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FAT POSSUM
Upon arrival during the fraught summer of 2020, Flower of Devotion felt like Dehd’s necessary prescription for us all. That was, of course, a moment of unprecedented anxiety and uncertainty, when just contemplating the future could seem overly optimistic. But Dehd captured and shared the precarious balance between real life and real hope, a feat mirrored by instant pop melodies and infectious punk energy. The Chicago trio had the audacity to look ahead when many of us didn’t, to imagine improvement through mere existence. It was an album we needed. We need its follow-up, the triumphant Blue Skies, even more.
Dehd’s fourth album (and first for Fat Possum) is also the band’s second consecutive breakthrough, loaded with the most compelling, compulsive, and expansive songs of their career. Blue Skies offers another jolt of timely hope, only with twice the power. These 13 hits feel like flashlights in the dark, acknowledging how difficult everything from love and sex to living and dying can be while supplying the inspiration of their own experiences.
The writing is sharper and smarter on Blue Skies. The harmonies and rhythms are more sophisticated and considered. The moods are deeper, the swings between them more inspiring. But this is still Dehd, just more wild and wonderful than ever before. “This is all we get,” Emily shouts with relish on the record’s last lines, during a song about the ways geologic deep time should free us all to live more. “Best to take the risk.” Heard, loud and clear.
Dehd’s fourth album (and first for Fat Possum) is also the band’s second consecutive breakthrough, loaded with the most compelling, compulsive, and expansive songs of their career. Blue Skies offers another jolt of timely hope, only with twice the power. These 13 hits feel like flashlights in the dark, acknowledging how difficult everything from love and sex to living and dying can be while supplying the inspiration of their own experiences.
The writing is sharper and smarter on Blue Skies. The harmonies and rhythms are more sophisticated and considered. The moods are deeper, the swings between them more inspiring. But this is still Dehd, just more wild and wonderful than ever before. “This is all we get,” Emily shouts with relish on the record’s last lines, during a song about the ways geologic deep time should free us all to live more. “Best to take the risk.” Heard, loud and clear.
TRACK LISTING
1. Control
2. Bad Love
3. Bop
4. Clear
5. Hold
6. Memories
7. Window
8. Palomino
9. Waterfall
10. Dream On
11. Empty In My Mind
12. Stars
13. No Difference
Remastered pressing of Ann Peebles wonderful debut album.
TRACK LISTING
1. Give Me Some Credit
2. Crazy About You Baby
3. Make Me Yours
4. My Man - He's A Lovin' Man
5. Solid Foundation
6. Chain Of Fools
7. It's Your Thing
8. Walk Away
9. Rescue Me
10. Won't. You Try Me
11. Steal Away
12. Respect
Great American Painting is The Districts fifth full-length album; produced by Joe Chiccarelli (Spoon, The Strokes, Broken Social Scene) and recorded at the legendary Sunset Sound in LA.
Great American Painting is the rare album that shines a bright light on all that’s wrong in the world but somehow still channels a galvanizing sense of hope. With equal parts nuanced observation and raw outpouring of feeling, the Philadelphia-based band confront a constellation of problems eroding the American ideal (gentrification, gun violence, the crushing weight of late capitalism), ornamenting every track with their explosive yet elegant breed of indie-rock/post-punk.
Threading that commentary with intense self-reflection, Great American Painting ultimately fulfills a mission The Districts first embraced upon forming as teenagers in small-town Pennsylvania: an urge to create undeniably cathartic music that obliterates hopelessness and invites their audience along in dreaming up a far better future.
Great American Painting is the rare album that shines a bright light on all that’s wrong in the world but somehow still channels a galvanizing sense of hope. With equal parts nuanced observation and raw outpouring of feeling, the Philadelphia-based band confront a constellation of problems eroding the American ideal (gentrification, gun violence, the crushing weight of late capitalism), ornamenting every track with their explosive yet elegant breed of indie-rock/post-punk.
Threading that commentary with intense self-reflection, Great American Painting ultimately fulfills a mission The Districts first embraced upon forming as teenagers in small-town Pennsylvania: an urge to create undeniably cathartic music that obliterates hopelessness and invites their audience along in dreaming up a far better future.
TRACK LISTING
1. Revival Psalm
2. No Blood
3. Do It Over
4. White Devil
5. Long End
6. Outlaw Love
7. Hover
8. I Want To Feel It All
9. On Our Parting, My Beloved
One year after the release of Ignorance, The Weather Station returns with How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars. The album is intended to be heard as a companion piece to Ignorance; songs written at the same time that connect thematically and emotionally, songs that reveal the vulnerability at the heart of the body of work. Recorded live in just three days, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars is achingly intimate; full of breath, silence, and detail.
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars was written in the same fruitful winter of songwriting that gave rise to Ignorance, but were songs that Lindeman felt were too internal, too soft to fit on the album she had envisioned.
Not long after completing Ignorance, Lindeman decided to make this album on her own terms, fronting the money herself and not notifying the labels. She assembled a new band, and communicated a new ethos; the music should feel ungrounded, with space, silence, and sensitivity above all else.
On this record, there are no drums, no percussion; in the absence of rhythm, time stretches and becomes elastic. Lyrically, many of the songs return to what has often been a hallmark of Lindeman’s writing; a description of a single moment and all the meaning it might encompass. And this dilation of the moment occurs musically too; as the band moves through music so ephemeral it often incorporates stretches of near silence, and breaths, single notes, and brief solos take on greater importance in the absence of other sound. Whereas the recordings on Ignorance leaned towards ambition and grandeur, here the band reaches towards a different goal; grace perhaps.
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars was recorded from March 10 - 12, 2020. When the band entered the studio, Covid-19 was a news item, not front of mind, but by the time they left, just three days later, everything had changed. Somehow, the music captures that instability; it is ungrounded and diaphanous, it floats and drifts. It is an album of immense sensitivity, a recording of a band and a person daring to reach towards softness without apology.
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars was written in the same fruitful winter of songwriting that gave rise to Ignorance, but were songs that Lindeman felt were too internal, too soft to fit on the album she had envisioned.
Not long after completing Ignorance, Lindeman decided to make this album on her own terms, fronting the money herself and not notifying the labels. She assembled a new band, and communicated a new ethos; the music should feel ungrounded, with space, silence, and sensitivity above all else.
On this record, there are no drums, no percussion; in the absence of rhythm, time stretches and becomes elastic. Lyrically, many of the songs return to what has often been a hallmark of Lindeman’s writing; a description of a single moment and all the meaning it might encompass. And this dilation of the moment occurs musically too; as the band moves through music so ephemeral it often incorporates stretches of near silence, and breaths, single notes, and brief solos take on greater importance in the absence of other sound. Whereas the recordings on Ignorance leaned towards ambition and grandeur, here the band reaches towards a different goal; grace perhaps.
How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars was recorded from March 10 - 12, 2020. When the band entered the studio, Covid-19 was a news item, not front of mind, but by the time they left, just three days later, everything had changed. Somehow, the music captures that instability; it is ungrounded and diaphanous, it floats and drifts. It is an album of immense sensitivity, a recording of a band and a person daring to reach towards softness without apology.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: A mostly unadorned collection of swooning piano pieces, reminiscent of country rock but a lot more intangible. Otherworldly and veering towards modern classical in parts, but with a firm footing in the realms of folk and pop songwriting.TRACK LISTING
SIDE A
1. Marsh
2. Taught
3. Ignorance
4. To Talk About
5. Stars
SIDE B
1. Endless Time
2. Song
3. Sway
4. Sleight Of Hand
5. Loving You
The second album by Empath is full to brim with gems that stick in your head. The sound is chaotic and raw but totally locked in. If you imagine Alvvays or Veronica Falls but produced by one of the Elephant 6 Collective then, then this is Visitor by Empath. In other words magical!! Ask the members of Empath how things have changed since the release of their critically-acclaimed 2019 album, Active Listening: Night on Earth, and they’ll downplay it. Now, Empath release their sophomore full-length, Visitor, via Fat Possum, marking a seismic shift for the scrappy quartet who came up playing shows on Northeastern DIY circuits and now have just completed a tour with Modest Mouse. While the album holds steadfast to the careening, joyous noise Empath staked their name on, Visitor was produced by Jake Portrait, making it the first release the band has recorded with a producer in a formal studio.
TRACK LISTING
1. Genius Of Evil
2. Elvis Comeback
3. Born 100 Times
4. 80s
5. V
6. Diamond Eyelids
7. Passing Stranger
8. Bell
9. Paradise
10. Corner Of Surprise
11. House + Surprise
This set is a straight remastered reissue, cover art and all, of 1975's Al Green's Greatest Hits LP, which collected his ten biggest singles. Nothing beats Al Green when it's time to sip your Courvoisier on your white pleather couch, be it alone or with that special someone... Ten classic tracks from 1975. Try it. Satisfaction guaranteed..
TRACK LISTING
1. Tired Of Being Alone
2. Call Me (Come Back Home)
3. I'm Still In Love With You
4. Here I Am (Come And Take Me)
5. How Can You Mend A Broken Heart
6. Let's Stay Together
7. I Can't Get Next To You
8. You Ought To Be With Me
9. Look What You Done For Me
10. Let's Get Married
This year, Fat Possum celebrates the 10th anniversary of Youth Lagoon's debut album 'The Year of Hibernation.' 45rpm Double Cream Color Vinyl will include the album as well as 3 bonus songs. The artwork will be expanded into a gatefold vinyl with updated artwork and printed inner sleeves by Collin Fletcher
TRACK LISTING
1. Posters
2. Cannons
3. Afternoon
4. 17
5. July
6. Daydream
7. Montana
8. The Hunt
9. Bobby
10. Ghost To Me
11. Goodbye Again
Sam Evian knew he wanted to leave New York City almost as soon as he arrived, more than a decade ago. An upstart songwriter and producer, he, of course, loved its creative wellspring—the ideas, the instrumentalists, the energy. But he’d grown up in the woods of upstate New York and, later, along the coast on the rather empty eastern end of North Carolina. The city was expensive, anxious, and unsettling, however inspiring it could be.
