Back in 2005, Seattle quintet Minus the Bear were riding the wave of a swift upward trajectory with their blend of ‘90s mathrock fretboard savvy, early ‘00s electro-indie textural depth, and the wistful melodicism of the more mature strain of Midwest emo. So it was an interesting time for the band to undergo a stylistic sea change. Looking beyond their fellow guitar slingers, Minus the Bear instead found inspiration in the more adventurous pop producers of the era and went full steam ahead with a revamped sound of glitchy guitar loops, modern R&B rhythms, and swirling electronic tapestries on their 2005 sophomore album 'Menos el Oso'. The stylistic shift was a gamble in the waning years of indie rock orthodoxy, but the risk paid off and Minus the Bear’s popularity exploded. Twenty years later, 'Menos el Oso' still sounds fresh and vibrant while simultaneously capturing the essence of a specific era where the rules and formulas of guitar-forward music were breaking down. To celebrate the album’s anniversary, Suicide Squeeze Records and Minus the Bear are offering up 'Menos el Oso - 20th Anniversary Edition'.

'Menos el Oso - 20th Anniversary Edition' expands the original LP into a double album featuring five demos mastered by Ed Brooks at Resonant Mastering on side C and an etching by Cory Murchy on side D. These early incarnations of four 'Menos el Oso' tracks and 'I’m Totally Not Down With Rob’s Alien' from the 'They Make Beer Commercials Like This' EP showcase how razor-sharp and sonically satisfying Minus the Bear were even when their songs were still being workshopped. As companion pieces to the album, these alternate takes shine a light on the creative process of a band undergoing a sonic evolution while also just being solid standalone tracks.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Game Needed Me
2. Memphis & 53rd
3. Drilling
4. The Fix
5. El Torrente
6. Pachuca Sunrise
7. Michio's Death Drive
8. Hooray
9. Fulfill The Dream
10. The Pig War
11. This Ain't A Surfin' Movie
12. Hooray (Demo)
13. Drilling (Demo)
14. The Pig War (Demo)
15. Michio's Death Drive (Demo)
16. I'm Totally Not Down With Rob's Alien (Demo)

Chastity Belt's version of "Loaded Painted Red" doesn't just cover 764-Hero's original. It dissolves into it, rebuilding it with a gauzy, wide-open clarity. It's a song that's always carried a certain weight: bruised and echoing with late '90s Pacific Northwest melancholy. In their first-ever recorded cover, Chastity Belt traces that ache into new territory, drawing it out like bated breath.

Lydia Lund threads a new guitar line through the song, tugging it towards their distinct style like a slow orbit around the song's core feeling. "I've been a fan of 764-Hero for a while now, and 'Loaded Painted Red' is one of my faves!" says Julia Shapiro. "It was hard to do the song justice because the original is so perfect, but we also had fun reimagining it and making it our own."

Initially released in 1998 on 764-Hero's Get Here and Stay (Up Records), "Loaded Painted Red" has long been a fan-favorite, a softly jagged and charged meditation. The new split 7" pairs the cover with the original, a full-circle release that marks 764-Hero's catalog joining the Suicide Squeeze family. Together, the two versions collapse decades into a single foggy breath riding out the dusky golden-hour light of the Pacific Northwest.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chastity Belt “Loaded Painted Red” (764-Hero Cover)
2. 764-Hero “Loaded Painted Red” (original)

In 2005, Headphones arrived as a seismic shift in David Bazan’s already formidable canon—a collection of synth-driven confessions that push the boundaries of narrative songwriting. Stripped down to its barest essentials, the album finds Bazan and collaborators Tim Walsh and Frank Lenz constructing an audaciously raw soundscape: no guitars, just synthesizers, live drums, and Bazan’s unmistakable vocals. Twenty years later, it remains a masterwork of emotional excavation and geopolitical reckoning, as relevant today as the day it was released.

This 20th Anniversary edition, remastered by Christopher Colbert at National Freedom (The Walkmen, Richard Swift, Pedro the Lion), is housed in a gatefold jacket with expanded artwork by Grammy-nominated designer Jesse LeDoux, plus liner notes by writer and Belmont University Associate Professor David Dark. The self-titled album threads a delicate needle, simultaneously personal and prophetic. Songs like 'Major Cities' tackle the macrocosm of American imperialism with clarity and anger, while tracks like 'I Never Wanted You' unearth the raw wounds of interpersonal defeat. These are stories of inner and outer collapse, of bullies (both personal and political) wreaking havoc, yet rendered with humanity.

