Top Selling

Sonic Youth

Daydream Nation

Goofin'

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Daydream Nation was Sonic Youth’s sixth full-length, their first double-LP, and their last for an indie label before signing with Geffen. Widely considered to be their watershed moment, the album catapulted them into the mainstream and proved that indie bands could enjoy wider commercial success without compromising their artistic vision. More recently, Daydream Nation has been recognized as a classic of its era: Pitchfork ranked it #1 on their “100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s”; Spin listed it at #13 on their “125 Best Albums of 1985-2010”. Daydream Nation was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry in 2006 and it was voted "One of the Greatest Albums of All Time" by Rolling Stone. This edition of Daydream Nation (CD/2xLP) is released on SY’s own Goofin’ Records and has been remastered under the band’s supervision. Experimental. Uncompromising. Essential.

Oh Sees, Thee

Floating Coffin

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!!! Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. We all know the type: prolific bands that commit every loose thought, stray idea and 90-second song fragment to tape. Bands that pay no attention to little inconveniences like “release cycles” or “self-editing,” and instead decide that quantity equals quality, creating a discography more labyrinthine, imposing and—ultimately—exhausting than the cast of creatures in a sci-fi novel. Here is why none of that applies to THEE OH SEES. Because each of the dozen-plus albums they’ve released since 2004 possesses a distinct personality and represents a different point along the path of JOHN DWYER’s slow transformation from auteur of woozy, bare-bones four-track psychedelia to goggle-eyed garage rock marauder backed at long last by a band that both shares and stokes his singular vision. Because drop a needle on any record and—to their great credit—it takes several songs before you’re convinced it’s Thee Oh Sees. The seasick hundred-bottles-of-rum shanty “What the Driven Drink,” from 2007’s delirious Sucks Blood exists in a different galaxy than the rollercoastering “Chem-Farmer” from last year’s Carrion Crawler / The Dream; the doomy doo-wop of “Blood on the Deck” hardly seems like the product of the same band that delivered the yelping “Ruby Go Home” in 2009. And the band that made last year’s engrossing Putrifiers II seems like a distant cousin to the one delivering Floating Coffin—arguably the most varied and textured Oh Sees record to date.

Fuzz

S/t

In The Red

***NOW AVAILABLE ON NEW GOLD VINYL!!! Received a 7.3 rating from Pitchfork.  Fuzz is Ty Segall (drums / vocals), Charlie Moothart (guitar / vocals) and Roland Cosio (bass). They’re heavy rock lifers—three California-bred dudes who have been refining their riffs and getting weird together since high school (which wasn’t that long ago, actually). If you are not already aware of Segall, well, what’s up? He’s one of garage rock’s most prolific sons. He said he was going to take it easy this year, but by the time you finish reading this, the onesheet for his next record will have already arrived in your inbox. Moothart plays guitar in The Ty Segall Band and was also a member of The Moonhearts, which included Cosio on guitar. Way back in the early ’00s, all three played in the Epsilons. Fuzz was formed a couple years ago as a collaboration between Segall and Moothart, but only recently did the pair have sufficient time to guide the band out of side-project limbo and into a recording studio. Since then, they have released two singles, “This Time I Got a Reason” (Trouble In Mind) and “Sleigh Ride” (In The Red). Around the time of the latter, Cosio joined on bass. They are not dabblers or dilettantes. Fuzz flipped through used bins, hard drives and record collections of the world, seeking out the finest weirdo cuts. The band’s self-titled debut LP, which was recorded by Chris Woodhouse (Thee Oh Sees, The Intelligence), dives deep, drawing...

Segall, Ty

Melted

Goner

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. San Francisco psych wunderkind Ty Segall continues a tireless musical assault on ears and minds with his third album, Melted. Segall says it sounds like "cherry cola, Sno-Cones and taffy." Indeed! Over the past two years he's released records more often than most people do laundry, but somehow there is still a heap of anticipation for this new album on Goner packed full of truly psychedelic pop songs with great vocals and exciting arrangements. On the heels of two critically acclaimed solo albums, Segall holed up in a basement studio in late 2009 to begin recording Melted. Friends occasionally dropped by to hang out and help--including Mike Donovan (Sic Alps), John Dwyer (Thee Oh-Sees) and Eric Bauer (Crack W.A.R.). The result is a carefree yet precise balance of acoustic and electric elements. Distorted echo and thunder mix together with enough clean guitar lines and addictive choruses to deliver an album that recalls the '60s without sounding like anything created during that decade. Time melts away, vision melts away, minds melt away. Get Melted!  Ty Segall's short, sharp songs peal out of the garage without raising the doors, sending 1960s rock riffs crashing through splintered, smart-ass lo-fi buzz." --Pitchfork "His second album, Lemons, solidifies his standing as one to watch.... There are few moments when Ty Segall isn't irresistibly catchy." --Nylon "Warped sonics do nothing to diminish the impact of his vigorously nostalgic riff and stomp. Segall thunders...

Sonic Youth

Sister

Goofin'

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!!  “Let’s get something straight. There is no album in the entire corpus of indie rock—not Loveless, not Surfer Rosa, not Psychocandy—that reaches the heights of invention, joy, and magic of Sonic Youth’s sublime fifth album.... The haunted reveries of Sister remain with you for years, even if you only hear them once” — Stereogum. 1987’s Sister was another notch in the band's move away from No Wave, yet still maintained their experimental approach. Gordon, Moore, Ranaldo and Shelley were coming into their own at this point, combining elements of noise, punk and pop. They had also become better songwriters since their previous album, providing better context for their noisier elements and incorporating the dissonance of their earlier releases into more traditional song structures. To quote Stereogum once again, “Sister is the sonic manifestation of refracted light. It’s a record that changes you.”

Oh Sees, Thee

Carrion Crawler / The Dream

In The Red

***BACK IN STOCK ON MAGENTA VINYL!!!  Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork.  What’s the first thing you think of when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, melody-maiming John Dwyer careening across your cranium, rounded out by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it’s a nail in the coffin of what you thought it meant to make 21st-century rock ’n’ roll? Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point—how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been to pin down since Dwyer launched the project in the late ’90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. (While Dwyer still records songs on his own, Thee Oh Sees is now a five-piece featuring keyboardist / singer Brigid Dawson, guitarist Petey Dammit, drummer Mike Shoun and multi-instrumentalist / singer Lars Finberg.) That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010’s Warm Slime LP to the mercurial moods of 2008’s The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In.  Now, Thee Oh...

