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WHARF CAT RECORDS

Bambara

Dreamviolence

    DREAMVIOLENCE is BAMBARA’s full-length follow-up to their acclaimed debut EP Dog Ear Days (2010). After playing countless deafening shows in their hometown of Athens, touring the US in sweaty house shows and sharing bills with Iceage, Grimes, Liturgy, A Place to Bury Strangers, and Parts and Labor, BAMBARA decided to leave their beloved Athens and move to a basement apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn for a change. Here they practiced, slept and recorded for the majority of 2012. Following the release of a Kate Bush cover and a 10 minute improv noise EP RINGS early in the year, BAMBARA began to work on DREAMVIOLENCE.

    With a minimal recording set-up and little sunlight, the band was able to completely capture the dark, grimy, noisy sound they are known for while maintaining the lush beauty that glues it all together. Reid’s voice croons and snarls the fragmented images of the city. Blaze and William’s driving rhythm section plows and swings through the dirge of vocal noise with furious power. BAMBARA doesn’t want you to get comfortable inDREAMVIOLENCE. They prefer to send you through vortexes of haunting noise before you reach the dreamy euphoria waiting in the wreckage.

    TRACK LISTING

    1. All The Same
    2. White Dresses
    3. Bird Calls
    4. Hawk Bones
    5. Young Mother
    6. Nail Polish
    7. Train Daze
    8. Bar
    9. Divine Teeth
    10. Z
    11. Breaker
    12. Blonde
    13. Disappear

    Bush Tetras

    They Live In My Head

      Bush Tetras have made punk music at the fringes for over four decades. Flashes of reggae, bursts of noise, guitars that rattle, shake and snake, born out of a gutter behind CBGBs. Over the years they have respawned time and time again, contorting their sound, tweaking the vision, remaining singular and indispensable.

      In the late 2010s the group—Pat Place, Cynthia Sley, and Dee Pop—reformed again, releasing an EP, Take the Fall, in 2018. It was their first offering of new music in over a decade. A few years later in, 2021, they released a career spanning box set called Rhythm and Paranoia. The New York Times called the box set an artifact that “proves for decades [that Bush Tetras] continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive directions.” Around the same time, the band began working on a full length record, writing sessions during the pandemic over Zoom.

      Right before the release of the box set, beloved drummer Dee Pop passed away. Determined to complete the record to honor his memory, the Tetras went into the studio to finish what they’d started, once the timing was right. They brought in a new drummer, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley, who also served as producer. Enter They Live in My Head. The band’s 3rd official LP (a misleading fact when viewed alongside a catalog as expansive as it is influential),They Live in My Head is a collection of songs that sometimes reflect on the past and sometimes reckon with our current reality.

      From “Ghosts of People,” on which Pat Place’s legendary guitar meanders through closed doors and portals, to the scorching “2020 Vision,” a matterof-fact call to arms to get on the streets and get something done, the album addresses new and old, in both abstract and specific terms. But whether they’re looking forward or backward, Bush Tetras have always been a political band, a band that calls out all kinds of bullshit. And, in that sense, They Live in My Head is absolutely no exception.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Bird On A Wire
      2. Tout Est Meilleur
      3. Things I Put Together
      4. 2020 Vision
      5. I Am Not A Member
      6. Walking Out The Door
      7. So Strange
      8. Ghosts Of People
      9. They Live In My Head
      10. Another Room
      11. The End

      GracieHorse

      L.A. Shit

        ‘L.A. Shit’ is the new LP from the punch-throwing, shit-kicking country outfit fronted by Fat Creeps bunder Gracie Jackson, featuring contributions from King Tuff, Emmett Kelley (Cairo Gang, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Ty Segall Band) and Bobbie Lovesong.

        Gracie Horse weaves stories into her songs. On ‘L.A. Shit’, her debut record with Wharf Cat, she takes us into the past half a decade of her life. We see her as a traveling nurse, living in big blue expanse of Wyoming, dancing with a man in a crisp white Stetson, eating chicken wings in a hazmat suit, commenting on how strange a place like Los Angeles can be, how loaded it is with wannabe cowboys and fast food restaurants. It’s a record of immaculate country music, the kind of stuff you’d put on blast in your truck as you drive down empty stretches of highway. It’s also a vulnerable record, full of lyrics about the intensity of being alive, all told with a sense of humour and self-awareness.