Even in its darkest moments, though, Headphones pulses with the hope that honesty might light a way forward—if only we'll bear witness to the truth. On its twentieth anniversary, Headphones feels more vital than ever. For those who've lived with it since 2005, this reissue is a chance to revisit an old wound, to press on it and see what's healed and what still aches. For new listeners, it’s a chance to sit with something audacious and true—an album that invites us to reckon with the ways we fail each other—and the ways we might still be good. Twenty years on, Headphones remains a rare album that doesn’t just speak to you, but asks you to listen harder.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gas And Matches
2. Shit Talker
3. Hot Girls
4. I Never Wanted You
5. Major Cities
6. Natural Disaster
7. Hello Operator
8. Pink And Brown
9. Wise Blood
10. Slow Car Crash
11. The Five Chord (Bonus Track)
12. Gas And Matches (Acoustic) (Bonus Track)

In the winter of 2022, Holy Wave had a week off after a short tour that ended with a show in Los Angeles. The band found particular glee in playing those shows at that time, as they weren't sure they'd ever be doing that again just a few months prior—this batch of songs results from hanging out with some very good friends at Studio 22.

"The band have fashioned themselves into mainstays in the world of gauzy psychedelia, infusing dream pop soundscapes with colourful instrumentation, lush melodies, and weighty pathos." - Under the Radar Magazine.

"…narcotic neo-psych with synthed-out bedroom-pop undertones." - Shindig Magazine. "…lush-yet-tempered instrumentation that's undeniably pleasant, if not downright attractive." - Flood Magazine.

"The sound of Austin's Holy Wave has been getting progressively dreamier with each successive release, their music lush and immaculately arranged." - Post-Trash.

"Wonderful aural tones, meandering genteelly." - Narc Magazine.

TRACK LISTING

1. Chaparral
2. Time Crisis Too
3. Cowprint
4. Father’s Prayer
5. Bog Song
6. Away Here
7. String Performer

Perhaps the biggest challenge for any musician is to learn to grow as an artist and expand one’s repertoire while retaining a coherent overarching vision to one’s work. Since their inception and across the span of three full-length albums, Blackwater Holylight have consistently conjured an aura of both power and vulnerability, as if the members of the band have found both the space and the vehicle for lowering their emotional defenses by fortifying their position with pure sonic strength. Yet that persistently haunting and enchanting quality has manifested in a variety of approaches. Equally adept at devil’s note doom riffs, narcotic neo-folk melodies, lysergic psychedelic forays, and jagged art-rock abrasion, Blackwater Holylight have used their limited arsenal of guitar, bass, drums, synth, and voice to cover a broad swath of aural terrain. On their newest EP, 'If You Only Knew', Blackwater Holylight continue to follow a path marked only as further, mining new tactics and timbres across four songs while continuing to address the uncertainties that come with transference and transition.

'If You Only Knew' opens with 'Wandering Lost', a track singer/guitarist/bassist Sunny Faris describes as being about “feeling community in sorrow and remembering that everyone hurts, everyone changes, and that no one knows what’s next.” Fueled by the interwoven melodies of Sarah McKenna’s mournful electric piano and Sunny’s lilting vocals, then driven into high gear with Mikayla Mayhew’s amplifier-worshipping guitars and Eliese Dorsay’s earth-shaking drums in the chorus, the song thrives on the contrast between sublime beauty and seismic menace, underscoring the song’s dichotomous theme of acknowledging pain and harnessing the power of shared experience in life’s trials and tribulations.

From there, the EP segues into 'Torn Reckless', a song that combines the wall-of-sound distortion of shoegaze with dream-pop vocals and prog-rock synth flourishes. Once again, the song’s lyrical themes center around vulnerability, with Faris describing the song as being about a private relationship quandary veiled in the broader universal experience of “standing in the doorway of something that feels so hugely mysterious and bigger than you… and I think we've all been there in that doorway, and I think we've all felt the doubt.”

Side B finds Blackwater Holylight continuing to explore new opportunities. While Side A was recorded and produced by Sonny DiPerri, the flipside was captured in the studio by Dave Schiffman. 'Fate Is Forward' is a song about stasis and realizing that some things are fixed in place and the only way to move beyond an obstacle is to stop leaning on it. Much like the other songs on If You Only Knew, the lyrics are rooted in specific incidents in the lives of the band members but eschew diaristic impulses in favor of highlighting the communal similarities in the spectrum of personal struggles. Never content to rest on their laurels, the band tackles the loud-quiet-loud dynamics and roaring power-chord choruses of early ‘90s alt-rock while maintaining their signature ability to render mesmeric vocal melodies out of a foundation of ominous and oppositional instrumentation. The EP closes with an absorbing cover of Radiohead’s 'All I Need', taking the original’s almost claustrophobic closeness and opening it up into a grandiose swirl of undulating drones and desperation.