Bunyan, Vashti

Just Another Diamond Day

Dicristina Stair Builders

***BACK IN STOCK ON VINYL!!! Note new price.  Long overdue reissue and first-time available on CD as a domestic pressing, Vashti Bunyan's lone 1970 solo release features contributions from British folk royalty including members of Fairport Convention and preeminent producer Joe Boyd. Vashti was recently heard singing alongside Devendra Banhart on the title track of Rejoicing In The Hands. "Ejected from art school in 1964 for failing to choose between writing songs and painting, Vashti Bunyan was found by Andrew Loog Oldham singing her songs in London. She was given a Jaggers-Richards song to record as a single for Decca and a year later she released a single on Columbia. She went on to record further tracks for the Immediate Label, which remain unreleased. Vashti intended to leave the music business and the city behind for good when she started off for the outer limits of northern Britain in 1968 with a horse and a wagon, heading for the promised land. "The songs were written over two summers and one winter of travelling. After a chance meeting that winter with Derroll Adams (noted Woody Guthrie era folksinger and banjo player) who told her not to "hide her light under a bushel," Vashti took the songs of her journey to Joe Boyd. A year later he recorded Just Another Diamond Day, inviting Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band, and Dave Swarbrick and Simon Nicol (who also played on Nick Drake's records) from Fairport Convention to accompany Vashti on some...

Sonic Youth

Evol

Goofin'

***NOW AVAILABLE ON CASSETTE!!!  Released in May 1986 on SST Records and Blast First! in the UK, EVOL was the third studio album by Sonic Youth and showed the first signs of the band transforming their No Wave past into a greater alt-rock sensibility.  “EVOL … mark[s] the true departure point of Sonic Youth’s musical evolution,” noted Pitchfork, “In measured increments, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo … bring form to the formless, tune to the tuneless, and with the help of Steve Shelley’s drums…, [impose] melody and composition on their trademark dissonance.” "If Daydream Nation is Sonic Youth’s opus, EVOL was crucial research. There’s a directness that makes everything feel close. It is pure tension with little release. The entire record is a shadow." Stereogum likewise praised the album as one, “full of suspense…, the cornerstone [of] the Sonic Youth sound…, ground zero for the combination of chiming guitars and atonal skronk… muggy delirium…. the virile ‘Tom Violence’ sounds less written than coaxed from a cauldron, the sort of song that fogs windows. The off-kilter ‘Starpower’ … is sung in a frosty [Nico-evoking] monotone [by Kim Gordon]. ‘In The Kingdom #19,’ featuring Mike Watt on bass and … vocals...

Oh Sees, Thee

Mutilator Defeated At Last

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. Here we have a new batch from Thee Oh Sees for your absorption—nine muscular tunes primed to pummel. Last year’s Drop was more schizophrenic, ranging from heavy to whimsical and back; Mutilator Defeated at Last has more in common with the monolithic hugeness of Floating Coffin. With only two brief reprieves from its onslaught, this record is made to be played loudly and demands bodily sacrifice.  Despite the plutonium heavy feel, Thee Oh Sees continue to be omnivorous. Synths and acoustic guitars wind throughout the album like veins of gold through granite. Any and all that stands in its way will be devoured and assimilated. This is the sound of a band doing what they do best.

Guided By Voices

Bee Thousand

Scat

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Little introduction should be required here. Let it suffice to say that Bee Thousand is arguably the best, or at least among the top Guided By Voices albums in a copious discography. Accordingly, the album has stacked up accolades over the years, including being voted #1 on Amazon.com’s “100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of All Time.” It’s a staple of such lists, and has also placed highly on those curated by Spin, Pitchfork, Mojo and Rolling Stone. This new LP pressing, the first since the late ’90s, honors the album’s 20th anniversary. It features new (and definitely improved) mastering from John Golden, a substantial gatefold jacket with a previously unpublished Robert Pollard collage, and high-quality virgin vinyl from RTI. We’ve also included a free download card.

Jawbreaker

24 Hour Revenge Therapy

Blackball

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 9.1 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork.  One of the most popular and successful underground bands of the early- / mid-’90s, California’s Jawbreaker was comprised of Blake Schwarzenbach (guitar and vocals), Chris Bauermeister (bass) and Adam Pfahler (drums). The band melded raw vocals, a driving rhythm section and grinding guitar with complex song structures and literary lyrics, forging a distinctive style that has since, along with Schwarzenbach’s subsequent band Jets to Brazil, influenced a generation of independent music. By the end of 1993, Jawbreaker was in full stride. The band had completed a full US tour in the summer, played several shows that October with Nirvana, and was attracting significant major label attention. 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, released in early 1994, was Jawbreaker’s third album. After the more “progressive” Bivouac, the trio had returned to a straightforward, poppier sound, and the resulting full-length is widely regarded as their best. The bulk of the recording was done by noted independent producer Steve Albini (though it is officially credited to Albini’s cat, Fluss). Following the mainstream success of fellow Californians Green Day and Rancid, Jawbreaker decided to sign with DGC. They released a final studio album, Dear You, before calling it quits in 1996. A feature-length documentary on the band is currently in the works.

Jawbreaker

Unfun

Blackball

Received a 7.7 rating on Pitchfork.  Blackball Records presents the 20th anniversary edition of Jawbreaker's beloved 1990 debut album Unfun--twelve groundbreaking tracks (sixteen on the CD) that captured the very inception of emo's big band and launched a galaxy of young, earnest bands and the scenes that love them. Unfun has been remastered by John Golden from the original analog tapes; the increased sampling rate boosts some of the bottom end and mid-range. It sounds fucking awesome. The vinyl version is available for the first time since 1992, and the CD and download versions of the record include the three-song Whack & Blite EP, as well as the 7-inch mix of "Busy" as an unlisted bonus track. This reissue features restored original artwork, and all formats include additional band photos from the time of recording. "Want" and "Fine Day" were in heavy rotation on college radio back in the day, and remained set list staples throughout Jawbreaker's run. Unfun wound up on a lot of fanzine top ten lists, and even the mainstream press took notice. Rolling Stone called it "a feast of heavy melody and...

Sleep

Volume One

Tupelo

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Volume One is the debut album. It was the only album recorded with second guitarist Justin Marler, before he became an Orthodox monk. Volume One showcases a darker sound and stronger doom metal influence than Sleep's later work. 

Oh Sees, Thee

Help

In The Red

***BACK IN STOCK ON  PURPLE W/PINK HI-MELT VINYL!!! Note new price.  If you've followed the San Francisco underground for the past ten years, you might already be familiar with John Dwyer. Or--tastes depending--you might not know him at all. A friend and devotee of preeminent Providence noise rock act Lightning Bolt, the majority of Dwyer's repertoire falls on the indie spectrum's more visceral wavelengths. He was Pink in Pink and Brown, fronted Coachwhips, and played guitar in the dysfunctional Hospitals. If you're unfamiliar with or in search of a refresher, you can search YouTube for a crash course on any of these bands. Some popular tags are: "garage," "punk," and "sweat."  If you like what you see, do yourself a favor and check out Dwyer's newest band, Thee Oh Sees. "Newest" because they've only been around for six albums--albeit in different incarnations, under several different names (OCS, the Oh Sees, et al.) with several different sounds. Formed in the wake of his more volatile commitments, Thee Oh Sees started as an extension of Dwyer's softer side. Their early recordings were somber and beautiful. Last year, Thee Oh Sees made an unexpected turn, delivering their wildest, weirdest, hardest-rocking record yet with The Master's Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In. Now Thee Oh Sees have followed it with an even wilder, more hard-rocking record, Help.  Recorded by Chris Woodhouse (the A-Frames, Mayyors), Help draws straight, dark lines to both the British psychedelic rock of bands like The Creation and the caveman thud...