So in the Summer of 2017, he and his band decamped to a rented house upstate to cut his second album, the magnetic You, Forever. He then realized he could no longer resist the urge; two years ago, Sam and his partner, Hannah Cohen, split from the city, building their refuge in the quiet of a Catskills town. That reflective, relaxing environment inexorably shaped Time to Melt, his third LP and debut for Fat Possum. A glowing set of soulfully psychedelic pop gems, Time to Melt is a testimonial to the life and wisdom to be found when you give yourself the mercy of space.
During the last decade, Sam has become a preeminent collaborator, producing and engineering records for the likes of Big Thief, Cass McCombs, and Widowspeak as Sam Owens, his given name. In their new home, he and Hannah hosted bands like house guests as he helmed their sessions. The coronavirus, though, clamped down on those interactions, largely sealing the couple from their longtime scene.
So Sam tried something new: He sorted through more than 60 instrumental demos he’d recorded in the last two years and began shaping the most enticing of them into songs with help from Hannah and a cadre of long-distance friends—Spencer Tweedy, Chris Bear, Jon Natchez, even strangers who sent him voice memos via Instagram. He took the unexpected time at home to dig deeper into his world of sounds and ideas than ever before, calmly considering our moment of prevailing chaos through a lens of newfound distance.
But the last few years have been purely happy for mostly no one, Sam included. Time to Melt reckons with the weight of our time, even when it sounds largely weightless. Inspired by John Coltrane’s mixture of grace and gravitas and Marvin Gaye’s uncanny ability to turn social issues into personal anthems, Sam strove to give these otherwise-beguiling instrumentals the thoughtfulness and depth these days demand.
With its rubbery bassline and sweeping strings, “Freezee Pops” unfurls like a Summer breeze. It reads, though, like poetic testimony on police brutality, an innocent kid’s life plundered for prison-system profits. And “Knock Knock” taps Sam’s memories of race-andclass violence in the small-town South and his subsequent reckoning with our crumbling American façade, where “we tell ourselves almost anything but the truth.” The song is ultimately a tribute to the perseverance of the vulnerable, who find community and joy in spite of the way centuries of miscreants try to deny it.
There are also songs of utter celebration on Time to Melt, paeans to whatever joy it is we find in life or love. Buttressed by bold baritone sax, lifted by exuberant trumpet, and washed in fluorescent guitars, “Easy to Love” is an exultant ode to finding a new paradise outside of the city, an idyllic setting where you can plant love and literally watch it bloom. “Lonely Days” blows in with a muted brooding, but it’s a feint for Sam’s sweet hymn to a blissful partnership of shared solitude, a true blessing for a year when so many have been alone. “Lonely days are gone,” he repeats, his rhythm shifting just enough in the middle of the sentence to tease dejection and surprise with delight. Sam is so content in the Catskills that the lovely but warped “Sunshine” finds him imagining how heartache must feel, as though it were only ever a hypothetical muse. He sublimates a sense of seasick sadness into a compulsively funky oddity.
At home now near the Ashokan Reservoir with their new rescue dog, Jan, Sam and Hannah mostly listen to music while they cook dinner. That’s the kind of record Sam wanted to make —an album of sounds so pleasant and compelling that you put it on and follow the slipstream. He succeeded; Time to Melt is a waking dream, its intoxicating rhythms and timbral webs as settling, even seductive as an evening glass of wine. But making dinner, or whatever your ritual at day’s end may be, isn’t some idle exercise. It’s a place to unpack the pain and wonder, the suffering and promise of the moment, to reflect on where you have been and what might come next. In 40 striking minutes, or the time it may take you to make that meal, Time to Melt sorts through a year of a life spent in rage and hope, lockdown and love.
So in the Summer of 2017, he and his band decamped to a rented house upstate to cut his second album, the magnetic You, Forever. He then realized he could no longer resist the urge; two years ago, Sam and his partner, Hannah Cohen, split from the city, building their refuge in the quiet of a Catskills town. That reflective, relaxing environment inexorably shaped Time to Melt, his third LP and debut for Fat Possum. A glowing set of soulfully psychedelic pop gems, Time to Melt is a testimonial to the life and wisdom to be found when you give yourself the mercy of space.
During the last decade, Sam has become a preeminent collaborator, producing and engineering records for the likes of Big Thief, Cass McCombs, and Widowspeak as Sam Owens, his given name. In their new home, he and Hannah hosted bands like house guests as he helmed their sessions. The coronavirus, though, clamped down on those interactions, largely sealing the couple from their longtime scene.
So Sam tried something new: He sorted through more than 60 instrumental demos he’d recorded in the last two years and began shaping the most enticing of them into songs with help from Hannah and a cadre of long-distance friends—Spencer Tweedy, Chris Bear, Jon Natchez, even strangers who sent him voice memos via Instagram. He took the unexpected time at home to dig deeper into his world of sounds and ideas than ever before, calmly considering our moment of prevailing chaos through a lens of newfound distance.
But the last few years have been purely happy for mostly no one, Sam included. Time to Melt reckons with the weight of our time, even when it sounds largely weightless. Inspired by John Coltrane’s mixture of grace and gravitas and Marvin Gaye’s uncanny ability to turn social issues into personal anthems, Sam strove to give these otherwise-beguiling instrumentals the thoughtfulness and depth these days demand.
With its rubbery bassline and sweeping strings, “Freezee Pops” unfurls like a Summer breeze. It reads, though, like poetic testimony on police brutality, an innocent kid’s life plundered for prison-system profits. And “Knock Knock” taps Sam’s memories of race-andclass violence in the small-town South and his subsequent reckoning with our crumbling American façade, where “we tell ourselves almost anything but the truth.” The song is ultimately a tribute to the perseverance of the vulnerable, who find community and joy in spite of the way centuries of miscreants try to deny it.
There are also songs of utter celebration on Time to Melt, paeans to whatever joy it is we find in life or love. Buttressed by bold baritone sax, lifted by exuberant trumpet, and washed in fluorescent guitars, “Easy to Love” is an exultant ode to finding a new paradise outside of the city, an idyllic setting where you can plant love and literally watch it bloom. “Lonely Days” blows in with a muted brooding, but it’s a feint for Sam’s sweet hymn to a blissful partnership of shared solitude, a true blessing for a year when so many have been alone. “Lonely days are gone,” he repeats, his rhythm shifting just enough in the middle of the sentence to tease dejection and surprise with delight. Sam is so content in the Catskills that the lovely but warped “Sunshine” finds him imagining how heartache must feel, as though it were only ever a hypothetical muse. He sublimates a sense of seasick sadness into a compulsively funky oddity.
At home now near the Ashokan Reservoir with their new rescue dog, Jan, Sam and Hannah mostly listen to music while they cook dinner. That’s the kind of record Sam wanted to make —an album of sounds so pleasant and compelling that you put it on and follow the slipstream. He succeeded; Time to Melt is a waking dream, its intoxicating rhythms and timbral webs as settling, even seductive as an evening glass of wine. But making dinner, or whatever your ritual at day’s end may be, isn’t some idle exercise. It’s a place to unpack the pain and wonder, the suffering and promise of the moment, to reflect on where you have been and what might come next. In 40 striking minutes, or the time it may take you to make that meal, Time to Melt sorts through a year of a life spent in rage and hope, lockdown and love.
TRACK LISTING
1. Freezee Pops
2. Dream Free
3. Time To Melt
4. Knock Knock
5. Arnold's Place
6. Sunshine
7. Never Know
8. Lonely Days
9. Easy To Love
10. 9.99 Free
11. Around It Goes
Spiritualized and Fat Possum Records announce the final instalment of The Spaceman Reissue Program. The album is the fourth in this series of 180g double albums mastered by Alchemy Mastering, presented in a gatefold jacket with reworked artwork by Mark Farrow and available in both a standard black vinyl pressing and limited edition ivory-coloured vinyl.
Let It Come Down saw Jason Pierce rebuilding Spiritualized after the core line-up dissolved following the intensive touring process of Ladies And Gentlemen... Dion’s Phil Spector-produced ‘Born To Be With You’ was an influence. The initial recordings were made at John Coxon’s studio before some 115 different musicians were brought into Air and Abbey Road Studios to work on these 11 songs. Spiritualized had always made wide-screen music but this time the movie theater was the size of the Coliseum
Let It Come Down saw Jason Pierce rebuilding Spiritualized after the core line-up dissolved following the intensive touring process of Ladies And Gentlemen... Dion’s Phil Spector-produced ‘Born To Be With You’ was an influence. The initial recordings were made at John Coxon’s studio before some 115 different musicians were brought into Air and Abbey Road Studios to work on these 11 songs. Spiritualized had always made wide-screen music but this time the movie theater was the size of the Coliseum
TRACK LISTING
1. On Fire
2. Do It All Over Again
3. Don't Just Do Something
4. Out Of Sight
5. The Twelve Steps
6. The Straight And The Narrow
7. I Didn't Mean To Hurt You
8. Stop Your Crying
9. Anything More
10. Won't Get To Heave (The State I'm In)
11. Lord Can You Hear Me
Pure Phase is the second album by Spiritualized, released on 28 March 1995. The album was recorded in the Moles Studio in Bath, England and features contributions from The Balanescu Quartet.
At the time of release, Pierce had renamed the band as "Spiritualized Electric Mainline", the name that appears on the album cover, before reverting to the Spiritualized name shortly afterwards.
At the time of release, Pierce had renamed the band as "Spiritualized Electric Mainline", the name that appears on the album cover, before reverting to the Spiritualized name shortly afterwards.
TRACK LISTING
1. Medication
2. The Slide Song
3. Electric Phase
4. All Of My Tears
5. These Blues
6. Let It Flow
7. Take Good Care Of It
8. Born, Never Asked
9. Electric Mainline
10. Lay Back In The Sun
11. Good Times
12. Pure Phase
13. Spread Your Wings
14. Feel Like Goin' Home
Sonny & the Sunset's vintage-style west coast pop songs tell sordid tales of death, drowning, outcasts, heavenly visions and otherworldly despair. This was captured in its purest form on their 2009 debut album Tomorrow is Alright, which still radiates with a classic yet indefinable sound, akin to a futuristic take 50's R&B.
