Buy | Sell | TradeWoods – Sun and Shade
May 30th, 2011
Woods is a two-headed dog asleep on the porch and a butterfly on the windowsill… a Janus, a Gemini and a screen door. The sun won’t fade and the earworms will not leave, but the jams go on too long for the girl in the back who wonders if her friends are at another bar. Still, the ballads always make her cry. Woods is up there relaying the Woods-feel: Folk-rock, fuzz, tambourines, tapes and raw lunch pulled straight from the yard. Pop songs and other things: Sun and Shade.
Kids on a Crime Spree –
May 30th, 2011
About a decade ago, Californian Mario Hernandez (of Ciao Bella and From Bubblegum to Sky) was sitting on a Stockholm couch, casually drinking a really good cup of coffee when a friend put on the Back to Mono box set and Hernandez’s life was forever changed. He was instantly drawn in by the excellent songwriting and lush instrumental arrangements; and what started out as an innocent side trip into the Phil Spector back catalog soon became a longtime fascination with the Brill Building and Spector’s fabled wall of sound. As time passed, he kept coming back to the idea of a simple pop song that wasn’t really that simple—a happy melody with a dark underpinning in the lyrics—and he knew that it wasn’t enough to just listen. He had to make his own version of this great stuff. Kids on a Crime Spree is the result of this obsession. After living in New York for a spell to more fully immerse himself in the culture that spawned the music he loved, Hernandez moved back to California and began recording in earnest. Of the more than one hundred songs he composed but was not able to record while in New York, eight of the best were chosen for We Love You So Bad, Kids on a Crime Spree’s first record. Much care was taken to use older recording techniques akin to those used in the ’60s in the Brill Building, and the whole record was captured on analog tape. As recording progressed, Hernandez brought in friends to help and to recreate his songs in a live setting. Key to the Kids on a Crime Spree sound is the simple yet driving drumming of Becky Barron (#Poundsign#, Scrabbel, From Bubblegum to Sky) and the perpetually drenched-in-reverb guitar of Bill Evans (From Bubblegum To Sky). From the punchy power-pop of “I Don’t Wanna Call You Baby, Baby” to the classic ’70s handclap-driven glam-pop of “Sweet Tooth” and the Ramones-y “To Mess with Dynamite,” We Love You So Bad shows Hernandez and Kids on a Crime Spree’s mastery of pop history and distinctive songwriting chops. “Jean-Paul Sartre 2” wraps the EP up in fine fashion: a feedback-drenched gem with a riff that most bands would just kill for. It’s a perfect way to end this great debut release and points the way forward to a lot more great pop from the trio.
Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts
May 30th, 2011
The third solo album from the Sonic Youth main man. Demolished Thoughts was produced by Beck and features Mary Lattimore on harp, Samara Lubielski on violin, and Beck on various instruments. Demolished Thoughts is an equally beautiful and brooding work. While there are more than a few tonal similarities to some of your older favorite Moore compositions, the execution this time is nothing short of staggering.
May 30th, 2011
Excavating another choice batch of rare grooves from Nigeria’s label archives, the new edition places the spotlight on some of the deeper fusions happening across the country during the 1970s as traditional guitar highlife blended with jazz and funk, hypnotic juju grooves became more progressive and young Nigerian bands came through with their own heavy West African take on U.S. soul, funk, disco and rock.
As on the previous Nigeria 70 volumes, all of the featured selections are previously unissued outside of Nigeria. Tracks range from the dynamite big band workout of Alex Ringo’s Moneyman & The Super 5 International to the Congolese guitar-drenched ‘Henrietta’ by the late Ali Chukwumah, former member of Stephen Osita Osadebe’s Sound Makers. Darker psych grooves from Don Isaac Ezekiel sit alongside raw college funk from college band Tabanaku comprising students from the University Of Ife. Highlife legend Victor Olaiya unleashes a slow, languorous Afro jam lifted from a rare Polydor 45 and juju legend Ebenezer Obey cooks up a lilting, deeply beautiful mid-tempo groove from 1970 in a musical plea for peace. ‘Nigeria 70: Sweet Times’ is another essential celebration of the glut of incredible music that surfaced in post-independence Nigeria.
Death Cab for Cutie – Codes and Keys
May 30th, 2011
By their seventh studio album, many bands are running out of creative steam and original ideas. But in the case of Death Cab for Cutie, nothing could be further from the truth. Codes and Keys is singular in the quartet’s catalog when it comes to sonic exploration and lyrical ambition. If anything, the band has never sounded more excited to experiment with textures, words, sounds and even the process of recording itself.