Oh Sees

Orc

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork. The newly shorn Oh Sees waste no time in racing headlong into nightmarish battle with the mighty Orc, clawing even farther up the ghastly peak stormed so satisfyingly by last year’s A Weird Exits. The band is in tour-greased, anvil-on-a-balance beam, gut-pleasingly heavy form, nimbly braining—with equal dashes of abandon and menace—on this fresh batch of bruisers and brooders, hypnotically stirred into to the cauldron of chaos you’ve come to expect. Fresh blood Paul Quattrone joins Dan Rincon to form a phalanx of interlocking double drums, alternately propelling and fleet-footing shifting ground to pinion John Dwyer’s cliff-face guitars to the boogie. Tim Hellman keeps it swinging like a battle-axe to the eyebrows. The tunes veer toward the violence of their live shows, with a few tasty swerves into other lanes: heavy to lush, groovy to stately. Throughout, it remains sinister in its swaggering skulk, manic in its fuzz-fried fugues. They hit all the sweet spots the heads foggily remember, and there’s plenty to sweat over if you just hopped into the sauna. More evil…more complex…more narcotic…more screech… more blare…more whisper…there’s even more Brigid. Less “Thee,” but more of everything else.

Jawbreaker

Bivouac

Blackball

***Green vinyl pressing! Received an 8.8 Best New Reissue rating from Pitchfork.  Blackball Records presents the 20th anniversary edition of Jawbreaker’s Bivouac. Originally released in 1992, this groundbreaking album has been remastered by John Golden from the original tapes, and the increased sampling rate boosts some of the bottom end and mid-range.  The vinyl version is available for the first time in years; the CD and download versions include the songs from the Chesterfield King 12-inch as well as two bonus tracks from the original studio session. The reissue also features restored original artwork, and all formats include additional band photos from the time of recording.  “Shield Your Eyes”, “Parabola”, “Chesterfield King” and “Bivouac” remained set list staples throughout Jawbreaker’s run. The album wound up on a lot of fanzine top ten lists and Rolling Stone listed it as one of the “Ten Most Influential Emo Albums of All Time.”

Pallbearer

Foundations Of Burden

Profound Lore

***Back in stock on Pink Galaxy or Purple Galaxy colored vinyl!!!!!!  Received an 8.6 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork. In the short time that they’ve been a band, Little Rock, Arkansas’ Pallbearer have set a new standard for modern-day doom metal. The band’s debut full-length, 2012’s Sorrow and Extinction, made a massive impact not only in the metal scene, but crossed over to wider audiences in the mainstream as well, landing on numerous “Best of 2012” lists and garnering acclaim from Pitchfork, Decibel, Spin, Rolling Stone, Stereogum and Entertainment Weekly (to name just a few). Pallbearer followed the release by touring with the likes of St. Vitus, Boris and Enslaved, and performing at Roadburn, Hellfest, Maryland Death Fest, Scion Rockfest, Fun Fun Fun and Hopscotch. With their sophomore full-length, the band has taken it to the next level, unleashing a followup even more glorious than its predecessor. If Sorrow and Extinction left its mark on the metal scene, Foundations of Burden will be the stuff of legend. Captured by legendary producer Billy Anderson (Agalloch, Sleep, Neurosis, The Melvins etc.) at Type Foundry Studios in Portland, Oregon, the unparalleled album is an epic sonic landscape of triumphant proportions destined to solidify Pallbearer’s standing as one of the most important metal bands today.Note Price increase for LP.Limited colored vinyl edition available to mail-order customers only, while supplies last!

Oh Sees, Thee

A Weird Exits

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.5 rating from Pitchfork. Emerging from the distant light is the new double-LP from John Dwyer’s Thee Oh Sees—the first studio recordings to capture the muscular rhythm section of twin drummers Ryan Moutinho and Dan Rincon with ringer bassist Tim Hellman cracking spines.  The groove and bludgeon one has come to expect from the band’s live shows is captured seamlessly here—they go from zero to head-splitter, and on the rare occasions they do let up on the gas a bit, you’re treated to some locked-in hypnotizers, too. The guitar sounds more colossal and ethereal at the same time, riding roughshod over the vacuum-sealed rhythm section, spiraling skywards, and diving into the emerald depths so quick your guts tingle. Synths, strings and smoke-soaked things crawl behind the scenes to make an extra far-out party platter, served on 45 RPM plates for most excellent listening quality.  With amazing visuals (including a side-D etching by airbrush-van-art maestro Robert Beatty) and packed in vape-proof goatskin, it’s a beast and, come August 12th, it can be yours should you so choose.

Oh Sees, Thee

Castlemania

In The Red

***BACK IN STOCK ON NEW PURPLE VINYL!!!  Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork.  San Francisco’s incredibly prolific Thee Oh Sees are back with another full-length album of original tracks plus a smattering of covers. While the group’s previous releases on In The Red, Help and Warm Slime, showcase their amped-up, reverb-drenched garage-psych pummel, on Castlemania, John Dwyer and company take a more low-key approach. Dwyer himself describes Castlemania as “summer-y and poppy”; on many of the tracks, electric guitars are jettisoned for acoustic, and the normally echo-laden vocals are a bit clearer. Happy pop melodies, sweet and somber tunes, psychedelic moves galore, cover versions of The Creation and the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and at least one garage stomper all rub elbows on Thee Oh Sees’ “sunshine pop” album. Its release couldn’t be more perfectly suited to the time of the year when the sunny skies return and the flowers start blooming. The vinyl for Castlemania is a three-sided double LP housed in a beautiful gatefold sleeve with a fourth side featuring an etching by William Keihn, who also did the fantastic cover art. Watch for Thee Oh Sees to return later this year with another full-length of pulverizing, heavy stomp. In the meantime, relax and enjoy Castlemania.  “John Dwyer deserves a star on the underground garage-punk walk of fame.” —Stereogum  “This San Francisco garage-punk quartet made for my first real holy-shit moment of this year’s SXSW; I had no idea these guys were so...