TRACK LISTING
1 Too Young To Burn
2 Death Cream
3 Strange Love
4 Planet Of Women
5 The Houris
6 Stranded
7 Bad Vibes & Evil Thoughts
8 Chapters
9 Love Among Social Animals
10 Lovin' On An Older Gal
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is the third studio album by English space rock band Spiritualized, released on 16 June 1997. The album features guest appearances from the Balanescu Quartet, The London Community Gospel Choir and Dr. John.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space has since been acclaimed as one of the best albums of the 1990s on various publications' decade-end lists. Pitchfork ranked it at number 55 on their list of the top 100 albums of the 1990s. In 2010, the album was also named one of the 125 Best Albums of the Past 25 Years by Spin
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space has since been acclaimed as one of the best albums of the 1990s on various publications' decade-end lists. Pitchfork ranked it at number 55 on their list of the top 100 albums of the 1990s. In 2010, the album was also named one of the 125 Best Albums of the Past 25 Years by Spin
TRACK LISTING
1. Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
2. Come Together
3. I Think I'm In Love
4. All Of My Thoughts
5. Stay With Me
6. Electricity
7. Home Of The Brave
8. The Individual
9. Broken Heart
10. No God Only Religion
11. Cool Waves
12. Cop Shoot Cop...
A little over a year ago, Nathan Williams found himself back in San Diego, writing what would eventually become Hideaway, his seventh album as Wavves, in a little shed behind his parents’ house. It was also the place where he made some of his earliest albums, before he became known for his uncanny ability to write songs that sneered at the world while evoking pathos, sympathy, and a deep understanding of how sometimes we’re our own worst enemies, and that can be okay. Williams’ return to his childhood home was not just a symbolic attempt at jumpstarting creativity. It came as a result of a series of major life changes. A decade ago, Williams released King of the Beach on the maverick indie label Fat Possum. The album was a cocky collection of pop punk gems that catapulted him into the public consciousness, eventually prompting a jump from Fat Possum into the major label system, where he released two albums before becoming disillusioned by the lack of creative agency available to him.
In 2017, Williams self-released You’re Welcome on his label, Ghost Ramp. Now, Williams has returned to Fat Possum with a barbed collection of anxious anthems that grapple with the looming sense of doom and despair that comes with getting older in an increasingly chaotic world. “He’ll always skew toward the Bart Simpson [character],” says Matthew Johnson, founder of Fat Possum. “But that does not mean that he doesn’t have some commentary, and once in awhile, it’s totally spot on.” Across its brief but impactful nine tracks, Hideaway is about what happens when you get old enough to take stock of the world around you and realize that no one is going to save you but yourself, and even that might be a tall order. The album features Williams’ most universal and urgent songs yet. “Honeycomb” lopes along sunnily, as Williams sings affecting lines like “I feel like I’m dying, it’s cool, it’s great, just pretend I’m okay.”
His directness is shocking, and proof that Williams is the kind of songwriter who can capture pain and uncertainty with resonant brutal force. “It’s real peaks and valleys with me,” Williams says. “I can be super optimistic and I can feel really good, and then I can hit a skid and it’s like an earthquake hits my life, and everything just falls apart. Some of it is my own doing, of course.” It’s this self awareness that permeates each of Hideaway’s songs, marking them each as mature reckonings with who he is. After realizing the material he’d been working on in the hideaway was starting to take shape, Williams, along with bandmates Stephen Pope and Alex Gates workshopped the songs in a series of now-abandoned studio sessions, before linking up with musician and producer Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio to help fully realize their new songs.
In 2017, Williams self-released You’re Welcome on his label, Ghost Ramp. Now, Williams has returned to Fat Possum with a barbed collection of anxious anthems that grapple with the looming sense of doom and despair that comes with getting older in an increasingly chaotic world. “He’ll always skew toward the Bart Simpson [character],” says Matthew Johnson, founder of Fat Possum. “But that does not mean that he doesn’t have some commentary, and once in awhile, it’s totally spot on.” Across its brief but impactful nine tracks, Hideaway is about what happens when you get old enough to take stock of the world around you and realize that no one is going to save you but yourself, and even that might be a tall order. The album features Williams’ most universal and urgent songs yet. “Honeycomb” lopes along sunnily, as Williams sings affecting lines like “I feel like I’m dying, it’s cool, it’s great, just pretend I’m okay.”
His directness is shocking, and proof that Williams is the kind of songwriter who can capture pain and uncertainty with resonant brutal force. “It’s real peaks and valleys with me,” Williams says. “I can be super optimistic and I can feel really good, and then I can hit a skid and it’s like an earthquake hits my life, and everything just falls apart. Some of it is my own doing, of course.” It’s this self awareness that permeates each of Hideaway’s songs, marking them each as mature reckonings with who he is. After realizing the material he’d been working on in the hideaway was starting to take shape, Williams, along with bandmates Stephen Pope and Alex Gates workshopped the songs in a series of now-abandoned studio sessions, before linking up with musician and producer Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio to help fully realize their new songs.
TRACK LISTING
1. Thru Hell
2. Hideaway
3. Help Is On The Way
4. Sinking Feeling
5. Honeycomb
6. The Blame
7. Marine Life
8. Planting A Garden
9. Caviar
A Color of the Sky is the third album by Lightning Bug - the project of musicians and friends Audrey Kang, Kevin Copeland, Logan MIley, Dane Hagen and Vincent Puleo. A Color of the Sky is an album of many firsts: the band’s first album with their new label home, Fat Possum, the band’s first time recording together as a live band, and the first time Lightning Bug, initially a three-piece, is rounded out by Hagen and Puleo as full-time band members. Recorded in a rundown home-turned makeshift studio in the Catskills, A Color of the Sky finds Lightning Bug sounding more organic, dynamic and lush than ever, while also finding the band’s songwriter Audrey Kang sounding bolder than before.
"Here I wanted to connect how the struggles and flaws within the individual are mirrored in the greater problems of society. How do we as individuals know we are on the right path? How do we as a society, as a species, know we are on the right path? So I started with myself, and my own struggles, touching on how I hide myself away from other people, on my stage fright, on my inability to be vulnerable, on this feeling I used to have that I needed to prove I was worthy of being alive. Then I tried to connect these struggles outward to global issues like xenophobia, the building of walls, destruction of the environment that we are ALL so guilty of. I feel like the lyrics are pretty self explanatory on this one."
RIYL: Grouper, Helena Deland, Ana Roxanne, Snail Mail, Julia Holter, Slowdive, Japanese Breakfast, Tomberlin, Hand Habits, Big Thief, Broadcast, Stereolab, Jessica Pratt, Deerhunter, Mazzy Star, Cate Le Bon, Boards of Canada, Adrianne Lenker, Gia Margaret
"Here I wanted to connect how the struggles and flaws within the individual are mirrored in the greater problems of society. How do we as individuals know we are on the right path? How do we as a society, as a species, know we are on the right path? So I started with myself, and my own struggles, touching on how I hide myself away from other people, on my stage fright, on my inability to be vulnerable, on this feeling I used to have that I needed to prove I was worthy of being alive. Then I tried to connect these struggles outward to global issues like xenophobia, the building of walls, destruction of the environment that we are ALL so guilty of. I feel like the lyrics are pretty self explanatory on this one."
RIYL: Grouper, Helena Deland, Ana Roxanne, Snail Mail, Julia Holter, Slowdive, Japanese Breakfast, Tomberlin, Hand Habits, Big Thief, Broadcast, Stereolab, Jessica Pratt, Deerhunter, Mazzy Star, Cate Le Bon, Boards of Canada, Adrianne Lenker, Gia Margaret
TRACK LISTING
SIDE A
1. The Return
2. The Right Thing Is Hard To Do
3. September Song, Pt. Ii
4. Wings Of Desire
5. The Chase
SIDE B
1. Song Of The Bell
2. I Lie Awake
3. Reprise
4. A Color Of The Sky
5. The Flash
The first four Spiritualized records are the sound of J Spaceman finding his way through the cosmos; bumping into debris, soaring over stars, crash landing onto bleak, lonely landscapes then taking off again, sometimes spinning around uncontrollably until he finds somewhere sublime that he can rest his head for a while, until the restless soul takes flight again.
Elevating the gritty, narcotic garage blues of his first band Spacemen 3 into more of a crystalline experimental space rock, pop sound, the Lazer Guided Melodies core line up was Jason (vocals, guitar), Mark Refoy (guitars), Kate Radley (keyboards), Will Carruthers (bass) and Jonny Mattock (drums). Recorded from 1990 to 1991, the 12 songs are divided up into four movements.
Jason: ‘The last Spacemen 3 record was under-realized to me. When I listen back to that stuff it sounds like somebody finding their way. There was a lot of ideas but no way to put them into a space that would make them all work. So, there was a huge freedom forging over the last Spacemen 3 record and when Spiritualized started it was like, ‘Ok it’s all yours. Go.’
I was living in Rugby in a flat above a plumber’s merchant at the time. I accidentally kept that flat for eight years when I moved to London and when I returned it was exactly how I left it. There was the Nick Kent book open at the page I left it like it was waiting for my return.
We recorded the tracks in the studio near my flat which was a place where they predominantly recorded advertising jingles and it’s where we made all the Spacemen 3 records, but then the recordings were taken to Battery Studios in London, to explore a more professional way of making music, the world outside.
We got it down onto a Fostex E16; like a half inch of tape and we squeezed 16 tracks onto it. It was almost like recording on a cassette tape but then we introduced those multi tracks to a new kind of mix scenario, new to me anyway.
Once I approached that way of doing things I opened up a whole world and I was astounded that somebody could take those tracks and turn it into the record it became. Barry Clempson mixed it and his references were completely outside my world. He was playing stuff like Massive Attack, the Horace Andy track with that beautiful tremolo voice, and Rain Tree Crow, very precise and clear productions. But he brought this clarity and definition to it that I could not have done in Rugby. I didn’t know how to make records that sounded like that. It turned out absolutely beautiful.”
Elevating the gritty, narcotic garage blues of his first band Spacemen 3 into more of a crystalline experimental space rock, pop sound, the Lazer Guided Melodies core line up was Jason (vocals, guitar), Mark Refoy (guitars), Kate Radley (keyboards), Will Carruthers (bass) and Jonny Mattock (drums). Recorded from 1990 to 1991, the 12 songs are divided up into four movements.
