In late 1962, French singer-songwriter Françoise Hardy collected her first three EPs for the Disques Vogue label into an eponymous full-length, which was retitled The“Yeh-Yeh” Girl From Paris! when finally released domestically in 1965 by 4 Corners Of The World/Kapp.
The songs on Old Sea Brigade are more impressionistic and evocative than anything concrete, like traditional pop songs blowing gently by you on a passing breeze.
Parallelogram is a 5 LP set featuring never before released works by Hiss Golden Messenger, Michael Chapman, Six Organs of Admittance, William Tyler, Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Thurston Moore & John Moloney (Caught On Tape), Alan Bishop/Bill Orcutt/Chris Corsano (Bishop-Orcutt-Corsano Trio), Bardo Pond and Yo La Tengo.
Inky Ovine is as wonderfully inspired and individual as any other record this year is likely to produce.
Charleston, SC’s A Fragile Tomorrow return with a bang on their fifth album in twelve years.
Whether the band’s every step is calculated or they’re completely unaware of their country’s underground rock distinctions and there’s just something in the water of Lake Te Anau that creates monumental jangle pop, doesn’t matter at all. Metalmania totally rips.
Named after the street of ill repute where most of the cab-driving band members cruised to score their junk, Phoenix, AZ’s Van Buren Wheels took their town by storm, started an underground garage scene and promptly imploded due to rampant drug use.
Hailing from the Greek island of Crete, the mysterious duo known as Thee Koukouvaya deliver a solid electric pulse that is both compositional and danceable on their debut full-length.
Feelies guitarist/vocalist, Glenn Mercer, builds on ideas explored with bandmate Bill Million in their side-project, The Willies, on his first solely instrumental solo album.
Vile has managed to tap into something that transcends indie trends and peers on B’lieve I’m Goin Down….
“a lovely, atmospheric jazz album with classical and world music overtones.”
he album is a quirky and inspired take on blues and folk, and it’s the sense of individuality and personality Evans injects into it that makes it so distinctive from the herd.
In giving punk’s sense of unhinged urgency to the somewhat predictable structure of the Delta blues, the band sounds like a raucous, drunken, and unpredictable attack on decades of tradition.
On Songs from Motel 43, singer-songwriter Knowlton Bourne escapes to the dusty highway familiar to many a songwriter before him. The resulting nine songs are a compelling blend of equal parts country, indie and ambient.
Beijing, China’s Noise Arcade returns with a short player comprised of ambient reworkings of songs from the 57471C F4D3Z remix compilation based on Shanghai metal band The Machinery of Other Skeletons’ Static Fades EP.
There’s plenty of bands trying to do something similar to this, but what will undoubtedly cause 3 Geminis to stand out from the pack is Carrico’s devotion to brutally, unadulterated emotion and energy.
Tuscon, AZ’s Wanda Junes deliver an astonishingly powerful debut that examines the darkness and sorrow of country music.
Boyracer’s Stewart Anderson teams up once again with frontman Justin Burch (Soft Paws/Inspaceno!) for a second offering of oddball pub rock.
Lower Manhattan native, Odetta Hartman, debuts with a quick and quirky cassette of psychedelic bedroom folk that ranges from bluegrass to soul in only twenty-two minutes.
Burnt Blue, the newest EP from San Francisco musician J Burn, is a modern slice of Americana as homespun as apple pie.
King manages to capture that same indefinable quality of Steely Dan, namely that it’s impossible to pin point exactly what the sound really is.
“This 10th anniversary of this beautiful album displays both how far the band has come and how close they remain to their sonic roots. What you can expect here is delicate and beautifully rendered ambient dream pop that bares the listener to their soul and drenches them with blistering joy and heavy emotion.”
As Mulva Myasis, Davis, CA noisician Noa Ver uses homemade synths and oscillators, aka her “friends,” to create the sound of electronics in pain.
Osaka, Japan’s Out of Dust team up with controversial saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and upstart guitarist Takumi Mura for an explosive two-set night of hard bop mixed with fusion tendencies recorded live in Kobe.
“…Brilliant, trippy folk with field recordings of bird song; it is like a daydream behind closed eyelids with the afterburn of bright sunshine.”
Though they reached notoriety with the bizarre single, “Janitor,” Long Beach, CA’s Suburban Lawns remain a criminally ignored footnote in the annals of LA’s new wave history.
A fantastic collection of the early days, this is probably as close as we’ll ever see to a proper Creation box set
London, England’s unsung urban folk heroes, Band of Holy Joy, return with yet another instant post-punk classic that focuses on their unique style of storytelling.
Chicago piano/drums duo, The Claudettes, now expanded to a trio with the addition of vocalist Yana, attack the blues with the ferocity of punk rock on their sophomore album.
NYC’s ever-morphing Tarana, led by drummer Ravish Momin and currently flanked by trombonist Rick Parker, release an astounding full-length that melds so many musical genres, it defies them all.
It’s easy to say Lozk has accomplished something very difficult to pull off, which is to create an entire separate universe for his work to thrive in, while remaining partially footed in cornerstones of world music.
Although not the heaviest nor the most aggressive by far, Five Hundredth Year more than make up for this with a strong sense of melody and theatricality that only intensifies as the extended play progresses.
Argentina’s Robot Garden fuse together bombastic indie rock and stately synthpop for a stylistic, slick approach to pop that seems as artistic as it is ready-made for the stadiums.
As hinted at in the title, Tryptych, is a collection of three songs unified in style, size, and power. Hazani’s sound is as modern as it is nostalgic, like a reexamination of 80’s synth power ballads.
A tower of shimmering guitars infects this album with an anthemic quality while simulatenously remaining dark and brooding.
MV and EE have achieved a career high with Alpine Frequency. They have cobbled both their influences and their own musical/spiritual path together into one permanent song. Many paths are taken here but they all lead to the same road, the golden bummer road to unlimited devotion.
Stephen Inglis is a folk artist based in Honolulu, Hawaii, and there’s something about the easy going yet passionate quality of his home state that runs deep in the veins of his music.
England’s Presents for Sally continue their spacey shoegaze pop excursions on their long-awaited sophomore full-length.
Rich in lush arrangements, and deep in honest simplicity, Lorentzen’s new album America is the product of someone obsessed and head over heels in love with music.
“Mark has migrated somewhat from shoegaze to dreamier electronic music, but the beauty of his older work remains. The music is lush and beautiful, perfect for daydreaming on warm summer days.”
From beginning to end, the record is one open-hearted confessional from a musician with nothing to prove, because he’s proven it already.
Produced by Manny Sanchez, who has worked with Fall Out Boy, there’s an intimate yet baroque feel to the entire EP, like an orchestra confined to the space of one’s bedroom.
A follow up to 2013’s Time Honoured Alibi, Late 44 is more of the same great power pop Aubrie’s become known for.
Brooklyn-based bass clarinetist and ISSUE Project Room Artist-in-Residence, Lea Bertucci, teams up with French-born cellist, Leila Bordreuil, for a series of unsettling improvisations that push their respective instruments to their limits.
York, Pennsylvania’s The Owls Are Not What They Seem return with a shortened name and new material that delves further into occult ritual blackness.
Compared with the page-turning novel that Brooklyn one-man wunderkind Tom Curtain’s 2014 debut concept LP/rock opera The Necromancer’s Kids was, the five-song Winter Lite is a superb short story collection.
The pair’s close harmonies and highly crafted writing set the foundation for a work of gentle resonance and surpassing beauty.
