just a voice and a guitar or two! They remark on the timeless nature of the songs and the voice, scrupulously informed by the folk-rock of ages past, but sung without bags. Two years on, and Jessica’s very new On Your Own Love Again is here for us, playing her further adventures in different pastures.  The album was recorded entirely by Jessica in the fashion of “Night Faces” and “Dreams,” from her first album, and mixed in collaboration with WILL CANZONERI. Touched lightly with additional instrumental and vocal parts, the songs ripple beneath the surface with lyrical details that morph almost subliminally from the personal into fantasy. When Jessica’s playful nature bubbles up, she sends her voice traveling into strange places to see what it finds there. The music too is deceptively accomplished, providing subtle hallucinatory nuances to the tunes. Perhaps most significantly, On Your Own Love Again was recorded at home over the past two years. This process sands the surface of her more active multi-tracking approach, allowing a sound as delicate and singular as her former recordings. On Your Own Love Again Jessica is fully alive in a space all her own; with isolation in the breeze, the sound...

Ishibashi, Eiko

The Dream My Bones Dream

Drag City

***EIKO ISHIBASHI's sixth solo album, The Dream My Bones Dream, rides the rails into a partly envisioned, partly imagined past. Eiko’s previous songs-with-singing records explored the ambitions and intoxications of pop music—but never so dramatically as with The Dream My Bones Dream. Here, her songs open up into reflections upon the vast spaces that exist between people as close as family members—in other words, reflections on the things we spend our whole lives drinking and cursing about! When we’re not trying to forget what we were told about god, that is... It’s been four years since Car and Freezer, a time during which Eiko has been steadily working, writing for stage and cinema, playing live and recording (and hanging out with her no-goodnik boyfriend!). In 2016, she toured Europe and released Kouen Kyoudai (Editions Mego), a collaboration with Masami Akita. At Sinnerfama Lisbon later that year, she won the Best New Music Award for her soundtrack to The Albino’s Trees. In 2018, Black Truffle released Ichida, her collaboration with Darin Gray.On The Dream My Bones Dream, as with Eiko’s previous albums, the diverse sounds within the musical arrangement and the qualities of JIM O'ROURKE's mix are crucial to the achievement. The Dream My Bones Dream is a record of exquisite musicality and deep emotions.

Silver Jews

American Water

Drag City

***BACK IN STOCK!!! A 20th anniversary reissue of SILVER JEWS' Amerian Water. Even as an unapologetic anti-metallite, I still can’t escape the call of this band’s silvery gleam. Still pleasant, still clever, still all the good-great pop action DAVID BERMAN and STEPHEN MALKMUS can dream up o’er the course of an album’s time. Twelve chuckle-along songs hitting red on your geekest hip-o-meter. Vinyl version half-speed remastered at Abbey Road. Received a 9.4 rating from Pitchfork.

Cave

Allways

Drag City

***Tremors rhythmically shaking your place—the air’s gone electric! You’ve seen this kind of weather before… you weren’t expecting it today. This is the beginning of Allways. CAVE are kind of beyond time, though. You might feel like it’s been awhile since you’ve seen or heard them, but when you see or hear them again, that moment will feel like Allways. During the making of the last album, Threace, Cave was in the process of becoming a quintet. They toured the world afterwards, playing on four continents and eighteen countries—as close to everywhere as they could get. Then they took a minute. They recorded it over time, in Chile and then Chicago. You can hear all of this, the energy of liveness, the reps, and consolidating expanded possibilities within their new alignment, the time away, the distance, and the freshness of returning to recorded sounds, everywhere on All ways. Cave digs driving down into a pulse and staying there for as much of FOREVER as they can. In the past, much has been made of Cave's use of particular compelling tropes, but man, their inspiration comes from everywhere—Miles, psych, beats, exotica, library music, rock, punk, the Germans, the New York guys too, minimalists, the Dead, music from India, everywhere! This is a bunch of guys playing rock-based music in a way that pushes them forward from everything they’ve experienced. When we listen to the new Cave, we’re hearing guitars, lots of ’em, bubbling under, scratching, fanning, locking in and taking off,...

Dead Rider Trio Featuring Mr. Paul Williams

S/t

Drag City

***DEAD RIDER TRIO FEATURING MR. PAUL WILLIAMS, while rife with intention, is an automatic/exquisite corpse four-car pile-up improvised in three different spaces at three different times. Basically, everybody involved was hearing it for the first time when they did it. Do you realize how hard that is? Put it this way, you’ll only have ONE chance in your life to hear this for the first time—and chances are, you won’t be playing an instrument when you do! Let’s assume that if you’re reading this, you got the Dead Rider part covered: three guys—MATT, TODD and WHITE CHRISTMAS—walking the crooked path of rock with a mutant gusto belonging to no one but Dead Rider. Three guys making a THICK-ASS sound, dipped in corrosive absinthe and still steaming from the bath; pulsing funkily, flashing blue desperate images! A truly urban music, streamlined with showbiz hands in quotes, to elevate the expression, and rock n roll’s future, if it weren’t dead already—but in Dead Rider’s ready grip, the merciless sounds of 2017’s Crew Licks stitched together an exceptional zombie prototype for today. Whipped up by the tour dates and promo cycle of Crew Licks, Dead Rider were feeling hot enough to jam, and just let the tape roll! This is where the intrepid Mr. Paul Williams came in. An occasional character in Todd’s life over the years, a ghostly presence back in Hamburg in the late '90s (when he was a hellbent tour driver with a dream of opening a midget race car...