Jason: ‘The last Spacemen 3 record was under-realized to me. When I listen back to that stuff it sounds like somebody finding their way. There was a lot of ideas but no way to put them into a space that would make them all work. So, there was a huge freedom forging over the last Spacemen 3 record and when Spiritualized started it was like, ‘Ok it’s all yours. Go.’
I was living in Rugby in a flat above a plumber’s merchant at the time. I accidentally kept that flat for eight years when I moved to London and when I returned it was exactly how I left it. There was the Nick Kent book open at the page I left it like it was waiting for my return.
We recorded the tracks in the studio near my flat which was a place where they predominantly recorded advertising jingles and it’s where we made all the Spacemen 3 records, but then the recordings were taken to Battery Studios in London, to explore a more professional way of making music, the world outside.
We got it down onto a Fostex E16; like a half inch of tape and we squeezed 16 tracks onto it. It was almost like recording on a cassette tape but then we introduced those multi tracks to a new kind of mix scenario, new to me anyway.
Once I approached that way of doing things I opened up a whole world and I was astounded that somebody could take those tracks and turn it into the record it became. Barry Clempson mixed it and his references were completely outside my world. He was playing stuff like Massive Attack, the Horace Andy track with that beautiful tremolo voice, and Rain Tree Crow, very precise and clear productions. But he brought this clarity and definition to it that I could not have done in Rugby. I didn’t know how to make records that sounded like that. It turned out absolutely beautiful.”
TRACK LISTING
1. You Know It's True
2. If I Were With Her Now
3. I Want You
4. Run
5. Smiles
6. Step Into The Breeze
7. Symphony Space
8. Take Your Time
9. Shine A Light
10. Angel Sigh
11. Sway
12. Bars
THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2020 RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY AS PART OF THE SEPTEMBER 26TH DROP DAY AT 6PM.
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.
Kickin presents Hi Tide Groove, DJ's choice 1969 - 1981, selected by Daisuke Kuroda.A collection of Hi Records singles from the famous Al Green and Ann Peebles, to the obscure African and Jean Plum.180 gram color vinyl
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.
Kickin presents Hi Tide Groove, DJ's choice 1969 - 1981, selected by Daisuke Kuroda.A collection of Hi Records singles from the famous Al Green and Ann Peebles, to the obscure African and Jean Plum.180 gram color vinyl
While everyone is social distancing, closing ranks and donning masks while they shop, life can seem somewhat surreal to the senses. Yet, through all of the chaos, one thing is constant, music brings us together. Now, on the 40th Anniversary of the landmark, Los Angeles, and 35 years since the original band have released an album – X, one of the greatest Punk Rock bands in music history, releases ALPHABETLAND. The original foursome - Exene Cervenka, John Doe, Billy Zoom, and DJ Bonebrake have now made the album available for fans to purchase and by adapting to this moment, X continues to embody the same spirit they did when they began in 1977.
“When your heart is broken you think every song is about that. These songs were written in the last 18 months & it blows my mind how timely they are,” explained John Doe. “We all want our family, friends & fans to hear our records as soon as it's finished. This time we could do that. Thanks to Fat Possum & our audience.”
“When your heart is broken you think every song is about that. These songs were written in the last 18 months & it blows my mind how timely they are,” explained John Doe. “We all want our family, friends & fans to hear our records as soon as it's finished. This time we could do that. Thanks to Fat Possum & our audience.”
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: Alphabetland is exactly what we need right now, rawkous good-natured punk-rock. Irreverent in places but as politically charged as you'd expect from some veterans of the scene. Brilliantly good fun, and as serious as it needs to be.TRACK LISTING
1. ALPHABETLAND
2. Free
3. Water & Wine
4. Strange Life
5. I Gotta Fever
6. Delta 88 Nightmare
7. Star Chambered
8. Angel On The Road
9. Cyrano DeBerger's Back
10. Goodbye Year, Goodbye
11. All The Time In The World
Blair Howerton started songwriting as a coping mechanism during her formative years. Her vivid lyricism has bloomed into the dazzling, full-band emotional release known as Why Bonnie. The band's Fat Possum Records debut EP Voice Box celebrates unhindered expression via beguiling, propulsive guitar pop. In a decisive step to start performing her backlogged material, Howerton moved back home to Texas after graduating college in 2015. In Austin, Howerton joined lifelong best friend Kendall Powell, who she met in preschool. Powells classical piano chops swapped to synth for the new project. Both active in the Austin scene, guitarist Sam Houdek and bassist Chance Williams later joined to complete the lineup. In 2018, the band emerged on petite indie outlet Sports Day Records with In Water. The EP eulogized Howertons older brother, who passed away years prior. Intimately bristling tracks explored the grieving process, introducing the groups uncanny ability to stir up huge catharsis in a seamless rise. Follow-up Nightgown expanded the effort, pulling lush Mazzy Star and Cranberries influences.
Embarking on their first DIY tour the same year, Why Bonnie quickly landed opening runs for the like-minded sounds of Snail Mail and Beach Fossils. The sum of those experiences culminates in the sweeping, layered rock sound of third EP Voice Box. Fuzzed-out guitars and crystalline vocals drive a tough-edged struggle in the space between suppression and artistic liberty. Howerton explains: It encapsulates a disconnect between my inner and outer world, and not being able to express myself authentically because of that. But, ultimately knowing I will crash and burn if I dont The intense effort isnt always pretty. The title track fumes with quiet wisdom, urging: I know it's easier to bury your uncertainties in a cloud of masculinity / Guess is the curse you bear to talk over me. Breeders-inspired Athlete endeavors self-doubt in a blistering metaphor of failed sportsmanship. Fiery No Caves rises to a forceful album finale, unleashing the full windswept power of Howertons vocals, padded by Houdek. Of the ending ascent, the lead singer decides about the freedom of realizing that you can't hide anymore. You have to put yourself out there.
Embarking on their first DIY tour the same year, Why Bonnie quickly landed opening runs for the like-minded sounds of Snail Mail and Beach Fossils. The sum of those experiences culminates in the sweeping, layered rock sound of third EP Voice Box. Fuzzed-out guitars and crystalline vocals drive a tough-edged struggle in the space between suppression and artistic liberty. Howerton explains: It encapsulates a disconnect between my inner and outer world, and not being able to express myself authentically because of that. But, ultimately knowing I will crash and burn if I dont The intense effort isnt always pretty. The title track fumes with quiet wisdom, urging: I know it's easier to bury your uncertainties in a cloud of masculinity / Guess is the curse you bear to talk over me. Breeders-inspired Athlete endeavors self-doubt in a blistering metaphor of failed sportsmanship. Fiery No Caves rises to a forceful album finale, unleashing the full windswept power of Howertons vocals, padded by Houdek. Of the ending ascent, the lead singer decides about the freedom of realizing that you can't hide anymore. You have to put yourself out there.
TRACK LISTING
1. Jetplane
2. Bury Me
3. Voice Box
4. No Caves
5. Athlete
The full-length debut from Ellis, Born Again takes place in spaces both intimate and vast, ordinary and near-mythic: warm beds and lonely church pews, restless cities and desolate forests and the furthest reaches of the cosmos. Produced by Jake Aron (Snail Mail, Solange, Grizzly Bear) and recorded partly at Aron’s Brooklyn studio, Born Again arrives as the follow-up to Ellis’s debut EP The Fuzz—a self-released, self-produced effort that promptly led to a deal with Fat Possum Records. In a departure from the viscerally charged dream-pop of The Fuzz, Born Again unfolds with a mesmerizing subtlety, gracefully spotlighting Ellis’s unhurried melodies, starkly confessional lyrics, and the luminous vocal work she’s shown in opening for artists like Soccer Mommy and Alvvays.
TRACK LISTING
1. Pringle Creek
2. Fall Apart
3. Happy
4. Born Again
5. Shame
6. Into The Trees
7. Saturn Return
8. Embarrassing
9. Zhuangzi's Dream
10. March 13
"You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere is an unachievable promise,” says The Districts bandleader Rob Grote. “It’s about a dream for love to last forever and a yearning to postpone death. It is about wanting to escape everyday life while also craving time with one who’s present. It’s a plea to remain the same in the face of constant change, and the certainty of going nowhere fast.” Written after playing nearly 200 shows over two years in support of their 2017 album, Popular Manipulations, The Districts’ fourth full-length You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere almost never arrived.
As they began to contemplate a new album, Grote and his longtime bandmates Pat Cassidy (guitar), Connor Jacobus (bass), and Braden Lawrence (drums) faced a transitional period that was painful for both personal and professional reasons, and found themselves fatigued and disoriented as a group. Grote also felt dysphoric from the anxiety-provoking state of the world today, while facing a daily battle with the dire health problems of his beloved dog. The Districts were forced to rethink everything. “This album was written as an escape and as reassurance. I was falling in love with someone new and trying to juggle this desperate desire to escape with the need to show up in my life. It’s pretty damn hard to be present and completely checked out all at once,” Grote explains. “It felt like much of my world had reached such a pitch that all I could do was try to tune it out. I felt really uncertain about the future of the band and super detached from much of what I used to identify with, on a personal level and with our music. I was thinking, ‘Do I want to keep doing music?’ ‘Do I want to keep doing it in this context?’” Grote retreated to his bedroom and started writing with no objective other than to create. Free from expectations, and with an acoustic guitar, synthesizer, and drum machine at hand, he discovered a newfound creative freedom.
As they began to contemplate a new album, Grote and his longtime bandmates Pat Cassidy (guitar), Connor Jacobus (bass), and Braden Lawrence (drums) faced a transitional period that was painful for both personal and professional reasons, and found themselves fatigued and disoriented as a group. Grote also felt dysphoric from the anxiety-provoking state of the world today, while facing a daily battle with the dire health problems of his beloved dog. The Districts were forced to rethink everything. “This album was written as an escape and as reassurance. I was falling in love with someone new and trying to juggle this desperate desire to escape with the need to show up in my life. It’s pretty damn hard to be present and completely checked out all at once,” Grote explains. “It felt like much of my world had reached such a pitch that all I could do was try to tune it out. I felt really uncertain about the future of the band and super detached from much of what I used to identify with, on a personal level and with our music. I was thinking, ‘Do I want to keep doing music?’ ‘Do I want to keep doing it in this context?’” Grote retreated to his bedroom and started writing with no objective other than to create. Free from expectations, and with an acoustic guitar, synthesizer, and drum machine at hand, he discovered a newfound creative freedom.
