I’ve listened a few times now to Stuck in Motion, the upcoming album from the American four-piece Formerly the Fox, but I need a few more spins to get it all in. And that’s a good thing, I think. They play dreamy psychedelic rock songs in which I keep discovering something new. Although the tracks are recorded from 2018 through 2020, the combination of old and new material still feels like a whole.
Add to wantlist: Bandcamp
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Now this is an impressive release, which you can rightly call art. Noah C. Lekas is an American writer / musician, and the author of Saturday Night Sage, a collection of poetry about mysticism and menial labor, drawing inspiration from Jack Kerouac, Patti Smith, Bob Kaufman and Nick Cave. These poems turn out to be a great combination with rock music, as you can hear on the mini-album Sounds from the Shadow Factory. Very good beat poetry in my opinion (“It’s jazz for the mind // It’s blues for the soul”, as spoken in the track Out of the Storm Drains), very cool in every way. Not only the music and lyrics are impressive, so is the accompanying video for Saturday Night Sage (with Howlin’Rain and Garcia Peoples’ Pat Gubler) by Shelby Baldock with artwork by Alan Forbes – watch below. The EP is out now through Blind Owl, on limited edition 10″ vinyl or CD, including the book.
Add to wantlist: Bandcamp
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New EP: Noah C Lekas || Sounds From The Shadow FactoryRead More »
The first time I saw DeWolff live, about 12 years ago, the three men were still boys. Inspired by Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, they played music made long before they were born. Their show and songs were pretty convincing back then, but they’ve only gotten better. Wolffpack is already the eleventh album of the psychedelic Southern rock band (if you count their great live LPs), which brings together the best from the history of quality rock (fizzing riffs, marauding organs, a funky groove, …). Out now through Mascot Records.
Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs || Mascot
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Six Tonnes De Chair Records is a French label with an ear for bands that sound good, and an eye for records that look good. Label runner Laurent Matthew Perret has built quite the roster, with artists like Tracy Bryant, Joe Ghatt, Doug Tuttle, Sunfruits and Mt. Mountain. Most of the bands on the label sound somewhere between psychedelic and garage rock. Today, I like to draw your attention to two new releases by the label. The first was released last month. It’s Butch Things by Warm Drag. The A-side’s got a drum beat that is hypnotic and a chorus that I find hard to resist. As alway with this label, the artwork is great. I guess the snake on the cover signals subliminally that this single is quite the trip. Make sure you check out the B-side as well. The second single will be released on March 5, but is already available for streaming and pre-order. It is Ask Me Later by Public body. This one is more straightforward indierock, with excellent guitar work. I particularly like the A-side, the hyperactive, no time to breathe title track.
Add to bandcamp: Bandcamp
Tommy Oberon and Rebecca Rose form a songwriting team, and with surnames like that you don’t have to think long about a band name. Oberon Rose pulls from a variety of rock, folk, country and pop influences that span both genres and decades (we should also mention power pop, glam rock and psych here, yet they produce their own unambiguous sound). After Wunjo (2012) and Tell Me All About It (2018) they have now released their third CD: Holographic Blues is out now through their own label ThouART Records. Mesmerizing music that makes you dream of better times. Watch and listen below to Sinner (the first and imho one of the best tracks on the album) and stream the other tracks on Spotify.
Add to wantlist: oberonrose.com
With Gimme 5! we take a peek into the collections of artists we admire. The premise is simple: artists WE like, share 5 records THEY love.
We are absolutely thrilled to present this week’s curator of Gimme 5!: Scott Davis. Scott is the main man behind Virginia Trance, who released Vincent’s Playlist last year – Niek’s favorite indiepop record of 2020. Scott also played in the psychelic rock band Psychic Ill’s. In his list, Scott challenges us to wander off the beaten path, and discusses the importance of an eclectic listening experience – which we love, and probably should do more often.
Click below to read and listen. Scott added short explanations for each pick. He even throws in his top 5 Lou Reed albums for good measure. We added YT video’s and Discogs links so you can add these records to your wantlist. Thanks a lot Scott!
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GIMME 5! || Scott Davis (Virginia Trance) Shares 5 Records To Listen To in 2021Read More »
Seeers, where have you been for the past five years*? In 2015, The Seeers were my band to watch and I frequently played their single in the Windian Records Subscription Series featuring the awesome Without Lites. But then…crickets, like they vanished. It’s absolutely a nice surprise (2021, let’s keep em coming okay?) that they released a full length this week. But is it any good? YES! Better than that actually, it’s full of garagepoppunk hits with a healthy dose of psych influences. Crossed fingers for a physical release, because I need to have this in my collection.
*UPDATE: The band informed me that technically this is not a new release. Happy Peaks was recorded back in 2015 on a Tascam 4-track tape machine. It was never released and this is the first time it’s made available online. Regretfully, this the last recorded material of The Seeers. They stopped being a band in 2016.
Add to wantlist: Bandcamp
What a pleasant surprise from King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard! The Australian rock band released Teenage Gizzard, a compilation of their first songs, recorded in 2010 and 2011. Very cool to hear how they started: short rock songs with surf influences, in which the characteristic singing style and hypnotic guitars are already central, but less complex and drawn-out than in their later work. The ten tracks are available as a digital album, but you can also bootleg the album yourself (like seven other albums – live shows or demos). The audio master files and cover art can be downloaded for free by anyone who wants to release this album (in 2017 they did something similar with Polygondwanaland, now 288 different versions have been made). I look forward to the creative outbursts this new challenge will yield and I want to have at least one of them in my collection.
At the start of each year, I create a playlist to keep track of newly released songs I like. Then, at the end of the year, I pick out the best song from this list to create a year-end mixtape, a playlist I like to return to every now and then, and revisit or rediscover songs and memories of a specific period of time. The thing is, I am not a very efficient person. So basically I drag songs to the playlist for 350 days resulting in quite the mess – the playlist currently has 1944 songs, almost 92 hours of music. Then, with the year coming to its close, I frantically go to work trimming down the playlist to its essence. That’s the hard part, because I am way better in adding stuff than throwing things away, or so I am told. I usually end up with a playlist around 300-400 songs, in spite of my good intentions to keep it shorter. This year is no exception. What I did do differently this year however, is split up the songs in two playlists that reflect my two musical taste buds: a playlist with more straightforward punk, powerpop and garage hits from 2020, and one playlist with a little less distortion (i.e., indiepop, jangle, twee, but also postpunk, and more fuzzy and surfy popsounds). As always, one song per artists. Click read more to check them out. Hope you’ll like ’em, and will uncover some new favorite tunes! BTW, in case this is my final post of the year, take care, be well and see you in 2021!
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Best of 2020 Playlists || Niek’s Favorite Songs of 2020Read More »
In 1995 Waldemar Noë visited Wim Elzinga to record a few songs at his home, the start of Bingo Trappers. Now, 25 years later, the Dutch lo-fi band still works that way. They make 60’s/70’s-influenced psychedelic garage pop with a twang. Old-fashioned craftsmanship. Their new album Giddy Wishes, follow up to Elizabethan (2018), offers ten new melancholic tunes that bring a little light to these dark days. Most of the songs are a bit more subdued than before, but the singer’s ‘Whoo!’ exclamation halfway through the stand-out track What’s the score (listen below) shows the enthusiasm that the band still has. The album title refers to an old-fashioned postcard: ‘Some giddy wishes from a confined place – mind and heart are free to travel from A to B.’ Just what we need right now.
Add to wantlist: Almost Halloween Time || Grapefruit || Morc Records (Bandcamp) || Morc Records (website) || Unread