On August 18, Matador will be releasing the long-anticipated new LP/CD/digital album from Jay Reatard, ‘Watch Me Fall’. Excepting last year’s pair of singles comps for Matador and In The Red, this is Jay’s first album since 2006’s ‘Blood Visions’, and it’s a self-produced full-length that more than lives up to the sky-high standards previously set. Earlier this year, Jay described the making of ‘Watch Me Fall’ to labelmate Andrew Earles :
“This new album has been challenging. It’s the first time I’ve written and recorded an album specifically because a label wants to release it. I’ve never made a record for a record label. I’ve always finished my recordings and then a label is decided on. When I made ’Blood Visions’ I had no idea that it was going to see the light of day. And I’ve never made a record in which the label heard the songs, or anyone heard the songs, before the album was finished, so that’s kind of intense. That’s what singles are for; I always considered my singles as a glimpse between the albums. Labels always had the previous single as an example of where I was going at the time, or of what the next album might sound like. In this situation, people at the label are hearing the songs before the album has been finished, but I try not to let it distract me, I’m trying to go about this process in a way that’s the closest to how I would have done an album in the past. A lot of bands these days, they approach the making of an album like it’s collecting songs, they don’t think about how all of the songs are going to work together. They sequence their albums on iTunes, wondering what songs sound best next to each other rather than putting them together as they were written. That’s not an album.”
A guitar-and-drums duo from Vancouver, Japandroids crank out eardrum-bursting noise rock that takes cues from alt-rock vets such as Hüsker Dü as well as contemporary bands like No Age. On their debut disc, Post-Nothing, guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse deliver a rush of fuzzed-out rockers and stoner-metal grooves, plus an awesomely bummed-out drone called “I Quit Girls.” Unlike most arty noise bands, these guys don’t take themselves too seriously. Instead, they get rip-roaring drunk (”Rockers East Vancouver”) and wonder what it’d be like to “French-kiss some French girls.”
Taken from: rollingstone.com MySpace
A new six song 12″ from The Mayfair Set, a collaborative effort between Blank Dogs and Dum Dum Girls. Two of the songs we’re already familiar with also happen to be the best tracks on the release, but you still have some nice dreamy pop jams to look forward to.
The Stone Roses Limited Edition 7 Inch Singles Box Set.
This very limited UK only release is being sold as a complete set although the first single, “Elephant Stone” is released on 6th July.This single comes complete with a hard-backed deluxe box, to house all x5 singles & includes artwork, liner notes & exclusive bits etc… The remaining singles are released one a week over the next 4 weeks. The singles are Made of Stone, She Bangs the Drum, Fools Gold and One Love. I will be shipping the complete boxes.
Directions to See a Ghost is the second album from Texas rock band The Black Angels. It was released digitally on April 15, 2008 by Light in the Attic Records. However, it was not until May 13th that the CD and 3xLP were released. Those who purchased the album digitally were given a code to download the album. On or after the date of release, it was to be brought back to the place of purchase in exchange for a hard copy of the album as well as a bonus four-song EP Black Angel Exit. Moreover, “Directions to See a Ghost features the song “Doves” also available on the “Doves” single 7″ released the same day. Unlike the CD, the 3xLP contains bonus tracks “Surf City (Revisited)” and “Paladin’s Last Stand.”
The group have signed to the label Suretone, owned by Interscope, for releases after this album.
Prefix Magazine called it “an easy candidate for one of the best records of the year”.
According to Rolling Stone Magazine columnist David Fricke “…tripsters the Black Angels bring the aura of mid-1966 - the drilling guitars of early Velvet Underground shows, the raga inflections of late-show Fillmore jams, the acid-prayer stomp of Austin avatars the 13th Floor Elevators - everywhere they go, including the levitations on their second album, Directions to See a Ghost (Light in the Attic). Mid-Eighties echoes of Spacemen 3 and the Jesus and Mary Chain also roll through the scoured-guitar sustain and Alex Maas’ rocker-monk incantations.”
Web: http: theblackangels.com
MySpace: myspace.com/theblackangels
Optimistic high school band teachers and the dapper French quartet Phoenix might be the only people alive who can envision a wave of “Lisztomania” sweeping today’s youth. But the title of the leadoff track from Phoenix’s new album is an apt synopsis of their mannered yet effervescent romanticism.
“Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix,” a truly marvelous album title if ever there was one, is danceable but only a little disco, synth-driven but clubland averse, an easy record to like but a more difficult one to love.
It’s fitting that many American fans learned of the band through the “Lost in Translation” soundtrack, as “Wolfgang” evokes that film’s dazed sensuality and sense of fleeting pleasure. The first single, “1901,” is driven by a thick, shimmering Moog and Thomas Mars’ collar-loosening yelps, and “Lasso” and “Countdown” are especially scintillating rockers.
Yet after a good number of frothy tracks like “Girlfriend” and a long instrumental doodle, Phoenix’s pleasures become akin to eating a tin of cake frosting: A worthy and delicious Friday-night endeavor, but expect a touch of a toothache in the morning.
Austin was a fertile ground for the emerging counterculture of the 1960s. Seen as nonconformists, Beatnik-inspired hipsters were drawn together by folk, country and Blues music while dabbling with peyote and LSD. Traditional values became challenged as they sought a lifestyle outside of the system. Civil Rights and the war in Vietnam were galvanizing factors in 1960s American society but the advent of psychedelics made it electrified. This documentary tells how it happened in Austin Texas. Featuring interviews with the people who were there and a wealth of Super 8 film footage and raw live recordings. Janis Joplin, The 13th Floor Elevators, Gilbert Shelton, Kenneth Threadgill - they’re all here - and their story will make you proud to be an Austinite.