Ultimately, 'If You Only Knew' is a brave step into the unknown that mirrors the uncertainty of the band member’s personal lives. Where Blackwater Holylight could’ve easily continued to tread on familiar ground, they’ve opted to make bold and brave steps, all while retaining the evocative power that put them on the map.

TRACK LISTING

1. Wandering Lost
2. Torn Reckless
3. Fate Is Forward
4. All I Need

L.A. Witch have always exuded an aura of effortless cool, whether it manifested as the Americana noir and laconic back-to-basics rock n’ roll of their self-titled debut or the blistering austere adventurism of their sophomore album Play With Fire. The band—comprised of Sade Sanchez (guitar/vocals), Irita Pai (bass), and Ellie English (drums)—began as an informal affair, but the sultry and beguiling reverb-draped songs they created caught on with the public, moving the project beyond the insular space of the band’s friends and peers in Southern California into the broader world.

On their latest album, 'DOGGOD', the trio push their craft beyond their previous creative and geographical confines, opting to craft the material in Paris, recording the tracks at Motorbass Studio on the Rue de Martyrs. 'DOGGOD' explores broader swaths of sonic terrain, employs a greater arsenal of tones, and probes larger existential and cosmic themes, all while retaining the band’s signature sense of the forbidden, the forsaken, and the foreboding. 'DOGGOD' is a way of tackling the universal riddle tangled in the spiritual nature of love and devotion. “I feel like I’m some sort of servant or slave to love,” says Sanchez. “There’s a willingness to die for love in the process of serving it or suffering for it or in search of it... just in the way a loyal, devoted servant dog would.” The album title is a palindrome fusing together DOG and GOD—an exaltation of the submissive and a subversion of the divine. It’s a nod to the purity of dogs and an acknowledgement of their unconditional love and protective nature that’s at odds with the various pejoratives associated with the species. “There is this symbolic connection between women and dogs that expresses women’s subordinate position in society,” Sanchez explains. “And anything that embodies such divine characteristics never deserved to be a word used as an insult.”

These conflicted explorations of love and subservience manifest themselves in L.A. Witch’s fusion of their trademark smooth and smoky garage alchemy with a newfound utilization of post-punk’s disciplined reserve and icy instrumentation. Album opener 'Icicle' captures the band journeying out of the proto-punk, psychedelia, and gritty riffage of the ‘70s into the chorus-drenched guitars and forlorn minimalism of Joy Division and early The Cure. A parallel is drawn between romantic suicide and martyrdom that carries over into the second song, 'Kiss Me Deep'. Here Sanchez describes a love so pure that it transcends time and carries over into multiple lifetimes. It’s a song about passion delivered in the worldly and wounded stoicism of early goth pioneers. From there, the band segues into the lead single '777', a song about devotion to the point of death. A propulsive beat, a driving distorted riff, and Sanchez’s ethereal vocals come together to create a song that’s both dire in its fatalism and sensual in its faithful passion.

Across the entirety of 'DOGGOD', L.A. Witch never strays from their muse. On 'I Hunt You Pray', Pai lays down a hypnotic bass throb while English employs a cyclical krautrock groove and Sanchez paints a picture of an abandoned dog on the roadside, alone in the night, living as both the hunter and the hunted. On 'Eyes of Love', the band harnesses the meditative mid-tempo repetition, deconstructed chords, and esoteric ruminations on love, death, and spirituality that made Lungfish such a beloved entity. It reinforces the parallel between the unwavering love seen in the eyes of a dog and the self-sacrifice of a savior. On 'The Lines', the band takes the propulsive pulse of post-punk and adds an extra dose of chorus to the mix. “Chorus is a modern effect that comes from the idea of replicating the slight pitch discrepancies of a choir. There is a shimmering quality which ties us back into this spiritual godly feel,” Sanchez explains. Coupled with the addition of organ and applied to a brooding minor-key melody, the song simultaneously conjures both the holy and the sacrilegious. The title track 'DOGGOD' bears perhaps the strongest resemblance to the material found on the previous album Play With Fire, pitting lean and mean guitars against a scrappy rhythm section and dreamy vocals. But whereas their previous album was a rallying cry to carving one’s own path, 'DOGGOD' adheres to the album’s “til death do us part” theme, going so far as to describe a level of submission that crosses over into dangerous and unhealthy places, with Sanchez singing “hang me on a leash / ‘til I wait for my release.”