King Khan & Bbq Show

S/t

In The Red

In Montreal, Canada, Black Snake and Mark Sultan played in the underground punk-garage band The Spaceshits. Following that band’s demise, Sultan banged drums for Canadian garage rock legends Les Sexareenos. Black Snake transformed into King Khan and relocated to Hamburg, Germany to become the Maharaja of ’60s super-soul with his band The Shrines. After the Sexareenos split, Sultan traveled the world with his guitar, serenading Brazilians, Laotians, Americans, and the French with his one-man band BBQ. One day a light bulb went off in their heads and they decided to join forces—The King Khan & BBQ Show was born. They released their debut album, recorded by DM Bob in Hamburg, on Goner Records in 2005. The record was deleted soon thereafter.  In The Red presents this long-overdue re-release of this classic in a newly expanded package. There are two bonus tracks not originally available on the Goner release, brand new artwork, and the LP version features a one-sided second disc containing the band’s first demo. This is a must for any fan of real rock ’n’ roll music. Take off your pants and dance.  “This is what it’s all about; swinging music by eccentrics with an ear for a tune…. the pair’s raw attempts at doo wop are simply sublime.” —Mojo   “This CD has improved my sex life! Ever since I got it I have had better orgazms.”  —Darla, CDBaby.com

Fuzz

II

In The Red

***BACK IN STOCK ON 2XLP!!! NOW AVAILABLE ON HD SILVER VINYL!Fuzz has abandonment issues. Abandoning expectation. Abandoning reservation, consummation, resignation and trite dictation. Instinct is all there is when it comes to the divination of harsh salvation. Segall, Moothart and Ubovich are exploring all the blank-ations of what will be, or has always been, Fuzz II. Tried and true methods mixed with tongue-twisting, teeth-shattering, seizure-inducing stabs at the norm. Who knows… maybe that’s wrong. Maybe it’s all done. Played out. Maybe it’s not for want of new but for lack of old. But probably not. Bathe in the heat wave that is Fuzz, and regret nothing in the time freeze. Necessity is the mother of creation; and devolution stakes its claim in the past as it continues to bind itself to the future.  San Francisco, Los Angeles, heaven, hell, lunar fields, subterranean hallucinations, traffic jams, sleepless days, hazy nights, recollection or blind reflection. It is all there and so should be you. 2015 and 2016 will bring a new surge of slime, fuzz and otherwise bittersweet concoctions of earthly lettering. It will be heavy, chaotically controlled, softly serpentine and blindingly barbaric. To translate the auditory from ethereal to saliva-soaked semantics is to shatter a promise as it’s made. In the meantime, Ty, Charles and Chad walk on. It is what it is. Just like everything else. And if you don’t know, now you know.  This message brought to you by In The Red Educational Services… as it was...

Sonic Youth

Bad Moon Rising

Goofin'

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork.  Sonic Youth’s second full-length LP Bad Moon Rising was originally released on Homestead and Blast First in 1985. The album is a fascinating examination of “the junction where hippie idealism [meets] the cold hard world,” says guitarist Lee Ranaldo, “where Woodstock [meets] Altamont—Death Valley, Charles Manson, Brian Wilson, musicians, murderers, heroes and villains.” Its original eight-song tapestry of droning guitar feedback, distant clattering percussion, and sullen vocals, all held together with interstitial noise loops and shadowy haze, ambles through a long, dark night before the feverish “Death Valley ’69,” driven by runaway guitar riffs and a frantic Thurston Moore / Lydia Lunch vocal duet, pounds the capstone into place. Sonic Youth’s big leap forward from Confusion Is Sex and Kill Yr Idols “reflects the spirit of the time,” to quote All Music Guide. Bad Moon Rising views “American gothic through the glassy eyes of willful moonlit paranoia.”Back in print on Goofin’ Records, this reissue includes bonus tracks “Flower” and “Halloween,” both from a 12- inch single of the same era. The sound collage morsels “Sa- tan Is Boring” and “Echo Canyon” are your cue to begin moving toward the exit and get out while you can.

Have A Nice Life

Deathconsciousness

Flenser

***BACK IN STOCK ON NEW COLORED VINYL!!! Note new price. Have a Nice Life released their debut double-album Deathconsciousness in 2008 to a whimper and critical non-interest; six years later, the band followed it up with 2014’s stunner The Unnatural World. In the meantime, Deathconsciousness has become a cult classic whose seamless blend of shoegaze, post-punk, new wave, industrial and noise influences inspires fanatic obsession. Now, longtime Have a Nice Life collaborator The Flenser reissues Deathconsciousness on colored vinyl with deluxe packaging. The band commented, “Working with Flenser lets us keep things comfortable on our end, while also pressing enough copies to actually meet the need and not creating an artificially inflated collector’s market, as happened with some of our past releases.” Rhythmic, primal and expansive, Deathconsciousness offers a meditation on death, loss and unrequited love, with repeated listens revealing new layers of depth and meaning. The Flenser’s reissue is accompanied by a 75-page booklet detailing the dark and forgotten history of the Antiochean cult—an engrossing narrative that blurs the lines between liner notes, novella and academic text. “Deathconsciousness is probably a perfect record” —Last Train To Cool “A masterpiece of depression” —The Quietus “85-minute powerhouse of a double-album” —The Needle Drop “Have a Nice Life’s Deathconsciousness could quite possibly move the Earth” —Sputnik Music (5/5 rating)

Segall, Ty Band

Slaughterhouse

In The Red

BACK IN STOCK ON CD!!!   Received an 8.7 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork.  A reissue of the 2012 debut release by the Ty Segall Band on In The Red, featuring a bonus song not on the original release! The Ty Segall Band is Ty Segall (obviously), Mikal Cronin, Charlie Moonheart and Emily Rose Epstein. While Segall has released many incredible solo releases, Slaughterhouse marks the first time he recorded with his touring band. For this mini-album (originally released as a double 10-inch, but now expanded to a double 12-inch) the band recorded with Chris Woodhouse at the Hangar, turned their amps all the way up, set their fuzz pedals on “obliterate” and commenced to kick ass and take names. Seriously, this record will melt your face. All of Segall’s usual psych-pop sensibilities are present but Slaughterhouse adds the full-throttle, go-for-the-throat bombast that the band delivers in the live setting. The fuzz riffs, bratty howl and Cro-Magnon bashing culminate with a feedback freakout that’s clearly the only sensible way to end a workout of this magnitude in shit to announce the debut release by the Ty Segall Band.

