This is possibly an even more accomplished effort than their great debut Lp The Big Roar. It feels fresher as this time we don’t have the benefit (?) of hearing half of the songs on a previously released EP. Some song lengths are noticeably longer (notably on “Maw Maw Song” and “The Leopard and the Lung”) and the guitar work on these is stunning, but otherwise they don’t vary much from the sonic assault of their previous material. It’s not out until later this month, but it’s streaming at Rolling Stone’s site here.

It’s interesting that Wild Flag have gotten much more attention than the two records Corin Tucker has made with her backing band in the last few years. This one from last year, her most recent, is far more upbeat and dare I say Sleater-Kinney-like (though different enough), than its predecessor (the sparse and underrated 1,000 Years) and lyrically some songs bemoan the social and political situation for women in the U.S. compared to when she started out in the early ’90s while others take on more personal concerns.

Though I was initially underwhelmed with this long-anticipated album (Yo La Tengo’s thirteenth studio album), it is a grower and a night-time drive with it playing turned my my opinion around. While there are no immediate pop songs like the last album’s “Nothing to Hide”, this set should be taken in as a whole and is a soothing, if melancholy and somber, listen from folks in their forties and fifties who no longer rely on noise and distortion to get their point across.

Thanks to Chris Zak for introducing me to this Oakland-area band. I know very little about them, but I can tell you that “Hourglass” (the first song on this EP released early last year) is an absolutely great track evoking the best of early ’80s college-rock/jangle-pop (think The Bongos and especially The dB’s). I’m hooked! You can give it a listen here.

Yes, this has been getting a lot of hype lately, but I think that the praise heaved upon this mysterious Swedish outfit is well-deserved. The hypnotic, psychedelic grooves contain herein occasionally make me think of Thee Hypnotics (appropriately enough) as well as older influences like early ’70s Funkadelic.

When he’s not fronting The Fresh and Onlys, Tim Cohen is also performing under this nom de plume. This 2011, 4-song Lp is only recognizable as the work of the same singer-songwriter due to his vocals. Otherwise, this is what used to be called “freak folk” in the mid ’00s with beguiling song lengths (almost all over 10 minutes) to match (think Joanna Newsom‘s Ys). I dig it, though it requires a lot of patience and concentration.

I picked up this fantastic split 7” in DC last month. Though Government Issue (who recently played a terrific reunion show in DC: see my review here) gets the lion’s share of the attention, Factory Incident vocalist John Stabb has been in many other groups (including his current band History Repeated) and all are quality. The song found here, “Rail”, is a post-punk burner par excellence with Stabb affecting a great English accent and proving that he is a master of various vocal styles.

Last Burning Embers is, of course, a band that our own Jack Rabid was in. Besides that factoid, “The Vacillator” is also a punishing post-punk burner with great lyrics by Dave Burokas that shows that both of these bands should’ve gotten more attention than they received when this came out about a decade ago and both were active.

Who knew that The Primitives (reunited since 2009) made a brand new studio album last year? I didn’t either until a few days ago. There are no peaks like the amazing “Crash”, but rather this is still an enjoyable, pleasant collection of obscure ’60s covers (I wasn’t familiar with a single original here).

From their forthcoming debut Lp, this Italian post-punk/dream-pop band follows the excellent Grey Days EP with a song that betters anything on there. Listen to it here. The Lp should be sensational!

Almost a year after its release, I’m still getting immense pleasure from this release, one of my favorites from 2012. When I first got into it in the spring of last year, it was side 1’s tunes that really grabbed me (particularly the single “Know Me” and side 1 closer “Pair of Wings”), but now I’m absolutely obsessed with side 2. In particularly, what I’m really gravitating to at the moment are the Arthur Russell-like moodiness of album closer “The Fall” (indescribably beautiful) as well as the appropriately named “Apples for the Sun” (which reminds me a bit of Silver Apples gone ethereal).