Ultimately, 'DOGGOD' is a perfect encapsulation of L.A. Witch’s approach. It’s simultaneously romantic and menacing, reverent and profane, a celebration and a lament. It finds the thread between the past and present, taking familiar sounds and revamping them for the modern age. But it also heralds a new era for the band, looking beyond the Kodachrome memories of midcentury America and digging deeper into the medieval and gothic energies of Paris and beyond, all while probing inward at a sullied heart.

TRACK LISTING

1. Icicle
2. Kiss Me Deep
3. 777
4. I Hunt You Pray
5. Eyes Of Love
6. The Lines
7. Lost At The Sea
8. DOGGOD
9. SOS

In their decade-plus together, the four-piece Julia Shapiro (guitar, vocals), Lydia Lund (guitar, vocals), Gretchen Grimm (drums, vocals), and Annie Truscott (bass, vocals)—have created a resonant body of work. Live Laugh Love is a natural continuation. Against the bizarre backdrop of the past few years, Chastity Belt remained a supportive space for the members to grow and experiment, drawing on the ingredients most essential to their process since the beginning: authenticity and levity. Recorded over three sessions in as many years (January 2020, November 2021 and 2022), the focus became more about enjoying their time together in the studio than making it feel like work. Their ease and familiarity with engineer Samur Khouja in LA, who also recorded their last album, made for a particularly enjoyable process. Once completed, they returned to renowned engineer Heba Kadry who mastered the album.

Album opener “Hollow” sets the tone with a gently driving rhythm while guitar layers stream like sun rays through an open car window. A warmth radiates through Shapiro’s voice, even while grappling with feeling lost and stuck. “The older I get,” Shapiro says of the lyrics, “the more I realize that I might just always feel this way, and it’s more about sitting with the feeling and accepting it, rather than trying to fight it.” That wisdom seems to anchor Live Laugh Love. Chastity Belt has never shied from navigating the spectrum of difficult emotions, and an existential thread weaves throughout the subject matter. And yet the songs feel more grounded than ever; there’s a sense of quiet confidence and self-assurance that comes with being less numb and more present. Facing discomfort takes more fortitude, after all.

Live Laugh Love finds the members in their prime as musicians. Their parts trace intricate patterns over one another, but there’s room to breathe between the layers. Everyone contributes to the writing, sometimes switching instruments, and for the first time, all four members sing a song. It’s never been more apparent that they are creative siblings, cut from the same belt. “We’ve been playing music with each other for over a decade,” says Shapiro, “so it really does feel like we’re all fluent in the same language, and a lot of it just happens naturally.”

“Laugh” seeks in the balm of friendship, aware of the anticipatory nostalgia that hits during a good time that you’re already missing before it’s gone; the heavier guitar tones on “Chemtrails” streak ominous chord progressions over Grimm’s precision timekeeping, lamenting memories that won’t fade easily. During a transitional time, Truscott came across a note in their phone that read, “it's not hard all day, just sometimes,” which inspired a poignant line in the chorus of “Kool-Aid,” their first song as lead vocalist on a Chastity Belt recording. Another standout, “I-90 Bridge” shines with a silvery melody that soars as Lund belts one of the most resounding moments on the album: “Tell your girlfriend she’s got nothing to fear/I’m set in my head/My body’s a different story.” The track “Blue” saunters nonchalantly with a wink; you can almost hear Shapiro’s smile as she sings “Faking it big time/So I can hit my stride/Man, it feels good to be alive,” channeling early Chastity Belt channeling early ’90s before channeling the late Elliott Smith in a spiral of distortion and insight: “Don’t get upset about it/It’s gonna pass/Tell all your friends about it/They’re gonna laugh.” “We have such a strong sense of each other’s musical inclinations” says Lund. “I think this allows for a lot of playfulness…we can kinda surprise each other, like a good punchline would.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Jangling indie guitars float beautifully around airy vocal melodies, crafting a beautifully honed noise that lands somewhere between shoegaze, folk and art-rock. Brilliantly inventive throughout, but never shy a melody or two. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Hollow
Funny
Clumsy
It’s Cool
Kool-Aid
Chemtrails
Blue
Tethered
1-90 Bridge
Laugh
Like That

Five of Cups opens with the title track, establishing the album’s auditory and thematic modus operandi from the get-go. Holy Wave’s lysergic textural palette is immediately apparent in the song’s woozy synth lead and anti-gravity guitar jangle, but the atypical chord progressions and vocal melody steers the music away from anodyne escapism into a pensive grappling between self-determination and defeatism. Holy Wave continue to ride the wistful and phantasmic train on “Bog Song,” where the members vacillate between swells of austere minor chords and layered electric orchestration. From there, the previously released digital single “Chaparral” plays with the band’s own sense of nostalgia, weaving references of their El Paso past into a tapestry of transcendental triumph.