Boris – Heavy Rocks
May 30th, 2011
Boris has earned its rabid cult following for their ability to expertly harness music as power. Be it psychedelic metal, colossal drone, blistering punk or distortion-ravaged shoegaze, a Boris song is an exploration of sound as physical mass. The Japanese trio’s classic 2002 album, Heavy Rocks, is a landmark of their mastery. So, it’s fitting that the group’s new album sharing the same title and very similar artwork to that disc, Heavy Rocks (2011) seeks to redefine ”heavy” music in a culmination of the band’s tireless efforts over the past two decades. This year’s Heavy Rocks is beyond heavy. It firmly establishes Boris as a pillar of innovation and integrity in guitar based music. Heavy Rocks (2011) features guest appearances by Ian Astbury (The Cult, BXI), Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), Aaron Turner (Isis, Mammifer), and longtime Boris collaborator Michio Kurihara
Boris – Attention Please
May 30th, 2011
Iconoclast Japanese trio Boris are widely known for their ability to breach styles and stretch sonic boundaries of all that is heavy, psychedelic, droning and downright cathartic. But, Attention Please is more like a complete redefining of their potential in several ways. First and foremost, it is the first album on which all vocals are sung by lead guitarist, Wata. While she has previously sung on a couple of songs for singles and her own solo recordings, the entire 10-song album features her intimate, multifaceted vocal style. Secondly, the songs on Attention Please have a sultry, intoxicating catchiness to them. It’s melodic without sounding pop. It’s psychedelic without sounding dated. It’s heavy without relying on barre chord riffs.
Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
May 30th, 2011
2011 album from the critically adored Seattle band. The first Fleet Foxes album (Fleet Foxes) was released on Sub Pop in 2008, and though the band s intention was to record a new album in the 6-8 months following its release, the reception of the record was such that Fleet Foxes found themselves very busy, touring consistently through the end of 2009. Drawing inspiration from Folk/Rock from about 1965 to 1973, and Van Morrison s Astral Weeks in particular, Helplessness Blues sees Fleet Foxes heighten and extend themselves, adding instrumentation (clarinet, the music box, pedal steel guitar, lap steel guitar, Tibetan singing bowls, vibraphone, etc., along with more traditional band instrumentation), with a focus on clear, direct lyrics, and an emphasis on group vocal harmonies.
Tim Kinsella of Joan of Arc In-Store Performance!
May 13th, 2011
Joan of Arc will be playing the Rhythm Room, but before the show Tim will come perform a few numbers acoustic at the store!!!
Free show!
Explosions in the Sky – Take Care Take Care Take Care
April 29th, 2011
Four years ago, Explosions in the Sky ended their last album with a short (for them) song called “So Long, Lonesome”. It was pretty and melancholy, not so unlike a lot of their other music, really, but as its title suggests, it had the feel of a goodbye. It seemed so final. But no, the Austin quartet is not done. Take Care, Take Care, Take Care finds the band returning with a renewed focus on its most basic sound: multiple guitars with drums and a bit of bass. The piano that helped lend “So Long, Lonesome” its sense of cold finality is gone, and the band sounds confident getting back to the setup on which they built their reputation.
The band famously doesn’t consider itself post-rock, but if we’re being honest, today they may be the last true exponent of turn-of-the-century post-rock– unlike Mogwai, they never wandered away from drifting instrumentals constructed around loud-soft dynamics and the contrast between soft guitar tones and pounding drums. Most of their other contemporaries from the period are gone or found dub or electronics or something else. But Explosions in the Sky are sticking to their guns– Take Care is less ragged than Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, but it’s otherwise a very similar album.
So whether or not you dive into Take Care will largely depend on your appetite for loud/soft instrumental post-rock. If your appetite for it is boundless, you will be very pleased by this album, and probably also its elaborate artwork, which can be folded several ways to make the interior or exterior of a building. At its best, Take Care is ruled by drummer Chris Hrasky. The guitars tend to hang on particular figures or throw up an e-bowed haze, and Hrasky is the one who can cut through that. On “Trembling Hands” his drum kit is the lead instrument as he unleashes Keith Moon-worthy torrents of snare, tom, and cymbal, throwing himself at the guitars as though they were a wall to break through.
One could argue that the music here is predictable and even a bit old-hat. We’ve lived with this sound for well over a decade now, and we have classics to compare it to, including Explosions in the Sky’s own work. And that argument holds some water. But the simple fact is that Explosions in the Sky are very good at this particular thing, and it seems as though no matter how many crescendos and diminuendos they play, there remains a certain amount of cathartic power to their music. The emotion in it is ambiguous, and you can read whatever you want into it– the soundtrack to your rainy day might be the soundtrack to someone else’s overwhelming joy, and that too is important to its appeal.
— Joe Tangari, Pitchfork, April 25, 2011
