***Liquid Mike is an indie power pop rock band from Marquette, MI, in the Upper Peninsula. Liquid Mike began in 2021 after Mike Maple’s locally beloved college band, We Should Be Laughing, called it quits once several members graduated from Michigan Tech and subsequently relocated. Liquid Mike highlights Mike Maple’s (vocals, guitar) pop-rock song writing. The band features a fluid cast of U.P. standouts including Monica Nelson (WSBL) (synth), Dave Daignault (Charmer)(guitar), Zack Alworden (Charmer) (bass), Cody Marecek (drums). From 2021-2022, Liquid Mike released their 2 full lengths locally on CD, as well as an EP and 2 singles digitally. Mike employs a 4-track TASCAM, recording/producing/mixing all the band’s output. In 2023, he released “Self-Titled” on cassette, which quickly went viral online in Midwest Emo/indie rock circles, and later on vinyl via Upper Peninsula label, Kitschy Spirit, which was well received by critics. Liquid Mike inhabits a sweet spot in the musical pantheon: catchy, well-crafted guitar and vocal hooks that will snag any fan of power-pop/pop rock. Heartfelt melodies that will melt the hearts of any Midwest emo fan without being ham-fisted or overtly schmaltzy. Liquid Mike invokes a relatable feeling of nostalgia with everyday lyrics of the quickly-receding flavor of Big League Chew bubblegum, drinking beer from used marinara sauce jars in college, and every 4th hand rust-bucket of a car you ever drove in a Great Lakes snowstorm.
LP $21.95
11/10/2023
***Tractorman is a long-lost slice of midwest underground punk. Formed in 1995 in Madison, WI, Tractorman embraced a D.I.Y. ethos and were highly influenced by the first wave of Riot GRRRL. Tractorman originally released one cassette of unorthodox, spastic punk rock in ‘96, available here for the first time since on vinyl. Featuring Indra Dunis (Peaking Lights, Numbers, etc) on drums in her first ever band and Corinna Greenwood (later of infamous Wisconsin noise rock/metal band Tormentula) on guitar. Pure unadulterated punk rock without any pretense or pomp with a focus on raw creativity, having fun, and screaming some grievances (both personal and systemic) into the void/basement kegger. Single-sided 12” vinyl with etching of original Tractorman t-shirt design image.
LP $26.95
11/10/2023
***CULT OF LIP is a Madison, WI based psych-rock band. Formed in Minneapolis in 2012, Cult of Lip continues to delve into the depths of ethereal washed-out shoegazing pop. Fuzz & Feedback Freaks compiles their past three EP’s into one release. Ronnie Lee constructs layers of thick noise and luscious guitar tones to envelope Hannah Porter’s dream-like vocals and driving bass.
MC $11.00
11/10/2023
***Madison, Wisconsin group Caryatids' album The End of the Sun is a fascinatingly ambiguous, yet genuinely expressive debut; an album oddly hard to define and pin down stylistically, yet perfectly comprehensible regardless. The band takes the bleak, hard-edged worldview and coldly experimental asperity of postpunk, combines that with warm, gorgeously melancholy psychedelic atmosphere and chaotic, shoegaze-inspired guitar noise, and uses the resulting concoction as a base for everything else they do musically. And they do a lot. Caryatids can go from manifesting a Krautrock band's sense of instrumental interplay to simply rocking all out in a tunefully grungy, alt-rock way, and they make it all make sense as part of their own individual sound. All in all, it results in melodic, thoughtful, puzzling, sometimes disturbing and heavily emotional material that never takes the easy way out. The band has received comparisons to artists as fundamentally different from each other as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Teenage Fanclub, Dinosaur Jr, Cocteau Twins, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Soft Boys, Radiohead and Can. But more than anything else, these attempts at description only end up underlining the band’s essential originality. This is unique music with a lot of personality, distinguished as much by the extraordinarily fluid and intelligent muscularity of the rhythm section as Martin’s alternately plaintive and forbidding tenor and unconventional, explosive, processed guitars.
MC $11.00
12/23/2022