Like so much classic album-oriented rock music, the real magic begins to unfold in the latter half of Five of Cups. On “The Darkest Timeline,” Holy Wave recruits their friends Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez from the Baja California, Mexico psych duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete to add additional ethereal layers to their intoxicating after-mid[1]night grooves. “Nothing in the Dark” functions on a similar principle, using a steady propulsive drum pattern as the bedrock to tape-warbled synths, arpeggiated guitar chords, jet streams of fuzz, and serene vocals. Five of Cups’ ruminations on combating defeat and disappointment are directly confronted on album closer “Happier.” Once again straddling the melodic line between melancholy and breezy sophistication, Holy Wave examines the synthetic construct of happiness in our modern age and how so often the attainment of comfort lacks any true sense of joy. Yet this isn’t some nihilistic dirge. Rather, it translates as a buoyant reminder that the bandwidth of human experience inherently requires peaks and valleys, and that euphoria is often found in the search outside of the familiar.

STAFF COMMENTS

Liam says: New one from Holy Wave, 'Five Of Cups' is here to scratch that insatiable indie-psych itch with plenty of woozy synths and trippy guitar passages - top draw!

TRACK LISTING

1. Five Of Cups
2. Bog Song
3. Chaparral
4. Path Of Least Resistance
5. Nothing Is Real
6. Hypervigilance
7. The Darkest Timeline
8. Nothing In The Dark
9. Happier

Debut Solo Album From Julia Kugel (The Coathangers).

If you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?

This is the crucial question at the core of Julia, Julia, the moniker for Julia Kugel, founding member of garage punk icons The Coathangers and the dream pop duo Soft Palms. On her first solo full-length album Derealization, Kugel shifts her focus from collaboration and band dynamics towards a singular artistic vision and private self-discovery. Steeped in the beguiling pop elements of her past work, Derealization is a meditative deep dive into the mind of a person struggling to understand a crumbling internal and external world. The album traverses a landscape of ethereal folk, atmospheric deconstructed pop, and dubbed-out country ballads, all centered around straight forward and direct lyrics. This juxtaposition of nebulousness and lucidity gives the album a sense of clarity emerging from the haze, an apt refection of Kugel's personal growth and journey toward self-acceptance.

Derealization is based on weaving the unreal, unsaid, and unknown into an undulating sonic fabric. Vocal layering and abstract instrumentation convey a blurred desperation to connect to an emotional and psychological focal point. Moody, dark, and sumptuous, the record is a flow chart of Julia Kugel coming into herself as an artist and songwriter. The album finds Julia playing almost all the instruments and taking her first stab at engineering at COMA, her and her husband's home recording studio in Long Beach, CA.

“You know how touring musicians often speak of whether home is real or tour is real? Well, it can lead you to lose grasp on ‘reality,’ especially when touring is taken away and you are left to wonder if anything was ever real, including yourself. Like you we're just playing a character,” Kugel says of her headspace leading up to the creation of Derealization. “Honestly, I kinda lost it, and through making this record I made peace with it and reconciled myself as a real person. I forgave myself and in turn forgave those around me. The song ‘Forgive Me’ is the apology I wanted to say and to hear. I wrote every song from that place and gained the confidence I was pretending to possess.”

This raw and personal approach to the lyrics is present throughout Derealization. On the opening track "I Want You," Kugel creates a woozy sense of space with reverb-soaked drums and spaghetti western guitars while she lists off her desires for a mysterious “you.” Is she actually listing off her desires for herself? For the people around her? As she repeats "do you feel it?" in the song’s chorus, it feels as if she’s conjuring a magical thread by which we are all connected, showing us how our desires are all the same. On "Fever In My Heart" the listener is treated to a lush, acoustic techno track detailing the exhilarating madness of an emotional breakdown. Simple truths percolate to the surface on "Words Don't Mean Much,” as if clearing away the murk of platitudes and empty gestures. The journey continues on the detached and conflicted "Do It Or Don't,” an alluring walk through the winding road of lonely choices.