TRACK LISTING
1. My Only Ghost
2. Hey Jo
3. Cheap Regrets
4. Velour And Velcro
5. Changing
6. Descend
7. The Clouds
8. Dancer
Cats and Dogs, the fourth Royal Trux album, was originally released in 1993 to critical acclaim; it was also the first indication that Royal Trux could do more than whip up a tornado of distortion. A little less focused than Thank You, it still has its moments of splendor, especially when it sounds as though it's going to fall apart and, suddenly, comes back together
TRACK LISTING
1. Teeth
2. The Flag
3. Friends
4. The Spectre
5. Skywood Greenback Mantra
6. Turn Of The Century
7. Up The Sleeve
8. Hot And Cold Skulls
9. Tight Pants
10. Let's Get Lost
11. Driving In That Car (with The Eagle On The Hood)
A compilation of the best songs released from Townes Van Zandt over his career.
TRACK LISTING
1. For The Sake Of The Song
2. Pancho& Lefty
3. To Live Is To Fly
4. Fare Thee Well, Miss Carousel
5. I'll Be Here In The Morning
6. St. John The Gambler
7. If I Needed You
8. Black Widow Blues
9. Tecumseh Valley
10. Flyin' Shoes
11. Waiting Around To Die
12. Lungs
13. You Are Not Needed Now
14. Tower Song
15. Nothin'
16. Rex's Blues
First 12" pressing of The Districts critically acclaimed debut EP, first released in 2014. Included in addition to the original five tracks is a stirring BBC live session version of 'Silver Couplets', a live favourite that had only previously appeared on the band's self-released debut.
TRACK LISTING
1. Rocking Chair
2. Lyla
3. Funeral Beds
4. Long Distance
5. Stay Open
Raw, soulful blues-rock from this duo from Akron, Ohio. This is the awesome second album (their first in the UK) from Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney. With a stripped back guitar, drums and vocal line up this is top notch blues, set apart by Auerbach's distinctive fuzz guitar. Recommended.
TRACK LISTING
1. Thickfreakness
2. Hard Row" (lyrics By Dan And Chuck Auerbach)
3. Set You Free
4. Midnight In Her Eyes
5. Have Love Will Travel (Richard Berry)
6. Hurt Like Mine
7. Everywhere I Go (Junior Kimbrough)
8. No Trust
9. If You See Me
10. Hold Me In Your Arms
11. I Cry Alone
It’s been eight years since Bondy last released a record, and his distaste for the present day has intensified. But rather than avoid popular sounds, on Enderness he gathers and subverts modern tools to construct his indictment of the modern world. With an arsenal of synthesizers, drum machine, sparse electric guitar, and a skeptic’s pen, he builds a plodding dystopian story of living death stoked by internet anti-reality, big pharma conspiracy, and environmental apocalypse—aka 2019.
It’s existential dread as mid-tempo cradlesong, the music of our worst sleepless nights. “Stranger if you come/Know that much is broken/I forget the way/Surrender is spoken,” he sings on album standout “Images of Love,” bass pulses driving the caustic groove. On “Diamond Skull,” Bondy strings tragic and worrying subjects of popular obsession into a stream-of-consciousness phantasmagoria over a simple guitar riff, like Nick Cave on “Higgs Boson Blues.” Observations about white nationalism, spiritual charlatans, and hollow celebrity worship spill into internet speak: “OMG sea to sea/L-M-F-A-O,” he sings with a knowing wink. Like so many who simultaneously bemoan and fuel the simulation—tweets and grams as a form of self-flagellation—Bondy is both in on and imprisoned by the joke.
It’s existential dread as mid-tempo cradlesong, the music of our worst sleepless nights. “Stranger if you come/Know that much is broken/I forget the way/Surrender is spoken,” he sings on album standout “Images of Love,” bass pulses driving the caustic groove. On “Diamond Skull,” Bondy strings tragic and worrying subjects of popular obsession into a stream-of-consciousness phantasmagoria over a simple guitar riff, like Nick Cave on “Higgs Boson Blues.” Observations about white nationalism, spiritual charlatans, and hollow celebrity worship spill into internet speak: “OMG sea to sea/L-M-F-A-O,” he sings with a knowing wink. Like so many who simultaneously bemoan and fuel the simulation—tweets and grams as a form of self-flagellation—Bondy is both in on and imprisoned by the joke.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: A.A. Bondy have mastered the art of slow and simmeringly beautiful melodies. Warming saturated melodies and slowly unfurling progressive synthplay form a percussive but unhurried base to Bondy's haunting vocal drawl. Lovely stuff.TRACK LISTING
1. Diamond Skull
2. Killers 3
3. In The Wonder
4. The Tree With The Lights
5. Images Of Love
6. I'll Never Know
7. Fentanyl Freddy
8. Pan Tran
9. #Lost Hills
10. Enderness
This is the debut EP from new Fat Possum signing Ellis. The six-track release presents an uncommonly fully-realized aesthetic to match the strength of Siggelkow's songwriting. Built from simple instrumentation, but deftly arranged to lend a grandeur and devastating scale to Siggelkow's skillfully rendered laments, the release is a resounding statement from a young artist who is poised for a reception that equals the scope of her remarkable gifts. Ellis, who, after generating buzz in her local scene on the back of opening stints with the likes of Soccer Mommy, Gabby's World, Chastity, Palehound, and Free Cake For Every Creature, garnered international acclaim with the release of a series of singles, earning comparisons to Mazzy Star, Alvvays and Slowdive from outlets like Pitchfork, Noisey and Stereogum, who marked her out as one of "a new generation of exciting songwriters."
TRACK LISTING
Side A
1. The Drain
2. Frostbite
3. What A Mess!
Side B
1. All This Time
2. The Fuzz
3. NYE
In case you don't know by now, Insecure Menare led by Saul Adamczewski (Fat White Family) and his schoolmate Ben Romans-Hopcraft. There debut album was a glorious mess of exotica, easy listening, lounge and timeless pop music.They now return with this 10 track covers record, feat. takes on Bruce Springsteen, The Pogues, The Carpenters, Peter Andre et al.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: It's a completely bizarre but thoroughly brilliant re-working of some karaoke classics from Insecure Men here, including the Police, the Denny's and PETER BLOODY ANDRE. WTAF / This is brilliant. Special shout-out to the Pogues' 'A Rainy Night In Soho'.TRACK LISTING
SIDE A
1. Rainy Days And Mondays
2. Mysterious Girl
3. She Thinks I Still Care
4. A Rainy Night In Soho
5. Streets Of Philadelphia
SIDE B
1. Roxette
2. I'm So Depressed
3. Sail Away To The Sea
4. Picture Cards Can't Picture You
5. Madame George
Fat Possum and Julian Casablancas' Cult Records are partnering to release NY Punks Surfbort record, "Friendship Music". Surfbort, a four-piece punk band from Brooklyn, New York made up of David Head, Alex Kilgore, Sean Powell and led by Dani Miller, channels inspiration from the 80’s punk scene to produce rousing, explosive music. Surfbort’s live experience is visceral and confrontational. Their feedback-strafed, guitar-shredding punk music says no to a digital age full of intolerance; they radiate love and friendship. All are welcome in the SURFBORT FREAK FAMILY! In the last three years they have supported acts such as The Dickies, Thee Oh Sees, Fat White Family, White Fang, Martin Rev, The Garden, Tijuana Panthers, The Mystery Lights, Tomorrows Tulips, Sunflower Bean, DIIV, GOGGS, The Dune Rats, Leftover Crack etc, Meatbodies, Ex-Cult, Hinds among others…
TRACK LISTING
1. Burn
2. High Anxiety
3. Feed
4. Rats
5. ACAB
6. Slushy
7. Hillside Stranger
8. Pretty Little Fucker
9. Stalker
10. Sunshine
11. Forty Five
12. Lets Be In Love
13. Selfie
14. Trashworld
15. Dope
16. Friendship Music
17. White People
Unknown Mortal Orchestra (U.M.O.) was conceived as a home recording project by Ruban Nielson after spending years playing and touring in an award-winning New Zealand punk band (on the legendary Flying Nun label). The band broke up after re-locating to Portland, OR and Ruban was ready to move away from his nomadic past. His recordings as U.M.O., mainly created for his personal amusement, have now taken on a life of their own.
Ruban’s vision of creating “junkshop record collector pop” culminated in the creation of sprawling Beatles-esque guitar melodies over hammered out break-beats, spliced with an individual touch of gentle weirdness. The results deliver a surprisingly unified fusion of several influential elements - classic psychedelic rock, Krautrock rhythms and proto-hip hop beats – all interacting to create a cohesive album.
Though the songs were never intended to be performed live, the last six months has seen the project gather pace behind a wave of critical acclaim. A sold-out limited edition EP lead Ruban to construct a live band consisting of skilled producer Jake Portrait on bass and a brilliant teenage drummer named Julien Ehrlich.
Ruban’s vision of creating “junkshop record collector pop” culminated in the creation of sprawling Beatles-esque guitar melodies over hammered out break-beats, spliced with an individual touch of gentle weirdness. The results deliver a surprisingly unified fusion of several influential elements - classic psychedelic rock, Krautrock rhythms and proto-hip hop beats – all interacting to create a cohesive album.
Though the songs were never intended to be performed live, the last six months has seen the project gather pace behind a wave of critical acclaim. A sold-out limited edition EP lead Ruban to construct a live band consisting of skilled producer Jake Portrait on bass and a brilliant teenage drummer named Julien Ehrlich.
TRACK LISTING
1. Ffrends
2. Bicycle
3. Thought Ballune
4. Jello And Juggernauts
5. How Can You Luv Me
6. Nerve Damage!
7. Little Blu House
8. Strangers Are Strange
9. Boy Witch
Debut album from Australian band RVG drawing on an array of influences from Echo and the Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, and The Go Betweens. A Quality of Mercy is made up of Eight songs. Classic songs. Songs recorded by the band, live off the floor, at Melbourne’s iconic rock’n’roll pub, The Tote. Songs that leant on the band’s heroes —the Go-Betweens, the Soft Boys, the Smiths— whilst never sounding like homage or pastiche. Songs hitting that sweet spot between light and dark, employing guitars both angular and jangling. Songs passionately sung by Romy Vager, the eponymous leader of a band once called, in full, Romy Vager Group. All of the songs on A Quality Of Mercy find Vager trying to move beyond ego, beyond the simple confessional of the songwriter, hoping to find perspective on both world and self. In such, these songs are at once personal and universal, intimate and grand, timely and timeless. They’re classic songs. And there’s eight of them. Adding up to a perfectly-formed debut that says so much, yet gets out in under half-an-hour.