        While some of the songs on ‘L.A. Shit’ are over a decade old, Gracie started writing the record in earnest during the pandemic. She’s a nurse, injured her neck in the line of duty, and suddenly found herself out of work. She had a creative explosion, putting memories into words and melodies in her home studio that she shared with her husband. Particles of songs from years past became beautifully realized. Everything was clicking in the way that it should. She found herself able to express the sometimes inexpressible. She did what all good country music should do: she created a patchwork of experiences in a way that is both deeply earnest and absolutely charming.

        In addition to being Gracie’s own major artistic statement, ‘L.A. Shit’ is a community effort. To make it, she enlisted countless friends in the Los Angeles Area, many of whom are touring and session musicians who were stuck at home during the pandemic. “I’m grateful,” she says of the experience, “I’m proud that I get to show off my friends on this record.” Indeed, ‘L.A. Shit’ is that kind of big family affair. It’s as country as country can be. Funny, heartbreaking, brutal.

        TRACK LISTING

        Hollow Her
        By The Light Of His White Stetson
        What I'm Missing
        Northwind
        Bakup Slowly
        Run Ricky Run
        If You're Gonna Walk That Straight Line Son, It's Only Gonna Hurt
        Hollow Head (Reprise)
        Winds Of The New West

        Water From Your Eyes

        Structure

          Water From Your Eyes’ Rachel Brown and Nate Amos are no strangers to contradiction, with Pitchfork making note of their “confidence in splicing different genres and feels from acoustic twee to indie-electronica” in their review of 2019’s Somebody Else’s Songs. So, upon first listen, Structure – with its tendency to turn on a dime from the buzzsaw synths and string arrangements that sonically bookend tracks like “My Love’s,” to the subtle, almost Squarepusher-esque rhythms that round out electronic compositions like “”Quotations”” – may just seem like a further refinement of the duo’s idiosyncratic approach to making music. However, repeat listens will reveal that, even though the album zigs and zags in a manner consistent with WFYE’s prior releases, its line of best fit trends in a very clear direction away from the quaint affectations of their prior work and towards something more deliberate and half a shade darker.

          Even on ostensibly cheery tracks like album opener “When You’re Around,” which, with its saccharine melodicism sounds like it could be a lost song from The Apples in Stereo or one of their Elephant 6-era labelmates, there’s an underlying eeriness that’s not immediately apparent until the song is listened to in the context of the full album. Amos’ advice for navigating Structure’s sonic terrain is to “remember that this is weed music,” while his counterpart Brown offers that that the album is like “solving a puzzle with a ton of different answers.” Although these varied descriptions of how to approach listening to Structure may accurately reveal it to be another exercise in contradictions, the clear intent with which the pair approached creating the album can only be appreciated with repeat listens, and is likely what makes it, by far, their most compelling entry to date.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. When You’re Around
          2. My Love’s
          3. You’re The Embers
          4. Quotations
          5. Monday
          6. Track Five
          7. You’re The Watching Fly
          8. “Quotations”

          Holy Motors

          Horse

            The more hopeful ‘sunrise’ to 2018’s critically acclaimed Slow Sundown, Horse finds Tallinn, Estonia’s Holy Motors acknowledging the Americana and rockabilly strands of their musical DNA without sacrificing any of the otherworldly mystique that keeps them from neatly conforming to the shoegaze and dreampop labels often applied to their music. From the album’s opening moments, songs like “Country Church,” with its major key and classic rhythm and blues guitarline, and “Midnight Cowboy,” which sounds like a lost Buddy Holly 45 played at 33 rpm, make it clear that Horse — even if it may not accomplish the impossible task of demystifying this band of ex-Soviet cowboys — will at least show you that there’s more to them than the near-impenetrable darkness of their work to date may suggest.