The name for the project Julia, Julia is a look in the mirror, a refection of what is hidden and unanswered, of what is real and what is transient. The experience of living life not as you planned it but as it unfolded, and the mysterious, magical pain that creates meaning.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Want You
2. Forgive Me
3. Impromptu
4. Fever In My Heart
5. Words Don’t Mean Much
6. Do It Or Don't
7. No Hard Feelings
8. Big Talkin'
9. Paper Cutout
10. Where Did You Go
11. Corner Town

Suck My Shirt is the fourth studio album by the Atlanta-based all-female punk rock band The Coathangers. It was released in 2014. Mark Deming of AllMusic writes, 'their approach to songcraft has matured and tightened up quite a bit, and the departure of keyboard player Candice Jones has turned this group into a leaner and meaner three piece. "It's a balance between overthinking and just going for it," guitarist Crook Kid (Julia Kugel) says of their songwriting strategy. It's a duality immediately apparent with the album opener "Follow Me." It's a classic Coathangers tune with Stephanie Luke's raspy vocals belted out over their signature ragged garage-rock. . But the chorus opens into one of the most accessible hooks in the band's canon, just before segueing into the next verse with a squall of violent dissonant guitar.

TRACK LISTING

1. Follow Me
2 Shut Up
3. Springfield Cannonball
4. Merry Go Round
5. Love Em And Leave Em
6. Zombie
7. Smother
8. Dead Battery
9. Adderall
10. Derek's Song
11. I Wait
12. Drive

Over the course of their seven-year run back in the ‘00s, These Arms Are Snakes covered a lot of territory, both in terms of actual miles spent on the road and in terms of their creative bandwidth. Though the band was often mistaken for a typical non sequitur-named screamo out­t or another “animal” indie band, the Seattle group quickly de­ed expectations and garnered a reputation for subverting the popular underground sounds of time. The group cultivated a small but fervent fanbase across multiple continents with their signature combination of synth-infused noise rock, bad-trip psychedelia, ‑amboyant proto-metal boogie, and unhinged basement-show hardcore before imploding at the end of 2009.

And while These Arms Are Snakes’ full-length albums remain ­tting testaments to the band’s frantic urgency and stylistic ‑uidity, there is a treasure trove of deep cuts buried on b-sides and split releases that further reinforce their position as one of the weirdest and wildest acts of the decade. For the fi­rst time, those rarities and one-offs have been compiled into a cohesive overview of These Arms Are Snakes’ lifespan on the double LP Duct Tape & Shivering Crows.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The inimitable TAAS return for a final outing of lesser-publicised extras and b-sides. With every bit of the grinding groove of their earlier full-length LP's, this collection shows what an incendiary and unique musical force they were, and shows off some of the tragically overlooked gems from their oeuvre.

TRACK LISTING

1. Meet Your Mayor
2. Camera Shy
3. Trix
4. Energy Drink And The Long Walk Home
5. Heart Shaped Box
6. Washburn
7. Old Paradise
8. Payday Loans
9. Hook On This
10. Riding The Grape Dragon
11. Run It Through The Dog
12. Diggers Of Ditches Everywhere
13. The Blue Rose

The album opens with “Hypnagogia,” an ode to the space between sleep and wakefulness where we are open to other realms of consciousness. The song slowly builds along a steady pulse provided by bassist Pickle (Nicole Smith) and drummer Rikki Styxx. Tripped out saxophone bleats from guest player Gabe Flores swirl on top of the organ drones laid out by guest keyboardist Gregg Foreman. The band’s choral objectives for Under the Spell of Joy are established right off the bat, with Bonnie Bloomgarden’s melodic invocations bolstered by a choir, giving the album a rich and vibrant wall-of-sound aesthetic. The song ominously builds on its hypnotic foundation until it opens up into a raucous revelry at the four-minute mark.

The portentous simmer of the opening track yields to the ecstatic rocker “Hold My Hand,” where verses reminiscent of Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting For The Man” explode into big triumphant choruses. From there the band launches into the title track, which marries the griminess of The Stooges with an innocence provided by a children’s choir chanting the album’s primary mantra “under the spell of joy / under the spell of love.”

Death Valley Girls have always vacillated between lightness and darkness, and on “Bliss Out” they demonstrate their current exuberant focus with a patina-hued pop song driven by an irrepressibly buoyant organ line laid down by keyboardist The Kid (Laura Kelsey). A similar cosmic euphoria is obtained on “The Universe,” where alternating chords on the organ help elevate soaring saxophone and keyboard lines out beyond the stratosphere. If you’re looking for transcendental rock music, look no further.

“Death Valley Girls are a gift to the world.” Iggy Pop.

“If Charlie Spahn Ranch girls had formed a band that was part-Stooges, part-Bikini Kill, all groove, then they’d have sounded like this.” Classic Rock Magazine.

