In a recent review of The Gabys’ second self-titled EP, our guest contributor Ray used the term “Fog Pop,” coined by Glenn Donaldson (The Reds, Pinks & Purples) to describe bands like April Magazine, Flowertown, and Cindy. It’s music with the “feeling of listening to Galaxie 500 or Mazzy Star through the floorboards” — introspective, lo-fi, sparse, and dreamy, “not necessarily designed to attract tons of listeners, just the correct ones.”
Cindy perfectly fits this fog pop mold – see our review on their wonderful 2023 album here, and their new EP Swan Lake is another hidden gem from the Bay Area. Songs like All Weekend and Consolation’s Test slow everything down, make you stop staring at your phone and feel all the feels, while Party In The Atelier offers an accessible gateway to the fog pop magic.
The Swan Lake EP is out now on 12″ vinyl at Tough Love Records.
The opening line of the new Retail Simps LP hits you straight away: “We’re a garage band, we’re from Garageland.” But make no mistake, this isn’t your typical garage band. Beyond the shifting names — from Tha Retail Simpson on their 2022 debut, to Theee Retail Simps on their 2023 follow-up, and now Thine Retail Simps, the group from Montreal stands out for its creativity and ability to concoct exhilarating blends from whatever they’ve got lying around in their sonic garage. I’m going for garage-punk-R&B-psych-and-soul, just to be done of with, because really, this is one of those records you need to experience and just make your own mind up on what to call it.
Strike Gold, Strike Back, Strike Out is a wild, chaotic trip through Garageland, where anything goes, and the biggest sin is being boring. Thine Retail Simps push the edges of familiar soundscapes, smashing them together into a potent cocktail that might be too intense for some but downright thrilling for others. Count me in the latter group for sure!
The band loops back to their opening line on the album’s closer, Duckland $imps (Out) — a loose and playful track on an album full of them. They thank the listener, saying, “We put a lot of hard work into this record and we hope you like it.” Honestly, it feels unnecessary after the impressive collection of songs that came before. Still, it adds to the charm of a band that not only put in the effort but clearly had a blast doing so.
Geishas Of Doom (G.O.D.), the masters of chaos in the Dutch underground, dedicate their latest album to Jur Scherpenzeel, the man behind the iconic Amsterdam blues venue Maloe Melo – described by the band as “one of the last men standing in the Dutch cultural live scene,”
Jur has been a pillar of the community —just like G.O.D. themselves. While some might say G.O.D. represents the last of a dying breed, I’d rather view them as role models. They, along with figures like Jur, are proof that the underground scene isn’t dead — it’s alive and kicking, and a welcoming place for anyone who wants to contribute. Their passion shows that whether you’re playing in a band, booking gigs, or just sharing music, there’s always room to make a difference.
But let’s get back to the music. Jur is a wild, psychedelic hardcore album filled with raw energy and love for the craft. It’s got 9 intense tracks, capped by a final song longer than the rest of the album combined. If you’re looking for an album to lose yourself in, this is it. Check it out, and if you can, catch them live. As the band themselves say: “GOD is love, and JUR forever.”
“When we first met // In the city of lights // Back in the days // Things were all bright // And the stuff that we made // And the stuff we played // We will play it again // In a different way.” In title song Psychedelic Days, Swedish psych rockers GOLD look back on their early days, over 30 years ago. Their 1991 debut LP Magic Power is finally getting a successor, with all original band members – Per Svensson (vocals, guitar, organ), Magnus Paulsson (guitar), Mårten Eriksson (bass) and Johan Bomberg (drums) – on board. “Still Young Inside” according to themselves, and that’s how it sounds. The lyrics of the six tracks here – 32 minutes in total – contain more of such appealing references, as titles like Pure Energy and Hard To Beat already reveal, but it’s the mighty vocals, heavy riffs and mean solos that make this return glorious.
Psychedelic Days, produced by Jörgen Wall and GOLD, is out now digitally and on vinyl LP through Sound Effect Records.
After last year’s strong debut, Texas duo Juli Keller and Cody Dosier (aka Falcon Bitch & Shmoofy) return with their sophomore LP, EELS – and are joined by Nicole Roman-Johnston. The record is highly enjoyable, largely thanks to the band’s fearless experimentation with different sounds and vibes while still making the whole album feel like a cohesive collection of timeless pop songs.