Oh Sees, Thee

Drop

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. Our lad John P. Dwyer has been lancing eardrums with Thee Oh Sees in an ever-escalating flurry of records for the past six years. Since the release of The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In announced a new loud era (and excepting a few momentary detours into home-baked territory—Dog Poison and Castlemania, for example), Dwyer and company have pummeled a bit harder each time out, cementing their reputation as a live force to be reckoned with and leaving legions sweaty and bruised in the process. Late last year, after years of relentlessly touring the world, the word got out… Dwyer’s moving to Los Angeles (fear not, still California!) and Thee Oh Sees are taking a much-needed hiatus with a shifting of gears ahead and a new album on the way. This is that album.  Drop was recorded in a banana-ripening warehouse (no joke) with hair-farming studio warlock Chris Woodhouse playing drums; it’s also graced with the presence of talented gurus Mikal Cronin, Greer McGettrick and Casafis adding horns and vocals. The result pushes the familiar polarities of the group farther outward than ever before. Opener “Penetrating Eye” might be the heaviest Oh Sees song yet, “Transparent World” and “Put Some Reverb On My Brother” foam with seasick fuzz, and yet the ballads, like the harpsichorded “King’s Nose” and the lush and stately closer “The Lens,” extend their oeuvre into mellotronic, far-out pop with delicacy and grace.  This...

Jawbreaker

Etc

Blackball

***The long-anticipated collection of rare A-sides, B-sides, covers and unreleased outtakes from influential punk rock favorites and emo granddaddies JAWBREAKER. A twenty-track Alpha-Omega of rare and previously-impossible-to-find songs presented chronologically from their first demo in November of '88 (before they were even named Jawbreaker ) to their final studio recording, a version of "Boxcar" re-worked at the end of the DGC Dear You sessions. Beautifully packaged with inviting artwork and track-by-track commentary and lyrics (printed courtesy of AARON COMETBUS). 24-Hour Satisfaction Therapy, indeed.

Oh Sees, Thee

Putrifiers II

In The Red

***BACK IN STOCK!!! AVAILABLE ON CLEAR WITH WHITE AND GRAY SWIRL. Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork.  What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions Thee Oh Sees? Probably their riot-sparking live show, right? Visions of a guitar-chewing, speaker-smothering, tongue-wagging John Dwyer careening across your cranium, chased by a wild-eyed wrecking crew that drives every last hook home like it’s a nail in the coffin of what one thought it meant to make 21st century rock ’n’ roll?  Yeah, that sounds about right. But it misses a more important point—how impossible Thee Oh Sees have been been to pin down since Dwyer launched it in the late ’90s as a solo break from such sorely missed underground bands as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips. That restlessness extends to everything from the towering, thirteen-minute title track of 2010’s Warm Smile LP to the mercurial moods of 2008’s The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In. And then there’s the home-brewed symphonies of Castlemania and the high-wire hooks of Carrion Crawler / The Dream, which dropped a second drum set among sunburnt organs, dovetailing guitars and rail-jumping rhythms.  If one prefers a slightly more subtle musical awakening, there’s always Putrifiers II, the latest in a long line of Oh Sees albums that expands the group’s sound well past your friendly neighborhood garage band. So while the space-odyssey nods of “Wax Face” actually sound like they’re meant to melt one’s ears straight off, the record’s full of...

Oh Sees

Face Stabber

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Hey there, human kids, lift your face out of the feed trough and pluck that feculence from your ears. Hark! A sonar blip from beneath the pile of bodies—the latest Oh Sees, Face Stabber! Boop, blip, ughhh….people churning like a boiling swamp. Man, this din is nauseating. The screen flickers for the first time this year with a transmission from two months in the future: “the internet has deemed guitar music dead and you are free to do whatever the fuck you like ….long live the new flesh!” This album is Soundcloud hip-hop reversed, a far flung nemesis of contemporary country and flaccid algorithmic pop-barf. No songs about money or love are floating in the ether. Just memories, echoes, foggy blurs, blip-blop goes the scope, heavy funk, dystopia-punk canons, long jams, bloated solos dribbling down your caved-in chest. Human cattle like a beef avalanche, right on your burned out face hole. Spider-legs fuzz crawling in your brain. Lots of curse words for your mom. You’ve gotten the over-population blues, so let’s have some art for art’s sake. What else are you gonna do? Stare at the sky? Please…fifty carbon copies of you look back at you as you walk the streets. Take a breath, you’re going to need it. Take drugs, you’re going to need those just to stand in line at the air and water reclamation center soon enough. There’s no fruit, buddy. You’re at the bleak-peak. They will squeeze you till you’re all squeezed out.

Oh Sees, Thee

Warm Slime

In The Red

***BACK IN PRINT ON NEW GREEN WITH ORANGE HI-MELT VINYL!!!The ridiculously prolific Bay Area band Thee Oh Sees are back with another full-length long-player. Warm Slime is guaranteed to please fans of their whacked-out garage / psych / punk jams. Recorded by Sacramento sultan of sound Chris Woodhouse, Warm Slime carries on in the same tradition as the group's previous In The Red release, Help, showcasing their more electrified and rocking side, in comparison to other recent home-recorded releases. The centerpiece is undoubtedly the mind-bending title track, which clocks in at nearly 14 minutes and takes up the entirety of the album's first side. It's a psychedelic epic of "Inna Gadda Da Vida" proportions! John Dwyer's guitar playing is at its quadra-spazzed best here. The results are stunning.  "Thee Oh Sees incorporate the oft-referenced Nuggets stuff in a way that feels reverential. With grinding guitars and bah-bah-bah vocals, but with the punk and new-wave elements also at play, they don't feel trite or plagiarized. This is like meat and potatoes prepared by a master chef--totally familiar but utterly delicious." --Pitchfork

Galaxie 500

On Fire

20|20|20

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  On Fire is widely recognized as the canonic pinnacle of Galaxie 500's career. The artwork conveys this, with a low-angle shot of the band, looking up towards an amber sky. This record marked the realization of their signature sound. Nowhere is it clearer than on the album opener, "Blue Thunder," the closest a song can come to waves crashing on a beach in song form. Lyrically inconsequential, with a chorus composed entirely of "la"s, the track's power lies in a systematic build and break of intensity that reaches a Spector-like climax. It is the quintessential Galaxie 500 song, encapsulating all that was great about the band. With the Boston trio once again utilizing the bizarre genius of producer Mark Kramer, On Fire sounds like anything but. The guitars are warm blankets enwrapping Dean Wareham's vocals, percolated by the open percussion of Damon Krukowski and anchored by the emotion-laden bass of Naomi Yang. Songs like "Snowstorm," "Strange," and "Decomposing Trees" have an endless quality, without beginnings or ends, but rather frozen somewhere on a spectrum of melancholy. For the first time since its original pressing, On Fire is available again on vinyl. Cut by vinyl ace Kevin Gray from a remaster by Kramer and Alan Douches, the album sounds more vibrant than ever, and Galaxie 500 exists again as one of the most enrapturing and glorious bands to emerge from the underground in the past 25 years.