“A striking record, all brazen fury and bratty beats, something resembling hard rock before Sabbath” Noisey.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A ruthless, but melodic jaunt through snarling punk riffs, snapping percussion and fists-in-the-air groove from Death Valley Girls here. Expertly toeing the line between distorted drive and more thoughtful, slow numbers. Utterly essential, and a superb early morning blast.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hypnagogia
2. Hold My Hand
3. Under The Spell Of Joy
4. Bliss Out
5. Hey Dena
6. The Universe
7. It All Washes Away
8. Little Things
9. 10 Day Miracle Challenge
10. I’d Rather Be Dreaming
11. Dream Cleaver

Where L.A. Witch's self-titled album oozed with vibe and atmosphere, with the whole mix draped in reverb, sonically placing the band in some distant realm, broadcast across some unknown chasm of time, Play With Fire comes crashing out of the gate with a bold, brash, in-your-face rocker “Fire Starter.” The authoritative opener is a deliberate mission statement.

“Play With Fire is a suggestion to make things happen,” says Sanchez. “Don’t fear mistakes or the future. Take a chance. Say and do what you really feel, even if nobody agrees with your ideas. These are feelings that have stopped me in the past. I want to inspire others to be freethinkers even if it causes a little burn.” And by that line of reasoning, “Fire Starter” becomes a call to action, an anthem against apathy. From there, the album segues into the similarly bodacious rocker “Motorcycle Boy” a feisty love song inspired by classic cinema outlaws like Mickey Rourke, Marlon Brando, and Steve McQueen. At track three, we hear L.A. Witch expand into new territories as “Dark Horse” unfurls a mixture of dustbowl folk, psychedelic breakdowns, and fire-and-brimstone organ lines. And from there, the band only gets more adventurous.

Play With Fire is a bold new journey that retains L.A. Witch’s siren-song mystique, nostalgic spirit, and contemporary cool. Despite the stylistic breadth of the record, there is a unifying timbre across the album’s nine tracks, as if the trio of young musicians is bound together as a collective of old souls tapping into the sounds of their previous youth.

TRACK LISTING

1. Fire Starter
2. Motorcycle Boy
3. Dark Horse
4. I Wanna Lose
5. Gen-Z
6. Sexorexia
7. Maybe The Weather
8. True Believers
9. Starred

“Mega model Staz Lindes’ buzzy four-piece is creating the L.A. DIY scene’s most richly layered punk sounds of the moment.” - i-D // “Their take no-prisoners fury and snarky sing-song choruses have quickly made them local favorites in the DIY and indie scene.” – Noisey // Los Angeles punk quartet The Paranoyds channel revelry and revulsion into their debut album Carnage Bargain - a raucous blend of garage rock grit, new wave swagger, horror film soundtrack campiness, and a myriad of other influences. The Paranoyds' beginnings can be traced back to a friendship forged between Staz Lindes and Laila Hashemi in their teens. With the additions of Lexi Funston and David Ruiz, the band found the personnel for their sonic balance of jubilant energy and foreboding undercurrents. Carnage Bargain captures this chemistry through guitar-and-keyboard, genre-mashing weirdness on "Laundry," the fever-dream kitsch of B-52s on "Ratboy," krautrock's motorik groove on "Hungry Sam", and Blondie on the sweet-and-salty highlight "Courtney." Title track "Carnage Bargain" is a perfect example of the band delivering scathing lyrical observations under the guise of a quirky pop hook. The notion of rejecting the status quo and creating your own destiny is evident on the lead single "Girlfriend Degree," which the band calls an ode to "being a badass woman who's taking time to make sure she's doing things for herself." The band may be paranoid, but they offer a solution to our modern ills through the act of being an inspiring, independent, and unflappable force. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Face First
2. Carnage Bargain
3. Girlfriend Degree
4. Egg Salad
5. Bear
6. Hungry Sam
7. Courtney
8. Laundry
9. Heather Doubtfire
10. Ratboy

With their new album Water, Los Angeles trio SadGirl taps into the romantic and nostalgic spirit of their native city while exuding a time-tested authenticity suggesting they’ve had a peek behind the curtain of the glitzy boulevards and relentless sunshine. It’s a collection of breezy pop songs captured with the timbre of old-time recording techniques. Songs like “Little Queenie” touch upon the yesteryear reverberations and longing of a Ken Boothe ballad. Similarly, a tormented love song like “Miss Me” transports the listener back to slow dances at a previous generation’s sock hop, only to be subverted by a chorus of “miss me with that bullshit.”