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: Displaying a perfect mix between jangling guitars and evocative vocal aesthetic (there's definitely a bit of Jarvis in there somewhere), RVG manage to switch from syncopated rhythmic psychedelia to soaring anthemic post-punk without batting an eyelid. Perfectly produced, and brilliantly immersive throughout.TRACK LISTING
1. A Quality Of Mercy
2. Cause And Effect
3. IBM
4. Heart Paste
5. The Eggshell World
6. Vincent Van Gogh
7. Feral Beach
8. That's All
Reduced
THE PICCADILLY RECORDS ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2018.
PICCADILLY RECORDS EXCLUSIVE:
For a limited period only, buy either the vinyl or CD of 'Childqueen' and get a free 3 track 'Outtakes' CD bonus disc.
Kadhja Bonet’s second album, Childqueen is something of a Hero’s Quest. In the opening Procession, above a muted drummer’s march, an unseen oracle announces to you, the listener: “every morning is a chance to renew, a chance to renew.” This is your first clue, setting you upon a path not to treasure, nor a grail, nor even a long lost love, but highest of all, what Kadhja has christened the “childqueen,” that innermost self that you were truthfully and instinctively before the press of the world came crushing in.
As with her 2016 debut The Visitor, the songs on Childqueen are never casual, never ditties. Instead they invite us into a world not wholly our own, a half-mythical atmosphere where past and future meet in a parallel, yet faraway, present. The lyrics and melodic lines nudge us along a path of self-discovery— or act as breadcrumbs along her own path. Everything that you hear on Childqueen was written, played, produced, and even mixed by Kadhja, who has always produced all her own music, insisting on a total vision that is nearly as difficult to co-create as a dream. The result is a soundscape the listener sinks into, a sound that combines softer enchantments with an ever-listenable experimentalism, unplaceable in genre and decade from beginning to end.
PICCADILLY RECORDS EXCLUSIVE:
For a limited period only, buy either the vinyl or CD of 'Childqueen' and get a free 3 track 'Outtakes' CD bonus disc.
Kadhja Bonet’s second album, Childqueen is something of a Hero’s Quest. In the opening Procession, above a muted drummer’s march, an unseen oracle announces to you, the listener: “every morning is a chance to renew, a chance to renew.” This is your first clue, setting you upon a path not to treasure, nor a grail, nor even a long lost love, but highest of all, what Kadhja has christened the “childqueen,” that innermost self that you were truthfully and instinctively before the press of the world came crushing in.
As with her 2016 debut The Visitor, the songs on Childqueen are never casual, never ditties. Instead they invite us into a world not wholly our own, a half-mythical atmosphere where past and future meet in a parallel, yet faraway, present. The lyrics and melodic lines nudge us along a path of self-discovery— or act as breadcrumbs along her own path. Everything that you hear on Childqueen was written, played, produced, and even mixed by Kadhja, who has always produced all her own music, insisting on a total vision that is nearly as difficult to co-create as a dream. The result is a soundscape the listener sinks into, a sound that combines softer enchantments with an ever-listenable experimentalism, unplaceable in genre and decade from beginning to end.
TRACK LISTING
1. Procession
2. Childqueen
3. Another Time Lover
4. Delphine
5. Thoughts Around Tea
6. Joy
7. Wings
8. Mother Maybe
9. Second Wind
10. Nostalgia (hidden Track)
Piccadilly Records Exclusive CD Bonus Disc:
1. Imposter
2. Wake
3. The Watch
Following on from last years compilation “Collection”, Nashville based Sophie Allison aka Soccer Mommy now brings us her debut album proper. Produced by Gabe Wax (Deerhunter, War On Drugs, Beirut), the new album is a huge step up from her earlier bedroom recordings. The fuller sound works perfectly with Sophie’s finely crafted, bitter-sweet pop songs that have a world weary quality beyond her 20 years.
TRACK LISTING
1. Still Clean
2. Cool
3. Your Dog
4. Flaw
5. Blossom (Wasting All My Time)
6. Last Girl
7. Skin
8. Scorpio Rising
9. Interlude
10. Wildflowers
In many ways Insecure Men - the band led by the fiercely talented songwriter and musician Saul Adamczewski and his schoolmate and stabilising influence, Ben Romans-Hopcraft - are the polar opposite of the Fat White Family. Whereas sleaze-mired, country-influenced, drug-crazed garage punks the Fat Whites are a “celebration of everything that is wrong in life”, Insecure Men, who blend together exotica, easy listening, lounge and timeless pop music, are, by comparison at least, the last word in wholesomeness.
The band originally formed in 2015 in the cramped confines of The Queens Head pub, Stockwell, in the Fat White Family’s notorious South London ‘practice space’. Saul recorded all of the songs he wrote at The Queens Head onto tape at Sean Lennon’s studio in upstate New York. This tape, recorded on his own in a corridor onto an ancient Tascam while in a foul mood with his mates, essentially became Insecure Men’s self-titled debut album as more layers were dubbed over the top until nothing of the original demos remained.
Saul lists some of the influences on their sound, mentioning the exotica of Arthur Lyman, the early electronic pop of Perrey and Kingsley, the supreme smoothness of The Carpenters, the songwriting chops of Harry Nilsson and the hypnagogic uncanniness conjured up by David Lynch, describing what they do as “pretty music with a dark underbelly to it”.
The band originally formed in 2015 in the cramped confines of The Queens Head pub, Stockwell, in the Fat White Family’s notorious South London ‘practice space’. Saul recorded all of the songs he wrote at The Queens Head onto tape at Sean Lennon’s studio in upstate New York. This tape, recorded on his own in a corridor onto an ancient Tascam while in a foul mood with his mates, essentially became Insecure Men’s self-titled debut album as more layers were dubbed over the top until nothing of the original demos remained.
Saul lists some of the influences on their sound, mentioning the exotica of Arthur Lyman, the early electronic pop of Perrey and Kingsley, the supreme smoothness of The Carpenters, the songwriting chops of Harry Nilsson and the hypnagogic uncanniness conjured up by David Lynch, describing what they do as “pretty music with a dark underbelly to it”.
TRACK LISTING
1. Subaru Nights
2. Teenage Toy
3. All Women Love Me
4. Mekong Glitter
5. Heathrow
6. I Don't Wanna Dance (With My Baby)
7. The Saddest Man In Penge
8. Ulster
9. Cliff Has Left The Building
10. Whitney Houston And I
11. Buried In The Bleak
The Districts are a band that never stops moving. Popular Manipulations is an accurate representation of how much Robby, Braden, Connor, and Pat have grown, individually and as one solid unit. They’ve fallen in love and had their hearts broken and put back together again. They’re not the young underage band anymore, they’ve stepped out of their comfort zone and have come face to face with things that are so much bigger than them.
Popular Manipulations is life in the present. The way Robby belts from the depths of his chest compliments Pat’s crooning guitar while Braden and Connor lock in with a rhythm section so thick you could slice it with a knife. The songs are so visceral and compelling they make you like you’re experiencing every emotion at once. You can wade through the lyrical themes of manipulation, possessiveness, and anxiety or float among their dark and dreamy arrangements. Each song stands alone on its own but the synergy between them as a whole is explosive
Popular Manipulations is life in the present. The way Robby belts from the depths of his chest compliments Pat’s crooning guitar while Braden and Connor lock in with a rhythm section so thick you could slice it with a knife. The songs are so visceral and compelling they make you like you’re experiencing every emotion at once. You can wade through the lyrical themes of manipulation, possessiveness, and anxiety or float among their dark and dreamy arrangements. Each song stands alone on its own but the synergy between them as a whole is explosive
STAFF COMMENTS
Barry says: Soaring melancholic indie anthems are underpinned by a staggeringly precise rhythmic backbone of hammering percussion and rolling bass. Slightly grungy in places and brilliantly emotive and perfectly produced throughout. Brilliant stuff.TRACK LISTING
1. If Before I Wake
2. Violet
3. Ordinary Day
4. Salt
5. Why Would I Wanna Be
6. Point
7. Airplane
8. Fat Kiddo
9. Capable
10. Rattling Of The Heart
Quietly catchy & surprisingly confrontational. Soccer Mommy is the project of Sophie Allison, a nineteen-year-old Nashville native & musical wunderkind. Collection compiles the best of Sophie’s DIY Bandcamp work as well as a few new songs.
Sophie sings of toxic relationships & infatuations. Or, as Sophie describes her subject matter, “crush stuff with a hint of bad to it.” The songs can be sweet, they can be happily melancholic or melancholically happy, but they always cut deep. They belong on playlists & mixes, to be shared among friends & belted out during road trips.
‘Allison,’ a gorgeous meditation on the bittersweet feeling of hurting someone you love while pursuing your own dreams, showcases Sophie’s talent for home recording, with multitracked vocals layered to perfection. On ‘Out Worn,’ a searing takedown of the desire for male validation, is relatable & anthemic, striking the perfect balance between anger & sugary pop bliss.
As long as records like Collection exist, there will be no shortage of young artists bashing their hearts out on guitars for years to come. “You can’t say indie rock is dead,” says Sophie. “It’s just being taken over by women.”
Sophie sings of toxic relationships & infatuations. Or, as Sophie describes her subject matter, “crush stuff with a hint of bad to it.” The songs can be sweet, they can be happily melancholic or melancholically happy, but they always cut deep. They belong on playlists & mixes, to be shared among friends & belted out during road trips.
‘Allison,’ a gorgeous meditation on the bittersweet feeling of hurting someone you love while pursuing your own dreams, showcases Sophie’s talent for home recording, with multitracked vocals layered to perfection. On ‘Out Worn,’ a searing takedown of the desire for male validation, is relatable & anthemic, striking the perfect balance between anger & sugary pop bliss.