I’d categorize this as garage pop, but it’s a delight for fans of surf, psych, and sunshine pop too. Plus, if you’re into boy-girl harmonies, EELS delivers some of the finest and sweetest in recent memory. Tracks like Blanket of My Bone and Big Bovine are standout examples. But there is much more to like. Nightvision starts with a dreamy, choir-like 50-second intro before exploding into an indie pop banger. Then there’s Rock’n’Roll Hurts, which is so catchy it’ll make you laugh and feel a little melancholic at the same time, seamlessly transitioning into the indie-punk hit Love Machine. On EELS, a fresh, exciting tune is always waiting just around the corner, ready to surprise you.
Feeling Figures left a strong impression with Migration Magic, but here’s the twist: before their debut even hit the airwaves, the Montreal band had another album ready to go. Now, they’ve just unleashed Everything Around You, the rare “sophomore pre-debut” album.
Like Migration Magic, this new release is packed with quirky, outsider tunes. Feeling Figures are sonic treasure hunters, digging up inspiration where others don’t even bother to look. They piece together these influences into a lo-fi, sweet-and-sour pop masterpiece. Expect a wild mashup of punk, C86, psych, jangle, and post-punk—duct-taped together in a perfectly chaotic way. Tracks often start slow, but explode in unpredictable bursts, with guitar freakouts and sudden tempo shifts lurking in the shadows, ready to jolt you awake. Just take a listen to the strong opening duo of tracks Co-Operator and Doors Wide Open, and it quickly becomes clear why there is so much buzz around this band.
Everything Around You is out now on Perennial Death and K Records.
Abes Bones are a roots rock band from Tucson, Arizona, featuring James Willis (vocals, guitar), Shane Harkins (bass, backup vocals) and Ben Pearson (drums, backup vocals), where functionally assisted by guest musicians. They draw attention with the cover’s collage art and the provocative title of their new full-length Strafed By All Gods Angels, but make an even bigger impression with the ten songs that follow after pressing the play button. In an interview with Tucson Weekly, the frontman – blessed with an awesome singing voice – explained that the album explores the topics of loss and personal maturation. It was recorded live in his living room, which explains the intimate and straightforward sound, but not how on earth it is possible that everything is so well thought out. Musically it is a diverse mix – actually also a collage – of folk, rock, psych and blues, played by rich instrumentation with an eye for detail, reinforced by catchy harmonies, leading to maximum synergy. Truly unique.
Strafed By All Gods Angels, produced by Luca D’Ippolito, is out now digitally via Coyote Oak.
Paperface Zinehas been a go-to treasure chest for fans of outsider pop, offering deep dives into releases and Q&As with all the bands we love (and write about). So, it’s only fitting that their first tape release is a treasure trove of its own — a compilation bursting with unreleased tracks, demos, and covers from an all-star lineup. We’re talking Itchy & The Nits, Class, The Smashing Times, Plastic Act, The Umbrellas, Kiwi Jr., ABC Gum, Feeling Figures, Sharp Pins, Pack Rat, and so many more. Oh, and did I mention that both D’Addario brothers of The Lemon Twigs chip in, along with a hidden power-pop gem from Uni Boys’ Michael Cipolletti and Noah Nash? Yep, this tape is basically a who’s-who of cool underground acts.
Action Now! is not just a sampler platter of bands you should know; it’s a full-course meal of sounds that is just as tasty as a whole as experienced in seperate bites. Blast this on repeat, and I guarantee your day will instantly improve.
Oh, and there’s more. All proceeds from this compilation go directly to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, so you get killer tunes while supporting an important cause. Win-win, right?
Tape out now, with digital downloads available as well, both for just $10. Time to hit play!
With ‘Gimme 5!’ we take a peek into the collections of artists we admire. The premise is simple: artists WE like share five records THEY love.
This Friday, Dandy Boy Records is dropping a Cleaners From Venus tribute compilation titled Tales of a Kitchen Porter, and it’s definitely one to get excited about. The line-up includes some incredible artists like Yae-Ming, Chime School, Flowertown, Whitney’s Playland, The Smashing Times, Owen Adair Kelley, and Sob Stories — the band fronted by today’s Gimme 5! guest, Joel Cusumano. We’ve already had a preview of a couple of tracks, and you can check them out below.
The upcoming release gave us the perfect excuse to chat with Joel and ask him to share five tracks that influenced his own songwriting. Joel is a talented guitarist with a style all his own, as you can hear in his past work with Cocktails, Razz, Talkies, and his current project, Sob Stories. He’s also an in-demand player, lending his guitar skills to R.E. Seraphin’s band and others. Beyond that, Joel has a keen ear for curation — his Odd Pop playlists are pure gold. If your daily soundtrack is feeling a bit stale, Joel’s eclectic taste will shake things up in all the right ways.