Oldham, Will

Songs Of Love And Horror

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received a 7.1 rating from Pitchfork.  Fall of 2018 sees the release of a celebrated lyrics archive that has been growing for over 25 years—the words to the songs sung by BONNIE PRINCE BILLY and PALACE MUSIC. The author of the songs is WILL OLDHAM, and the book, to be released by W.W. Norton, is titled Songs of Love and Horror, the same as this album. The songs of Will Oldham have been written most often for the aliases of Palace or Bonny. Their identities, kept necessarily separate from Will’s, has allowed them to bring to the stage the reach needed to project to everyone in the room, to everyone outside the room, to whomever chose to make the audience. The songs were written to create a singular encounter, to be shared among those who choose to listen. Songs of Love and Horror is a rare entry in this oeuvre: a Will Oldham album, with the writer taking a turn as singer. As befits the nature of this project, the songs are sung and played by Will alone, in a setting enjoyed by fans of his music—that of one voice and one guitar, the better to savor the spare changes and starkly-cut lyrics, operating in quiet tension and ultimate collaboration. Will brings to the songs all that he has learned from his stagecrafting fellows over the years, singing new versions that quiver like fresh young things in the air of today.  Starting with...

Mulaney, John

Kid Gorgeous At Radio City

Drag City

***JOHN MULANEY is a comedian. Kid Gorgeous at Radio City is his third stand-up comedy concert film and album. He also made one in 2014 called The Comeback Kid and before that he made one in 2012 called New In Town and before that he made an album in 2008 called The Top Part. He was a writer at Saturday Night Live from 2008–2013 and in 2018 he returned to host the show. In 2016 he and Nick Kroll wrote and starred in Oh Hello on Broadway which was on Broadway. He then went on a stand-up tour called Kid Gorgeous which culminated in seven sold-out shows at Radio City Music Hall. He currently stars on Netflix’s animated magical-realist puberty thriller Big Mouth. "This album is called Kid Gorgeous at Radio City. It is the album of the Netflix concert film I did called John Mulaney Kid Gorgeous at Radio City which was the culmination of a 150 date stand-up comedy tour called John Mulaney Kid Gorgeous. It was recorded on February 17, 2018."

Papa M

A Broke Moon Rises

Drag City

***That chill in your spine makes total sense. PAPA M is back in the room, and like the animal you are, you sense it before you actually know he’s there. As the light from the broke moon floods in, you feel that you’ll survive—even if you’ll never be the same.... Late 2016’s Highway Songs brought Papa M back to us, after many years of silence and several harrowing dances with death for his Id-ego/host body, DAVID PAJO. Now, two years on down the road, we’re all here again to witness A Broke Moon Rises. Highway Songs was a necessarily cathartic experience in all phases. Afterwards, with no tour dates forthcoming (partially due to lousy clubs and their lack of wheelchair-accessible stage doors!), it felt good just to play for fun again, like being in the practice space instead of the psych ward—a much healthier change of pace than some might guess! David blew it out; all the different styles he’s played in over the years, from folk-blues to metal, electronic, pop, Bollywood—all of it. But when the spasms subsided, a back-to-roots sediment remained in the bottom of the bowl, which he read as a motive for a new Papa M album done with all acoustic instruments. That’s how there’s nothing electric about A Broke Moon Rises. The five songs of A Broke Moon Rises find David focusing his technique in unknown directions, to find out what he can do with them. When that happens, he finds himself on the very...

Segall, Ty & White Fence

Joy

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. Blonde and brunette. Dog and cat. Lemon and onion. Friend and foam. The change has been made! You can scratch your seven-year itch freely now: TY SEGALL and WHITE FENCE are become one again, regrooving what we once called Hair into what is now Joy. Hair grew out of a simpler time, man! If, as the dyphrenic duo indeed affirm on Joy, rock in 2018 is dead, don’t come around here looking for no burial. Instead, find Joy caught up in the commencement of on-beyond rock; music made with the old tools, but emitted from a fresh new, single-celled organism. This time, the old “one and one make one” line does not apply. Hair had the quality of emulsion—drops of Segall suspended in Fence; a compound of White dispersed over sheets of Ty. With Joy, Tim and Ty arrive without traveling from the same place, occupy one single headspace, finishing the other’s phrases, pulling licks from each other’s places. Singing and thinking and laughing as one. Calling themselves from inside the house. C-c-c-creepy! Both these fellows have been known to trifle with tropic pasts and reactivate vintage visions within their new music. Not now. Now is the only time this time—Joy is their own sound of today, a shared individuality, prisming all possible stances into an unseamly metastasis that FLOWS for 15 ebbcentric tracks. Plus, since it ends at the beginning, it never has to stop. LOOP that shit!