Sonic Youth

Simon Werner a Disparu

Sonic Youth Records

***BACK IN STOCK!!! In Spring 2010, Sonic Youth gathered at their Echo Canyon West studio in Hoboken, New Jersey, to watch the rushes of a new film, Simon Werner a Disparu, by French director Fabrice Gobert. They spent the following few weeks recording music which was then shaped as needed to fit the various scenes. For this release, rather than present the small clips of music as used in the film, the band went back in the autumn to the original tapes and re-organized the various pieces for this original soundtrack release, sometimes montaging multiple tracks together, other times extending cues into new sonic realms. The film premiered at Cannes in May 2010 and opened nationwide in France.

Segall, Ty

Lemons

Goner

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Burying '60s sing-alongs and dance crazes beneath waves of reverb and giddy thud, Ty Segall has carved out his own shelf in the San Francisco neo-psych garage alongside local compatriots and collaborators Sic Alps and Thee Oh Sees. After shattering the Bay Area underground as a frantic one-man band that was devoured by the local press, Segall has now given up the solo act for a three-piece group that destroys sonic and melodic boundaries with manic glee. This new live setup is a better reflection of his studio work.  As an exploration of the space between Cro-Magnon fuzz and atmospheric acoustic psych, Lemons is the natural next step after his celebrated self-titled 2008 debut on Castle Face. "Look out Jay Reatard, this Bay Area one-man band has even scuzzier static in his garage." --SPIN

Oh Sees

Smote Reverser

Castle Face

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. Crack the coffers, Oh Sees have spawned another frothy album of head-destroying psych-epics to grok and rock out to. Notice the fresh dollop of organ and keyboard prowess courtesy of Memory Of A Cut Off Head-alum and noted key-stabber Tom Dolas, while the Paul Quattrone / Dan Rincon drum-corps polyrhythmic pulse continues to astound and pound in equal measure, buttressed by the nimble fingered bottom end of Sir Tim Hellman the Brave and the shred-heaven fret frying of John Dwyer, whilst Lady Brigid Dawson again graces the wax with her harmonic gifts. Aside from the familiar psych-scorch familiar to soggy pit denizens the world over, there’s a fresh heavy-prog vibe that fits like a worn-in jean jacket comfortably among hairpin metal turns and the familiar but no less horns-worthy guitar fireworks Dwyer’s made his calling card. Perhaps the most notable thing about Smote Reverser is the artistic restlessness underpinning its flights of fancy. Dwyer refuses to repeat himself and for someone with such a hectic release schedule, that stretching of aesthetic borders and omnivorous appetite seems all the more superhuman!

Oh Sees, Thee

An Odd Entrances

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! From the same misty mountaintop tape spool as August’s A Weird Exits, Thee Oh Sees bring the companion album An Odd Entrances. Delving more towards the contemplative than the face-skinning aspects of its predecessor, this sister album is a cosmic exercise en plein aire with John Dwyer and company double-drum shuffling, lounging with cellos, following a flute around the groove, and spooling a few Grimm-dark lullabies along the way. Lurking in the grass are a snake or two, like the celestial facing instrumental buzz of “Unwrap The Fiend Pt. 1.”… But for the most part this is a relatively hushed affair, a morning rather than evening listen. The band plans on donating half their profits from the first pressing to Elizabeth House, a local charity in Pasadena that specifically helps homeless women with children get back on their feet.

Osees

Protean Threat

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Witness the ever-changing, ever-mutating threat that is reality. Perception is under duress; sensibility is bending everyday under the barrage of nonsense. One must make note of whom one is and what one has become: look into the mirror of the planet-killers—psychic cannibals infiltrate and contaminate once familiar and seemingly secure territories… formidable foes indeed! What powers these beasts? What fuels discord and hatred? The behemoth of a “civil” society? What are the weapons at one’s disposal? Generosity is the aegis against greed, empathy is the armor to deflect apathy, love is the club to abate hate…the fog is lifting and humans are opening their eyes.  And so Castle Face offers this field recording, the Osees Protean Threat, from the pits as a quick booster between protein pills and recycled sweat beverage anthems to assist the listener to not worship at the altar of violence and greed, to not offer oneself up for free, to stand up and be vigilant! Truth will not be found in the speeches and photo ops of the overlords— stand strong and together under the gaze of the oppressors. Stand vigilant, united with those who don’t have the same privileges. Demand respect and a peaceful life for all.  This recording is at the apogee of scuzz—punk anthem amulets for the ears and heart, a battery for one’s core. Be strong. Be human. Be love.

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

Om

Variations On A Theme

Holy Mountain

***BACK IN STOCK ON OLIVE GREEN VINYL!!!  OM reunites one of the most powerful rhythm sections in rock music: Al Cisneros [bass, vocals] and Chris Hakius [drums], both ex-members of the legendary Sleep. Variations on a Theme is comprised of three long songs employing a series of rhythmic chants whose cadence-like textural drive conveys flight. The album's numerous lyrics serve as symbolist vehicles to a state outside the field of time and space. Variations on a Theme is a series of vibrations and flow. The opening track,"On The Mountain at Daw" is the thematic blueprint of the entire album; a transportive series of differentiated verse with sets of solid groove. "Kapil's Them" furthers the motif while the closer "Annapurna" breaks the spell, where the final wash of sound reflects the infinite. 

Om

Conference Of The Birds

Holy Mountain

Comprised of two songs that build on Om’s (Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, rhythm section of legendary sludge and stoner rock pioneers, Sleep) use of cyclical rhythm, riff, and vocal intonation, the duo’s new album Conference of the Birds blends metal, chant, drone, dub, and psychedelia . The band’s lyrics expound upon the structure of the universe, potentiality, and freedom from the physical body. Engineered by Billy Anderson and produced by the band, Conference of the Birds progresses beyond their debut, Variations on a Theme, with more fully realized songwriting and production by Billy Anderson (Melvins, Neurosis)

Fugazi

Repeater

Dischord

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Remastered by BOB WESTON at Chicago Mastering Services. Includes a free MP3 download.

Galaxie 500

Today

20|20|20

***BACK IN STOCK ON LP!!!  When Galaxie 500's Today was released in 1988, it set off a chain reaction of quiet explosions still being felt. Never before had a record so emphasized the calming elements of rock music, transforming what at first seems like a collection of bridges into fully realized songs. And one can draw a straight line from here to the many groups they influenced, like Low, Belle & Sebastian, and Bon Iver. Today is full of idiosyncrasies. The trio of Damon Krukowski, Dean Wareham, and Naomi Yang were recent Harvard grads who intuitively eliminated any histrionic tradition to rock songs, leaving core emotion (not for nothing did they include a cover of "Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste," by the kings of feeling, The Modern Lovers). It was produced by Mark Kramer, who was best known for his work with cataclysmic slop rock pioneers such as Bongwater, Ween, and King Missle. The band's hometown of Boston was just coming out of its love affair with Mission of Burma and pouncing upon the spasmodic electricity of The Pixies. Despite, or perhaps because of, all these elements, Today thrived.  More than 20 years after its initial release, its title is still no misnomer. The music, recorded with what many thought at the time was too much reverb, sounds present, alive, and indeed a product of today. Songs like "Flowers," "Temperature's Rising," and of course "Tugboat" (the band's debut single) stand the test of time and exist...