            While tracks like “Trouble” and “Endless Night” gravitate towards the ethereal production and existential subject matter of prior releases, repeat listens will reveal the same complex compositions and humanity that are much more a hallmark of Horse’s eight songs. As a whole, Horse stands as a warmer, more human counterpoint to 2018’s celestial Slow Sundown. As to which of the two entries better approximates Holy Motors’ natural set point, only time will tell.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Country Church
            2. Endless Night 
            3. Midnight Cowboy 
            4. Road Stars 
            5. Matador
            6. Come On, Slowly
            7. Trouble
            8. Life Valley (So Many Miles Away)

            Profligate

            Too Numb To Know

              Too Numb to Know showcases Profligate continuing to shirk the heavy electronics of his early years for razor sharp pop. On 2018’s Somewhere Else, Noah Anthony delivered catchy nuggets while adding live instrumentations, reinvigorating his songwriting and sonic palette. This new song-driven approach gained praise from Resident Advisor, Pitchfork and The Wire, exposing Profligate to new listeners.

              Anthony worked on Too Numb To Know while living on both coasts of the United States, but eventually completed the album in Cleveland, Ohio, where he currently resides. Anthony recorded demos in Philadelphia and in Los Angeles, which was a creatively-challenging, emotionally-depleting city for him - after losing the computer holding original recordings of TNTK to a thief, he took a friend’s suggestion and moved to Cleveland where he finished the album, and added contributions from allies like Matchess, Lazy Magnet, Gel Set, Missions, and others.

              TNTK is about growth, reflection and change. Lead single “Hang Up” urges the artist’s younger self to trust his instincts during chaos. Its message pairs with bright keyboards, a pulsing beat, and soft, alluring vocals - on the chorus, he croons “Nothing you create but love penetrates.” It’s an urgent, driving pop song that fuses electronics with rock instrumentation like the best of Alternative radio. “A Little Rain” and “My Days” feature evocative melodic and textural beauty. The latter’s hopeful and assuring chorus is unexpected and welcome. Softer moments like these are interspersed throughout TNTK in between kinetic numbers like “No Clear Way” and “We Can Punish,” or “A Stranger” reminiscent of his noisier, beat-oriented years. This varied approach and attention to detail is garnish to an already tight song cycle

              TRACK LISTING

              1. Mask 
              2. Hang Up 
              3. Tula 
              4. A Little Rain
              5. No Clear Way
              6. We Can Punishl
              7. Drink A Spider
              8. Just A Few Things Wrong
              9. My Days
              10. A Stranger

              On the heels of their justly lauded LP "Dream All Over", Gun Outfit deliver "Two Way Player", an EP of enigmatic & spacious guitar music that stands alongside the band's boldest & strongest work thus far, this time with a new line up of David Harris (MILK MUSIC), Joe Denardo (GROWING/ORNAMENT), with Will Lawrence, in addition to the core members, Daniel, Carrie, & Dylan. Abstracted legends of the American West, fortunes gained & lost, tragic songs of life rendered in deep focus - all portrayed through mysterious & dense compositions that recall the lonely expanses & warm intimacies of the films of Bruce Baillie & Gunvor Nelson. "Two Way Player" is a brief, beautiful dispatch from the country's most consistent band, a record equally suited for stoned sunny mornings & lonely full moon nights.

              Wall

              Wall

                A certain self-awareness of the very question is at the heart of the WALL apparatus & listening along as they discover themselves throughout this EP is invigorating & scary. Tone & rhythm whirl together, like an emergency exit door choreographed to swing flawlessly in time to its damned & chaotic Pavlovian alarm bell. From the first rigid & cautious seconds of their EP, WALL unleashes an uncanny self-awareness that methodically slips pages ripped from demented No Wave legacies through a shredder of their own design.

                Posse

                Perfect H / Voices

                  Seattle 3 piece, Posse (featured in Pitchfork's RISING Listings in 2015) follow up their 2014 LP "Soft Opening" with this limited run 7" with jacket artwork by Sam Falls. Featuring beautifully interwoven guitars, propulsive, stripped down drumming & Paul Whittmann-Todd & Sacha Maxim's hushed vocals, these 2 tracks take Posse's brand of minimalism to the next level.


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