As long as records like Collection exist, there will be no shortage of young artists bashing their hearts out on guitars for years to come. “You can’t say indie rock is dead,” says Sophie. “It’s just being taken over by women.”
STAFF COMMENTS
Laura says: Lovely heartfelt melancholic pop songs from this Nashville singer songwriter. I have to admit I knew nothing about her before this release but this is really great. If you like Chastity Belt, Big Thief, Girlpool etc. then check it out.TRACK LISTING
1. Allison
2. Try
3. Death By Chocolate
4. Out Worn
5. 3am At A Party
6. Inside Out
7. Benadryl Dreams
8. Waiting For Cars
Hoops' full-length debut, Routines is a bittersweet and honest record that sounds both warmly familiar and jarringly distinctive. Whereas their previous releases were recorded on four-track tape machines in living rooms and basements (both their own and their parents’), Routines marks the band’s first sessions in an actual studio - namely, Rear House Recording in Greenpoint, Brooklyn with Jarvis Taveniere (Widowspeak, Quilt). Those sessions, however, were just one step in the band’s careful creative process. After a few months of touring, they returned to Indiana to set up their gear in Krauter’s parents’ basement and began experimenting with the studio-recorded tracks. Some songs they only tinkered with, others they scrapped completely and rebuilt from the ground up. They were determined to make a record that sounded like Hoops. The result is Routines, the sharpest and clearest delineation of the band’s sound thus far, drawing from and emphasizing each members’ distinctive influences and personal styles: four guys making music that is larger than themselves.
RIYL: Real Estate, Deerhunter, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Ariel Pink, John Maus, Wild Nothing, Mac DeMarco, Twin Peaks, Whitney, Tennis
RIYL: Real Estate, Deerhunter, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Ariel Pink, John Maus, Wild Nothing, Mac DeMarco, Twin Peaks, Whitney, Tennis
TRACK LISTING
1. Sun's Out
2. Rules
3. On Top
4. Benjals
5. Burden
6. On Letting Go
7. The Way Luv Is
8. Management
9. All My Life
10. Underwater Theme
11. Worry
Gold Connections’ debut EP was home-recorded in the spring of 2014 in Williamsburg, VA, and features production, engineering, and mixing by Will Toledo (Car Seat Headrest). It is comprised of the band's five best, earliest original songs written by Marsh while he was an undergrad of the College of William & Mary in Virginia. It was there that Marsh met Toledo; Marsh a freshman, Toledo a sophomore. Though Toledo won’t be a member going forward, he also plays drums, electric guitar, bass, and backing vocals throughout the EP. Fat Possum will release Gold Connections’ debut album later this year.
RIYL: Car Seat Headrest, The Districts, Pavement, Modest Mouse, Wilco, Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes, Pinegrove, Built to Spill, The Walkmen
“...an animal of its own. Languid atmospherics give birth to howlingly aggressive rock ‘n’ roll that ultimately builds to a richly arranged climax." - Stereogum
RIYL: Car Seat Headrest, The Districts, Pavement, Modest Mouse, Wilco, Ryan Adams, Bright Eyes, Pinegrove, Built to Spill, The Walkmen
“...an animal of its own. Languid atmospherics give birth to howlingly aggressive rock ‘n’ roll that ultimately builds to a richly arranged climax." - Stereogum
Communions are a four-piece from Copenhagen, made up of brothers Martin and Mads Rehof, Jacob van Deurs Formann and Frederik Lind Köppen.
‘Blue’ is Communions’ debut album, following a series of singles over the last two years. ‘Blue’ makes the most of everywhere Communions have been. Through all of this the stakes have changed but the sensitivity and craft with which the band takes risks has bloomed. An eloquence now shines through and you can take it or leave it.
Discarding some of the moodiness found in their previous recordings, ‘Blue’ tells us what was always natural to Communions. It’s about love and taking chances. It’s about trying something and it still doesn’t matter if there’s apprehension.
‘Blue’ is Communions’ debut album, following a series of singles over the last two years. ‘Blue’ makes the most of everywhere Communions have been. Through all of this the stakes have changed but the sensitivity and craft with which the band takes risks has bloomed. An eloquence now shines through and you can take it or leave it.
Discarding some of the moodiness found in their previous recordings, ‘Blue’ tells us what was always natural to Communions. It’s about love and taking chances. It’s about trying something and it still doesn’t matter if there’s apprehension.
TRACK LISTING
Come On, I’m Waiting
Today
Passed You By
She’s A Myth
Midnight Child
Got To Be Free
Don’t Hold Anything Back
Take It All
It’s Like Air
Eternity
Alarm Clocks
‘Goodbye Terrible Youth’ is the second album from St Louis-by-way-of-Scotland songwriter, Gary McClure.
Performing under the name American Wrestlers, Gary’s second record sees him taking bedroom recordings onto a bigger stage without sacrificing the intimacy that makes them so attractive.
If his self-titled album showed Gary’s knack for stringing together addictive guitar lines - the shimmer of shoegaze mixed with the emotional fist pump of power pop, ‘Goodbye Terrible Youth’ amplifies that energy with a roadtested band. Literally breaking out of the home studio - the Tascam mixer McClure had been recording on has fallen apart from overuse - he’s embraced a bigger sound and stage on ‘Goodbye Terrible Youth’, his rueful yet propulsive songwriting only becoming sharper.
“This [‘Amazing Grace’] is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in 2016. All swirling guitars and plinking pianos, the song builds to a real moment of triumph. ‘I am waiting for that moment to arrive,’ Gary McClure sings, and then they hit you with those crunchy, soaring guitars, and you know it has” - USA Today
KEXP named ‘Amazing Grace’ their Song Of The Day, saying “When the guitar solo kicks in towards the final minute, it’s almost enough to make you pick up that matchbook and light the edge of that ever-expanding todo list on fire.”
Performing under the name American Wrestlers, Gary’s second record sees him taking bedroom recordings onto a bigger stage without sacrificing the intimacy that makes them so attractive.
If his self-titled album showed Gary’s knack for stringing together addictive guitar lines - the shimmer of shoegaze mixed with the emotional fist pump of power pop, ‘Goodbye Terrible Youth’ amplifies that energy with a roadtested band. Literally breaking out of the home studio - the Tascam mixer McClure had been recording on has fallen apart from overuse - he’s embraced a bigger sound and stage on ‘Goodbye Terrible Youth’, his rueful yet propulsive songwriting only becoming sharper.
“This [‘Amazing Grace’] is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in 2016. All swirling guitars and plinking pianos, the song builds to a real moment of triumph. ‘I am waiting for that moment to arrive,’ Gary McClure sings, and then they hit you with those crunchy, soaring guitars, and you know it has” - USA Today
KEXP named ‘Amazing Grace’ their Song Of The Day, saying “When the guitar solo kicks in towards the final minute, it’s almost enough to make you pick up that matchbook and light the edge of that ever-expanding todo list on fire.”
TRACK LISTING
Vote Thatcher
Give Up
So Long
Hello, Dear
Amazing Grace
Terrible Youth
Blind Kids
Someone Far Away
Real People
‘Pearls To Swine’ maps Adam Torres’ complicated history as a songwriter and musician: it’s the sound of someone who discovered the value in his own devotion to music and how songs and writing are extensions of his own journey. He embeds his own folklore within his high-lonesome sounding, deeply felt and moving brand of folk music.
‘Pearls To Swine’ was recorded over eight days in January at Austin’s Cacophony Recorders, which overlooks the Colorado River valley. Working alongside co-producer and mixer Erik Wofford (Bill Callahan, Black Angels, M. Ward, Okkervil River), Torres chose the analogue route, recording and mixing directly to tape to allow for more finality and less overthought. This method in turn lends a natural, warm and almost magical realism atmosphere to the songs - like a high stakes live show captured in a fantastical setting.
The core rhythm was captured live and augmented by a few overdubs and Torres is joined on the album by the players in his band: Thor Harris (of Swans; on conga drums, vibraphone and percussion), Aisha Burns (violin) and Dailey Tolliver (bass / piano), with drum kit performances by Matthew Shepherd and Rodolfo Villareal III.
‘Pearls To Swine’ was recorded over eight days in January at Austin’s Cacophony Recorders, which overlooks the Colorado River valley. Working alongside co-producer and mixer Erik Wofford (Bill Callahan, Black Angels, M. Ward, Okkervil River), Torres chose the analogue route, recording and mixing directly to tape to allow for more finality and less overthought. This method in turn lends a natural, warm and almost magical realism atmosphere to the songs - like a high stakes live show captured in a fantastical setting.
The core rhythm was captured live and augmented by a few overdubs and Torres is joined on the album by the players in his band: Thor Harris (of Swans; on conga drums, vibraphone and percussion), Aisha Burns (violin) and Dailey Tolliver (bass / piano), with drum kit performances by Matthew Shepherd and Rodolfo Villareal III.
TRACK LISTING
Juniper Arms
Some Beast Will Find You
By Name
High Lonesome
Morning Rain
Daydream
Outlands
Where I’m Calling From
Mountain River
City Limits
‘Get Gone’, the potent debut album by Shreveport, Louisiana natives Seratones, makes a strong case that this little-known corner of the state is fertile ground, musically speaking. AJ Haynes (vocals), Connor Davis (guitar), Adam Davis (bass) and Jesse Gabriel (drums) serve up a combination of Southern musicality, garage rock ferocity and general badassery.
Seratones’ music, created with collaborative songwriting and spontaneous creativity, is certainly their own, due perhaps in part to Shreveport’s unique sonic geography. The city sits at a nexus roughly equidistant from Memphis soul, Mississippi Delta Blues and New Orleans jazz, with Texas swing located just over the nearby state border. The band’s sound draws from those touch points and more, ranging from Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ to ‘Kind Of Blue’.
Seratones’ music, created with collaborative songwriting and spontaneous creativity, is certainly their own, due perhaps in part to Shreveport’s unique sonic geography. The city sits at a nexus roughly equidistant from Memphis soul, Mississippi Delta Blues and New Orleans jazz, with Texas swing located just over the nearby state border. The band’s sound draws from those touch points and more, ranging from Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ to ‘Kind Of Blue’.