This Gimme 5! has been a long time coming, and we hope you enjoy diving into Joel’s picks and seeing how they’ve shaped his approach to songwriting as much as we have. He wraps things up by explaining his choice for the Cleaners From Venus track he covered with Sob Stories, which will be out this Friday. Pre-order your copy here!
1. John Cale || Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend (from 1974s Fear)
“Music is godlike. Creation ex nihilo, conjured from vibration. John Cale is some sort of trickster deity; luring you in with deceptively sweet melody and arrangement while smuggling in stories of violence, rape, and obsession in the lyrics. That tension of levity and darkness is really appealing to me as a songwriter. This song’s great paranoid druggy opening line recalls one of The Velvet Underground’s most notable songs: “Standing waiting for a man to show / Wide-eyed, one eye fixed on the door”.”
2. The Adverts || Cast of Thousands (from 1979s Cast Of Thousands)
“Around age 15, I dove headfirst into ’70s punk after buying the US version of The Clash’s first record at Sam Goody. I think I bought Highway 61 Revisited that day too. Anyways, The Adverts were a discovery of that era, but only later did I hear their second album, Cast of Thousands. I loved that early punk music wasn’t restricted to the strict power chord chugging that it became (though I still love those kinds of records). This album is in line with other punk bands’ sophomore albums that opened up their sound with different instrumentation, arrangement, rhythms, etc. If there’s a single guitar other than the one in the B section, I don’t hear it. The song’s condemnation of dehumanizing, sensationalist media is brilliant. The recording quality on Cast of Thousands notoriously “sounds bad”; but that’s wrong, it sounds perfect.”
3. The Church || Violet Town (from 1984s Persia)
“I got heavily into The Church a few years ago, having only previous known their US hit Under the Milky Way. On a trip to Venice the week of New Year’s Day 2019, I was listening to their first few records on repeat as I wandered the freezing streets. Venice was founded on a swamp by Roman refugees fleeing Attila the Hun’s army. It became one of the wealthiest cities of the Middle Ages, and, its glory days now long gone, is a romantic and haunting mausoleum of an ancient world. I don’t know what Violet Town is about, but for wandering the streets of Venice you couldn’t do better. The Church have a knack for evoking an impressionistic mood on their records, and this is one of their best tunes.”
4. Graham Parker || Love Without Greed (from 1980s The Up Escalator)
“I was and am a huge Elvis Costello fan, but age has helped me appreciate Graham Parker, from whom Costello controversially (may have) derived his early sound. I think it’s very easy to love them both. Parker’s songs cover comparable angry young man angst, but his language is clearer, more direct and more confrontational. And Brinsley Schwarz is a hell of a guitar player. Love Without Greed finds Parker mining rich territory — the transactional nature of love and the destructive power struggle that results. “He may get your kiss / and believe that it’s his / But you know baby I hit your heart / where the others only missed” — damn, wish I’d written that!”
5. Cleaners from Venus || Victoria Grey (from 1986s Living With Victoria Grey)
“When Bobby from Dandy Boy Records said he wanted Sob Stories to cover a Cleaners from Venus song for his upcoming tribute album, I immediately knew I wanted to do Victoria Grey. The jazzy chord progression in the verse is fantastic, and the post-chorus guitar tag is killer. I’m a bit of an Anglophile (could you tell by this list?), and this is one of the most distinctly British of Cleaners songs. A song about the specter of Queen Victoria that references the UK miners’ strike and Falklands War possibly sounds odd sung by an American. I hope we did it justice.”
Listen to Sob Stories’ version of the song below. Read our review of the compilation here.
If you draw a line in the musical universe between The Growlers, Dope Lemon, Khruangbin and Richard Hawley, Marcoca floats somewhere in that imaginary quadrangle. After Silent Struggles (2020) and Cosmic Blunder (2022), the “psychedelic surf boy band” from Germany is back with Homage to Delusion, another LP with an amazing theme and enchanting music. Marco Rinke, Martin Schenk, Matthias Schmidt, Moritz Schütz and Simon Kerler create a delirious world full of late summer colours and warm atmospheres to lose yourself in, influenced by psych, surf rock, funk, jazz and soul from the 70s. Ten songs (including two instrumentals) with titles such as Rigid Dreams and Melancholie Shore that do not disguise what you can expect, but still surprise via reverb drenched guitars, transcendent organ melodies and characterful vocals. Dreamy and groovy, soon on repeat in your favorite coffee bar.
Homage to Delusion, written & composed by Marco Rinke, recorded & mixed by Martin Schenk, is out now digitally and on vinyl LP through Nice Guys.