Segall, Ty

Singles 2007-2010

Goner

Jet-packing around the indie / garage cosmos for the last four years, Ty Segall has done too many singles and EPs and split records and shared records and albums and cassettes to count. He’s found himself increasingly in the spotlight, and this year’s Goodbye Bread for Drag City was met with a big wet kiss from the indie media world. But Segall don’t care about that. He ain’t in it for the corporate buck. He’s made it because he’s toured constantly, puts on a great show and genuinely loves what he does.  Goner is proud to present a double-album of tracks culled from Segall’s massive out-of-print catalog—plus some stuff that never made it out in the first place. Here ya go: Singles 2007-2010.

Neutral Milk Hotel

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

Merge

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Named Best Album of the 1990s by Magnet Magazine, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea gives us JEFF MANGUM’s powerful solo acoustic work, full horn section marches, history, religion, and sex—everything you hoped for and more! Now available on 180-gram vinyl! Includes coupon for an MP3 download of the entire album.

Wire

Pink Flag

Pinkflag

***Wire’s first three albums need no introduction. They are the three classic albums on which Wire’s reputation is based. Moreover, they are the recordings that minted the post-punk form. This was adopted by other bands, but Wire were there first. It has been a number of years since these albums were readily available. The aim with these new vinyl and CD releases is to approximate the original statements as closely as possible, but with remastered audio. The vinyl releases have the same covers and inners as the originals (minus the Harvest logo). The digipack CDs have identical track listings to their vinyl counterparts. These versions should be considered Wire’s classic 1970s albums, pure and undiluted.Usually contextualized against a backdrop of two years of the growing cultural importance of punk rock—Wire’s debut Pink Flag, released in December 1977 on EMI’s progressive label Harvest was in fact was something “other.” To the keen cultural commentator, the timing and label of it’s release will register two essential facts about it. Firstly, too late (a year after the Pistol’s debut release) to be part of UK punk’s first flush and secondly that the band were signaling something beyond punk by their choice of label. Further investigation would reveal twenty-one tracks, some of them clocking in at well under a minute and covering a range of tempi well beyond the buzzsaw rockabilly that had become, even by the second half of 1977, punk’s staple.

Melvins

Bullhead

Boner

Available again with updated artwork and a new gatefold sleeve! Melvins' follow-up to 1989’s Ozma was 1991’s groundbreaking Bullhead. The songs are longer, the mood is calmer, yet more menacing. “Boris” (which gave the Japanese group their name) is a long, slow, low death march of addiction and self-abuse. “Zodiac” is a frantic punk rock machine gun blasting away at Buzz’s demons (both inner and outer). “Cow” is a happy baboon bashing away at the best drum solo of his life. “It’s Shoved” is a groovy beat for the cast of Shindig to bop along to, until their carefree performances of The Pony, The Mashed Potato, and The Watusi are horribly interrupted by the soundstage tilting up and sliding them all into a mangled heap of screaming dancers, broken cameras and flaming electronic equipment at the bottom.

Oh Sees, Thee

Singles Collection 1 & 2

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! A double-LP collection of every single and compilation track THEE OH SEES have released to date, along with one previously unreleased gem. Tracks run the gambit from very mellow stuff with strings to completely fried burners.

Oh Sees, Thee

Sucks Blood

Castle Face

***BACK IN STOCK!!! JOHN DWYER and his OH SEES reissue the Sucks Blood album on his own Castle Face imprint. Produced by KELLEY STOLTZ using all green energy (no joke), the album serves as a half-way point between the band’s Cool Death of the Island Raiders album and their most recent material.

Forgetters

S/t

Too Small To Fail

forgetters: as we are, so shall we be. In the spirit of national historical amnesia, the scrappy, enormous Brooklyn band continues its mission to master its immediate moment through the occlusion / collapse of events prior and subsequent. Originally touted as a “9/11 denier hoax,” the group went on to surprise even itself by losing its mind on its tragic-glorious 2011 European tour. Surviving members Kevin Mahon (Against Me!) and Blake Schwarzenbach (Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil) went to Baltimore, Maryland, in late 2011 / early 2012 to record this eponymous full-length with J. Robbins. The result is pure Caesar—a quasi-fascist Republic with power streaming from every administrative angle.  The small nation-state plans to tour following the release of its album, in what it has called “Dubai or Death.” Mortal Kombat fans take note, all others be seated.

Sonic Youth

S/t

Goofin'

*** Available again on 2xlp!! Sonic Youth’s eponymous debut 12-inch was recorded in late 1981 at Plaza Sound at Radio City Music Hall in NYC and originally released on composer Glenn Branca’s Neutral label.  This remastered and expanded double vinyl and CD reissue includes the self-titled debut record plus live material from '81 and a track from a previously unheard studio session (and remains the only recorded document of an early line-up featuring actor Richard Edson on drums). Includes liner notes by original Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson, Glenn Branca and Byron Coley. The first Sonic Youth EP - originally released on Glenn Branca's Neutral imprint - sits alongside the Sonic Death cassette and the Kill Yr Idols LP as some of the group's most evocatively blasted work. Listened to with modern ears it's immediately remarkable just how fully-formed the Sonic Youth sound was, even as early as their first quartet gig - included here in its entirety on disc two. The complex interlocking webs of dissonant guitars are as distinctive as ever - even when rendered via conventional tuning - and the automatic/somnabulant delivery of the lyrics is every bit as zoned as on later tracks from Evol and Bad Moon Rising. There's still a fair bit of new wave damage in the way the bass...

Oh Sees, Thee

Live in San Francisco

Castle Face

Perched in the belfry of The Chapel we caught thee mighty Oh Sees, alive and in their natural element, with our shutters aflutter and our tapes on a roll. After a short incubation period, the beast has reached full maturity and it is hideous. Over three nights they pummeled, and we’ve culled some great photographs, a wicked recording, and even a little live video action. Castle Face is happy to announce the first double LP in the Live in San Francisco series, presented on two discs, in a handsome double gatefold jacket. Finally you depraved Oh Sees freaks have something to take home with you when you lose your shoes and your girlfriend at the show. Put it on at home and pretend to wait in line for the bathroom and it’s like you’re really there. The thrash, the throb, the mob is all present and pushed to the front. Dual drummers synced in each ear, Tim Hellman rounding out the bottom and Castle Face’s own John Dwyer up front on guitar, lasering young brains off and fomenting the crowd to a froth—it’s a great band, in a great room, with a great crowd and it’s cooked to perfection… Take a little bit of it with you this time.