It’s as if guitarist/vocalist Misha Lindes, drummer David Ruiz, and bassist Dakota Peterson want to conjure an idealized past only to remind us of innocence lost. “If you want to learn about water, go to the desert.” It’s a piece of wisdom that made an impact on Lindes. “Here we are in Los Angeles, a desert, ping-ponging between drought and El Niño. This record is an attempt to share a small portion of my experience growing up and living here,” said Lindes. “It’s basically about the fluidity of water and its power and importance.” “L.A.’s SadGirl make slow and hazy pop perfect for your summer soundtrack” 

TRACK LISTING

1. The Ocean
2. Chlorine
3. Hazelnut Coffee
4. Miss Me
5. Breakfast For 2
6. Little Queenie
7. Mulholland
8. Strange Love
9. Avalon
10. Water

Guantanamo Baywatch’s new album ‘Desert Center’ opens with ‘Conquistador’, an instrumental track displaying enough fretboard savvy and fiery twang to make The Challengers proud. However, any notion that Guantanamo Baywatch are strictly adhering to one facet of rock ‘n’ roll’s classic era is dispelled by the soulful swagger and unabashed pop of ‘Neglect’.

It’s an inadvertent juxtaposition maintained through the entirety of ‘Desert Center’, with blazing instrumental nuggets like ‘The Scavenger’ alternating with the proto-grunge and golden oldies mash-up of a track like ‘Blame Myself’.

Like their 2015 album ‘Darling… It’s Too Late’, ‘Desert Center’ was primarily tracked in Atlanta at Living Room Recording with Justin McNeight and Ed Rawls, with Jason Powell doing the bulk of the guitar tracks on his own at Jungle Muscle Studios.

While Guantanamo Baywatch initially made a name for themselves with their early blown-out recordings, ‘Desert Center’ retains the raw aesthetics of a Hasil Adkins single but has the added heft and thump afforded by a modern studio. This balance is perhaps best captured on ‘Video’, where bassist Chevelle Wiseman drives the tune with a thick, throbbing riff while drummer Chris Scott ruthlessly pounds his kit with a crashing clarity guaranteed to please even the most snobby analogue audiophile.

TRACK LISTING

Conquistador
Neglect
The Scavenger
Mesa, AZ
Interlude #1
Witch Stomp
Blame Myself
Area 69
Video
Interlude #2
The Australian

‘Gift Of Life’, the first proper full length by VHS, follows in the footsteps of their previous EPs, with the band self-recording their amalgam of Lost Sounds’ trashy discontent, early Big Black’s trebly guitar stabs and ‘Only Theatre Of Pain’-era Christian Death’s black reverberations. These are brash and bitter territories to occupy but the band sees no other choice for their musical direction, citing the daily grind as the impetus behind their music.

The harsh reality of frontman Josh Hageman’s day-today existence working on the periphery of the medical field played a direct role in the overall theme of the album. Those fatalistic views and medical themes are on full display on ‘Wheelchair’, where a punk pulse underscores Hageman’s harrowing description of a life lived in chronic pain with drugs serving as the only escape.

The album continues on to ‘Hospital Room’, where wiry guitar leads and ominous chords provide the soundtrack to a scene of misery and tragedy within the sanitized walls of Western medicine.

Elsewhere, the themes of addiction and exposure take on more universal themes, such as on the culturegorging lament of ‘Binge Everything’ or the panopticon-paranoia of ‘Public Act’.

TRACK LISTING

Fully Realized
Wheelchair
Hospital Room
Public Act
Crooked Echo
Binge Everything
Art Decay
Constant Hiss

On ‘Visits’, Tammar pulls off a pretty incredible trick with each and every one of its post-punk anthems. They mine the classic sounds of paranoia, malaise and misanthropy (Joy Division, The Velvet Underground, The Fall and early 90s alt-rock) and fill it all with so much exuberance and joy of playing that each song becomes a triumph over anxiety and ennui.

TRACK LISTING

1. Heavy Tonight
2. Summer Fun
3. The Last Line
4. Deep Witness
5. Arrows Underwater
6. Yung Jun
7. Frost Meter

This Seattle band features John Atkins (764-Hero) and Joe Plummer (Black Heart Procession) and are recommended if you like Quasi, the Replacements, 764-Hero and the Blues Explosion. They reach to stretch the elastic of modern indie-pop music while adding an appreciative nod to the SST-era of punk rock when Husker Du and the Minutemen were kings. Aggressive where it needs to be, loose when it should be, the Magicians second self-titled album matures and furthers what was started on 2001's "Girls" and shows that the band's got plenty more to offer.