TRACK LISTING
Choking On Your Spit
Headtrip
Tide
Chandelier
Sun
Get Gone
Trees
Kingdom Come
Don’t Need It
Take It Easy
Keep Me
Sunflower Bean find magic within friction. The New York trio’s full-length debut album, Human Ceremony [Fat Possum Records], emerges at the intersection of dreamy modern psychedelica and urgent fuzzed-out bliss. That push-and-pull colours the aural tapestry of these three musicians—Jacob Faber [drums], Julia Cumming [vocals/bass], and Nick Kivlen [vocals/guitars].
“Everything comes from a conflicting interest,” affirms Nick. “We love dream pop, but we also really love rock ‘n’ roll. It’s those two spectrums.”
“You’re allowed to obsess over Black Sabbath as well as The Cure,” adds Julia. “It’d be boring if everything was just one way or the other.”
That diversity defined the group’s approach since Nick and Jacob started jamming back in high school. They would hole up in Jacob’s Long Island basement for hours on end, channelling this vast cadre of influences. Julia’s addition would only expand that creative palette further in 2013. Through constant gigging around New York, Sunflower Bean sprouted into a sonic enigma, boasting a fiery musical call-and-response that serves as a centrepiece, giving the music what Jacob refers to as a “lyrical aspect” between the guitars, drums, and bass.
They transferred this multi-headed energy into their 2015 Independent EP, Show Me Your Seven Secrets. At the same time, this distinct alchemy enchanted ever-growing audiences live. By the time, they entered the studio for Human Ceremony, Sunflower Bean had a lively aural cauldron from which to draw.
They took the summer of 2015 off and retreated to Jacob’s basement to write together. Taking the ideas out of the basement, they hit a Brooklyn studio with producer Matt Molnar [Friends] and tracked eleven tunes in just seven days. Whereas the EP was recorded after Sunflower Bean played 100 shows in one year, Human Ceremony showed the band’s studio side with richer soundscapes, overdubs, and music that had yet to be debuted live.
On the lead track “Easier Said,” Julia’s delicate vocals glide over a lilting clean guitar that spirals off into a vibrant hum.
Sunflower Bean’s spell is cast on Human Ceremony.
“When you’re in a band, you always dream about the first record,” Julia concludes. “It’s that moment where you explore everything that’s been inspiring you.”
“Everything comes from a conflicting interest,” affirms Nick. “We love dream pop, but we also really love rock ‘n’ roll. It’s those two spectrums.”
“You’re allowed to obsess over Black Sabbath as well as The Cure,” adds Julia. “It’d be boring if everything was just one way or the other.”
That diversity defined the group’s approach since Nick and Jacob started jamming back in high school. They would hole up in Jacob’s Long Island basement for hours on end, channelling this vast cadre of influences. Julia’s addition would only expand that creative palette further in 2013. Through constant gigging around New York, Sunflower Bean sprouted into a sonic enigma, boasting a fiery musical call-and-response that serves as a centrepiece, giving the music what Jacob refers to as a “lyrical aspect” between the guitars, drums, and bass.
They transferred this multi-headed energy into their 2015 Independent EP, Show Me Your Seven Secrets. At the same time, this distinct alchemy enchanted ever-growing audiences live. By the time, they entered the studio for Human Ceremony, Sunflower Bean had a lively aural cauldron from which to draw.
They took the summer of 2015 off and retreated to Jacob’s basement to write together. Taking the ideas out of the basement, they hit a Brooklyn studio with producer Matt Molnar [Friends] and tracked eleven tunes in just seven days. Whereas the EP was recorded after Sunflower Bean played 100 shows in one year, Human Ceremony showed the band’s studio side with richer soundscapes, overdubs, and music that had yet to be debuted live.
On the lead track “Easier Said,” Julia’s delicate vocals glide over a lilting clean guitar that spirals off into a vibrant hum.
Sunflower Bean’s spell is cast on Human Ceremony.
“When you’re in a band, you always dream about the first record,” Julia concludes. “It’s that moment where you explore everything that’s been inspiring you.”
TRACK LISTING
1. Human Ceremony
2. Come On
3. 2013
4. Easier Said
5. This Kinda Feeling
6. I Was Home
7. Creation Myth
8. Wall Watcher
9. I Want You To Give Me Enough Time
10. Oh, I Just Don't Know
11. Space Exploration Disaster
Katie Monks and Liz Ball started Dilly Dally in 2010 while living in a cockroach-infested apartment near Toronto’s Kensington Market. The two shared a love for dreamy guitars, weed and karaoke. Turning to good friends Corey Marshall (drums) and Michael Guiliani (bass), the four piece spent the next three years playing any bar or basement with a PA, building a solid fan-base in Toronto and sharing the stage with notable bands such as Born Ruffians and Tokyo Police Club.
By 2014 the band had recorded their first full length record with producers Leon Taheny (Owen Pallett, Austra, Dusted) and Josh Korody (Fucked Up, Beliefs, Greys) at Candle Studios in Toronto, capturing a collection of songs that had been written over the course of three years. The track ‘Next Gold’ was released independently as a single: “Katie Monks sings the way drunk people do at weddings - loudly, messily, and with absolute conviction. You can make out about five words total on ‘Next Gold’, the first track from Dilly Dally’s forthcoming debut, but the Toronto four-piece’s Pixies-style grunge pop is no less riveting for being incomprehensible.” - Pitchfork, May 2014
By 2014 the band had recorded their first full length record with producers Leon Taheny (Owen Pallett, Austra, Dusted) and Josh Korody (Fucked Up, Beliefs, Greys) at Candle Studios in Toronto, capturing a collection of songs that had been written over the course of three years. The track ‘Next Gold’ was released independently as a single: “Katie Monks sings the way drunk people do at weddings - loudly, messily, and with absolute conviction. You can make out about five words total on ‘Next Gold’, the first track from Dilly Dally’s forthcoming debut, but the Toronto four-piece’s Pixies-style grunge pop is no less riveting for being incomprehensible.” - Pitchfork, May 2014
TRACK LISTING
Candy Mountain
Green
Fat Possum are excited to announce the European release date of Jackson Scott’s debut album, ‘Melbourne’. The album is a refined bedroom pop record which pitches Jackson somewhere amidst the otherworldly stargazing of Sparklehorse and the determined singularity of Neutral Milk Hotel and Mellow Gold-era Beck.
Jackson Scott has developed out of a weird audacity; bending spoons with apocalyptic melodies, sugared with solipsistic textures. How did the world conceive this young cosmonaut? A college dropout with a 4-track and a one-track mind. A listener and a conceiver. His voice, whether pitched up or androgynous, speaks of a still life. But painting is meaningless, songs irrelevant, aura outdated if you are a revivalist. Jackson is not.
The upcoming debut ‘Melbourne’ - conspired it out of isolation, deprivation and hunger - shows we’re all alone together, sharing the same tragedies, ecstasies and phenomenon.
Jackson Scott has developed out of a weird audacity; bending spoons with apocalyptic melodies, sugared with solipsistic textures. How did the world conceive this young cosmonaut? A college dropout with a 4-track and a one-track mind. A listener and a conceiver. His voice, whether pitched up or androgynous, speaks of a still life. But painting is meaningless, songs irrelevant, aura outdated if you are a revivalist. Jackson is not.
The upcoming debut ‘Melbourne’ - conspired it out of isolation, deprivation and hunger - shows we’re all alone together, sharing the same tragedies, ecstasies and phenomenon.
TRACK LISTING
Only Eternal
Evie
Never Ever
Sandy
That Awful Sound
Tomorrow
Wish Upon
Any Way
Together Forever
In The Sun
Doctor Mad
Sweet Nothing
A.A. Bondy's second album originally released in 2009.
Recorded primarily in Water Valley, MS in April and May of 2009, 'When the Devil's Loose' expands upon the stripped-down sound of A.A. Bondy's debut album, 'American Hearts'. A full band now accompanies him on most tracks, lending a full, roomy sound to ten songs of bluesy Americana carried along by Bond's lived-in voice. 'When the Devil's Loose' sounds almost from another era, whether it's a quiet, spooky twang, lullaby-like, inflected with old-time R&B, or coloured with traces of '60s pop.
Recorded primarily in Water Valley, MS in April and May of 2009, 'When the Devil's Loose' expands upon the stripped-down sound of A.A. Bondy's debut album, 'American Hearts'. A full band now accompanies him on most tracks, lending a full, roomy sound to ten songs of bluesy Americana carried along by Bond's lived-in voice. 'When the Devil's Loose' sounds almost from another era, whether it's a quiet, spooky twang, lullaby-like, inflected with old-time R&B, or coloured with traces of '60s pop.
For those not au fait with wrestling vernacular, the Swanton Bomb is a manoeuvre, popularized by the three-time world champion Jeff Hardy, that involves leaping off a top rope, flipping your body over and landing back-first upon your opponent. So what does it have to do with Swanton Bombs, the band? “Absolutely nothing,” concedes singer and guitarist Dominic McGuinness. “We just thought it was pretty cool.”
Their sound is a visceral, unvarnished blend of blues and punk, underpinned by rich narratives and resolute melodies, and informed by McGuinness and drummer Brendan Heaney’s admiration for The Clash, Television, The Ramones and Richard Hell along with the moody, blues-rock stylings of Randy Newman, Tom Waits and Nick Cave.
This limited edition two tracker on Fat Possum features "Wasteland", "Swanton Bombs Who's Asking".
Their sound is a visceral, unvarnished blend of blues and punk, underpinned by rich narratives and resolute melodies, and informed by McGuinness and drummer Brendan Heaney’s admiration for The Clash, Television, The Ramones and Richard Hell along with the moody, blues-rock stylings of Randy Newman, Tom Waits and Nick Cave.
This limited edition two tracker on Fat Possum features "Wasteland", "Swanton Bombs Who's Asking".
STAFF COMMENTS
Laura says: Two more great slices of blues punk rock from this two piece. Limited edition on Fat Possum.
Can’t wait! 🙌 Hit the link for all the info👇
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Sun 26th - 11:32
Sun 26th - 11:32
Looking great John 👌Thanks for ordering and sharing 🙏
https://t.co/rHCupRQrAG)
@DeadOceans @whereisMUNA https://t.co/B0pGopRUjc
Fri 24th - 12:45
Fri 24th - 12:45
Yes, physical copies available July 1.
Get your pre-orders in here 👇
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@TheVintageCrop https://t.co/lvQfXTbhYH
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