Wolves In The Throne Room

Diadem Of 12 Stars

Artemisia

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Written almost exclusively in a windowless, black room over the long, dark nights of winter 2005, Diadem of 12 Stars was the first official Wolves In The Throne Room release. Re-imagining black metal as an ode to rain storms, wood smoke and the wild energies of the Pacific Northwest, Wolves In The Throne Room craft a unique melancholic atmosphere. Diadem of 12 Stars is about lunar sorcery on Cascadian mountaintops and encounters with wild spirits. In contrast to the icy, razor sharp soundscapes of their ’90s Norwegian forebears, Diadem of 12 Stars is lush and ethereal, dripping with rain-soaked moss and lichen. In 2006, all but a few self-defined black metal acts avoided performing live. In contrast, Wolves In The Throne Room honed the material for Diadem of 12 Stars by touring across the country’s basements and squats. It’s raw analog sound, paying homage to the band’s varied influences—the harsh black metal of Norwegians Ulver and Emperor, and their American counterparts Weakling and Ludicra; the monolithic heaviness of Neurosis and Swans; the sorrowful funeral doom of My Dying Bride; the mournful goth of Dead Can Dance—yet it distills these inspirations to create a sound entirely their own. Described by guitarist Nathan Weaver as “the most raw and punk” of their five full-length releases, Diadem of 12 Stars was recorded live to tape in Oakland by Tim Green. The band was joined in the studio by Jamie Myers (Hammers of Misfortune / Sabbath Assembly) and...

Woods

At Echo Lake

Woodsist

***RECEIVED AN 8.0 RATING FROM PITCHFORK!!! "The distance between 2007's At Rear House and 2010's At Echo Lake may at first seem only semantic, but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing. "Over the past few years, Woods has established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks. They were an odd proposition even in the outre company of vocalist / guitarist / label owner Jeremy Earl's Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer-songwriters. Recent live shows have seen them best confuse the two, playing beautifully constructed songs torn apart by fuzztone jams and odd electronics.  "At Echo Lake feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows, in much the same way that The Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" single amplified and engulfed the planetary aspect of their improvised takes. Some of the material here--the opening "Blood Dries Darker," the euphoric "Mornin' Time"--is so lush that lesser brains would've succumbed to the appeal of strings and horns, but At Echo Lake is more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers, nowhere more so than on "From the Horn," a track as beautiful in its assault on form as "Eight Miles High" or Swell Maps' "Midget Submarines." But despite...

Sonic Youth

Confusion Is Sex

Goofin'

BACK IN STOCK ON VINYL! Note price increase.  Originally slated to be a seven-inch single to follow up their self-titled debut, Sonic Youth ’s Confusion Is Sex blossomed into the band’s first album:  a brain-bludgeoning, completely fried endeavor of dissonance and disarray, a perfect soundtrack for running from a chain-wielding gang near the SIN Club. This was the sound of 1983 New York City: nothing like London where punks were starting to scrub their faces and sounds to get on Top of the Pops , and nothing like the jangly roots of college radio rock starting to formulate in Athens, Georgia. It sounded like no one else on Earth, for that matter. The raw, Wharton Tiers  8-track production is dark, the Kim Gordon-scrawled cover figure art of Thurston Moore  is dark, Lee Ranaldo ’s back cover photo-collage and Catherine Ceresole ’s crumpled-xeroxed images that adorned the inside are dark. It’s an album that moves Sonic Youth forward from their first EP almost by devolving backwards into true ugly, lo-fi primitivity. The bareboned arsenal of junkpile guitars and implementation of alternate tunings was growing, and so were the songs that matched the individual attributes of each instrument: certain ones groan and growl a specific way that the band started to realize itself could become the compositional germ of a song. Herein is the threshold of a new explosion of the band’s creativity , replacing the comparatively cleaner buzz of the Sonic Youth EP with guitars that  spew fractured,...

Neurosis

Fires Within Fires

Neurot Recordings

Of all that humankind has inherited through our ancestry, no single language has transcended every age as powerfully as music. For those few who channel that inheritance of sound today, none wield its command and authority like Neurosis. Showing their discontent with convention from the very beginning, Neurosis revealed what would become an instinct for transformation in sound and scope. With each release, the sound became interchangeable with vision. A vision of the conscious and unconscious coexisting in an audial spectrum that challenged not only the constraints of what listeners expected but of the listeners themselves as beings. Over the collective’s past ten albums, Neurosis have invited listeners to join them on the path their music carved. Going beyond the remarkable, they became unforgettable. Throughout the last 30 years, the band has relished the unpredictable and embraced the unknown possibility of where the music was capable of taking them. Neurosis takes their most dominant step yet with their eleventh full-length, Fires Within Fires. Three decades in the making, striking their signature balance between light and dark, beauty and repulsion, this latest album gives due to its predecessors while progressing forward into the unfamiliar and formidable. Featuring exquisite album artwork from the renowned Thomas Hooper and the stellar recording work of the group’s longstanding engineer Steve Albini, Fires Within Fires is at once a beautiful and forbidding work of mastery. For members Scott Kelly, Steve Von Till, Jason Roeder, Noah Landis, and Dave Edwardson, the album is a welcome companion to...

Dirtbombs

Ultraglide In Black

In The Red

Mick Collins and his merry band of Dirtbombs (which, this time around, features Bantam Rooster's Tom Potter and Detroit studio wiz Jim Diamond) bring the soul on their sophomore album Ultraglide In Black, named after Ultraglide in Blue, a cool late-nite flick from your youth. All the influences that helped shaped his sonic psyche are in the forefront here - Sly & the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Parliament, the Miracles and host of others too obscure to mention all have their presence felt. If the Temptations owned fuzz pedals and read too many comic books they might've sounded something like this. There are a lot of young bands claiming to be creating "soul" music and "testifying" (we won't name names) but this here is the authentic item - accept no substitutes.  "The Dirtbombs' combination of squealing feedback-driven guitar, dual drumming and walloping bass presence rivals that of the Velvet Underground. Imagine the Velvets, Gories and Oblivians battling to the death inside a tuna fish can, their raw and ultra crude instrumentation blazing away with hell-bent fury. Led by Mick Collins (who spent time fronting the Gories and the rockabilly grunge outfit Blacktop), the Dirtbombs' distinctive Motown howl and wicked axe slingin' escapades shred like one of Dolemite's rapid-fire, X-rated monologues.… Collins executes some snarling, self-professed "cyclone" guitar riffs underneath the stomping, mummified mayhem. These Detroit cavemen have found their place in a fuzz-drenched, garage band sound reminiscent of Question Mark and the Mysterians fused with...