Web: dirtroadtopsych.com
The last Dirty Projectors full-length, 2007’s Rise Above, reimagined a Black Flag hardcore classic as an art-jazz cave painting, so these forever-fluctuating Brooklyn space cadets aren’t exactly short on ambition. Since Rise Above, the band has locked down a reasonably stable core lineup and signed with Domino. But judging by the flurry of activity they’ve got coming up, the Dirty Projectors aren’t quite ready to settle into any sort of regular record-tour-record-tour rhythm.
Now, the band has revealed the details of the Rise Above follow-up. Domino will release Bitte Orca, the band’s fifth full-length, on June 9. The band recorded the album last year in Brooklyn and Portland, Oregon. Song titles on this thing are commendably weird: “Cannibal Resource”, “Remade Horizon”, “Fluorescent Half Dome”. That’s the album cover up there.
On April 21, Domino will release the album’s first single, “Stillness Is the Move”, on both 12″ vinyl and digital download, and it’ll include a couple of b-sides and a remix from Lucky Dragons, their peers in elusiveness. (The first single is not “Byond Uquafina”, as previously reported.)
But those records are only part of the story, as we recently reported. This spring, the band will play a few American shows (including the Pitchfork/Windish Austin Bash) and then head over to the UK for a quick headlining tour. They’ve added two touring members to their lineup: bassist Nat Baldwin and singer Haley Dekle.
Meanwhile, Bang on a Can will premier a work from Dave Longstreth, the band’s sole constant member, at New York’s Kaufman Center on April 2, alongside a piece from Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo.
Longstreth isn’t the only member of the band making music on the side. On May 5, Lovepump United will release Mind Raft, the first solo EP from band member Angel Deradoorian, who records as just Deeradorian.
And supposedly the band also has another full-length in the works. They still intend to release one more album on Dead Oceans, the label that released Rise Above, though God only knows how they’ll find the time to finish the thing.
Also worth noting: “Knotty Pine”, the band’s collaboration with David Byrne, opens the massive double-CD charity comp Dark Was the Night, which we BNM’ed yesterday. It might be the best thing they’ve ever done, and it’s getting us amped for Bitte Orca.
Taken from: pitchfork.com MySpace
Bradford Cox and his pals in Deerhunter can’t stop making new music. And what may be tiring for them is good for the rest of us. Case in point: A new five-song EP called Rainwater Cassette Exchange is due May 18 digitally and June 8 on CD and vinyl via Kranky in the U.S. and 4AD elsewhere. Like last year’s Microcastle, the EP was recorded with producer Nicolas Verhes at Brooklyn’s Rare Book Room studios.
And while it’s exciting enough to read about fresh Deerhunter tracks, it’s slightly more exciting to actually listen to them. Thankfully, we’ve got you covered. The title track and first single is available to stream and download right below this paragraph. In a recent interview with this website, Cox professed his love for Animal Collective and “Rainwater Cassette Exchange” definitely has a bit of that dubby, underwater lilt perfected by those Merriweather guys.
Taken from: pitchfork.com
Modest Mouse has announced they will release their ‘Autumn Beds’ 7” single on June 23rd. This collector 7” will this time be on on black vinyl with an embossed sleeve and individually numbered to 4000.The never-before-released track ‘Autumn Beds’ is backed with another new track, ‘Whale Song.’ This special vinyl will be available nationally at retail, with the songs also offered on iTunes.
Blank Dogs is the brainchild of one prolific, mysterious Brooklynite named Mike Sniper. That’s probably more info than he’d appreciate us giving out, seeing as he’s most often spotted with a tea-towel around his face, but ‘Under And Under’ is an album deserving of recognition.
A spooky mash-up of Sonic Youth, Public Image and Joy Division (among others), this is post-punk at its most eerie and disconcerting, but still – as ‘Setting Fire To Your House’ proves – defiantly danceable. From the robotic churn of ‘Blue Lights’ to the wiry rock’n’roll of ‘Tin Birds’, there’s little cohesion – perhaps understandably, given Sniper’s penchant for releasing new material every couple of days – but that simply makes it feel of a lovingly-crafted mixtape.
During the 1990s, Pajo played with King Kong, The Palace Brothers, Stereolab, Royal Trux, The For Carnation, Matmos, Tortoise and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.
If you the thought 3-chord punk couldn’t be simplified any further, then you’ve been misled. Pajo takes punk’s musical manifesto and turns it into very simple lo-fi acoustic jams. Pajo follows the chordal tonality of each song, then turning the power chords into natural chords more suitable for the tenderness of plucking and finger picking. Pajo’s feeble vocals could bother some, but I found them to be pleasantly human.
You’re not going to find a whole lot of progressive jazz riffs, piercing harmonics, spastic time signatures or anything else that made Pajo a Louisville legend, but there is a great way to enjoy this album: build a camp fire deep within your local wilderness destination, crack open a few cold ones and indulge in one of the most epic sing-a-longs courtesy of Pajo, and of course, Dr. Glenn Danzig.
Taken from: decrepittapes.com
In July, 2008, Cocker met Steve Albini in Chicago at the Pitchfork Music Festival.Together they tested some songs, liked the sound and agreed to record an album together. The album has a heavier sound than debut Jarvis, something that Cocker attributes to realising his band “could rock”, which led to him choosing to write with them. He told BBC 6 Music: “What I’ve tried to do with the new stuff, rather than me just sit there and wait for inspiration to come at some point – which takes ages – instead we’ve written stuff together. And it’s a bit louder.”
