Sea Wolf has a kickstarter up for a new striped down album.
It is a multi-tiered buy in with a lot of cool extras. You can buy in as low as
a dollar and up from there. I will probably do the limited color vinyl.
Polica have a new album coming out soon called Shulamith. You can preorder
the album on their web page.
Veronica
Falls have a new 7”
single coming out for the song Broken Toy. The preorder is not up yet but the single will
be released on October 22.
Here we go...
This is a 7” record/single that was pressed at 45 RPMs. It
was released in December of 2012. There were 500 copies pressed. The “sleeve”
is made of chipboard and was silk screened in black and pea-green. I say sleeve
but it is more like a sheet folded in half. There was also an insert with
credits and thanks. It is a two track single. Both of the tracks are included
on the up coming full length album to be released on Slumberland Records. I had
never heard of the record company that this record was released on. The company
is called Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records. That is a bit of a mouth full if
you ask me. I thought the etching on both sides of the records was cute though.
The A side reads, “Boo-Ba-Dee” and the B side reads, “Boo-Ba-Dee Enjoy It Right
Now.”
The A side track is called Do You Really Wanna Know Why YrStill In Love With Me? The song seems to be styled after what Golden Grrrls
have done with their last record with both high pitched male and female vocals
singing the same thing at the same time. There is a lot of high pitched guitar
noise going on at the same time. It sort of makes it hard to listen to at any
kind of loud volume. It is still a good song though.
The B side track is called Lemonade Grrrl. I am not sure if
this is a reference to Golden Grrrls or not. The song is more of the same sound
as on the A side really but with a different beat. This track relies more on
the female vocals than the A side track does. I kind of like it this way.
Both songs are fast paced and exciting even with the noise.
I wanted to hear what was in store for me before I got the new full length. Now
that I have hear a taste of what is to come I am very excited.
This multi-split release was put out on three different
formats. It was released as a four track 7” record as an eight file download
and as a limited CDR with the original 7” packaging and tracks. If you bought
the item from the Art Is Hard Records Bandcamp page you also automatically get
the eight file download. As of this writing there are no more 7” records but
still are seven CDR packages available. You can get the download at any time. I
did not find out about this set until I found out about Joanna Gruesome. That
being said the record was sold out. I instead got the CDR package, more limited
anyway. The download has a second track from each band. This means that each of
the four bands has contributed two tracks. I guess it could be called a
compilation then. You can listen to each track on the Art Is Hard bandcamp album page found in the link above.
The first track from Gum is called Cherryade. This track
sounds like something that may have been a first draft from My Bloody Valentine
with the bending of the chords that happens. The verse part is standard indie
rock. The chorus is a bit louder but still very standard indie pop. The part
that really stands out is the bending of the chords.
The second track form Gum is called Soon. This track is a
bit slower from Cherryade. There is some feedback in the track so I can only
assume that they were trying to push the sound as much as possible, a bit too
far at times. I don’t think they meant to have the feedback in the track but
they couldn’t tweak the sound to the right spot to eliminate it. The sound is
not over bearing though and kind of works with the song. I just don’t think it
was intentional.
The second band is called Playlounge. The first track from
them is called Connor, Oh Burst? This is kind of a play on another musician’s
name, Conor Oberst, who is a part of Bright Eyes. The song doesn’t resemble
anything from Bright Eyes music. It is very punk, fast, fun and short.
The second song from Playlounge is called Revolution Summer.
It is a bit slower than their first song on the split. I think I enjoy this
song a bit more than the first because it is a bit slower. I think this is what
makes it more listenable really. Both songs are super short, less than a minute
and a half.
The next band is called Keel Her. The first track from them
is called Norman.
The drums are very muffled and the opening keyboard sound is super distorted.
It really doesn’t sound that great. The guitar part sounds pretty good though.
The vocals are multi-tracked and slightly distorted. This makes it hard to
understand what they are singing about. I think that without the keyboard part
the song would be good but not so with it in. It is very distracting.
Their second contribution to this split is called Wilson. The drums are
still very muffled but make a good beat still. The vocals remind me of
something that The Pixies could have done with the loud male and female vocals
over the top of each other. The music behind the vocals is much better with
this track. I could almost listen to it more than once in a row.
Last is the two tracks from Joanna Gruesome. The first track
is called Sweater. This track has a super cool opening riff that I could sink
my teeth into repeatedly. Sadly this track is not going to be on their new full
length album Weird Sister. I think this track is so much better than the two
that are on the above single. During the verse they are together and for the
chorus the male vocals sing on their own the first time and the female vocals
come in on the second time before going back into the verse. The guitar riff
really makes the song though.
The last track is called Pantry Girl (Original Demo). This,
like all of the other second tracks, is a bit slower. The guitar is heavily
distorted with a deeper tone. There is also an acoustic guitar being played in
line with the electric guitar that is not distorted. This gives a very cool
sound. The vocals are all male on this track and, like most of the music on
this split, you can’t understand most of what is being said. This isn’t a bad
thing though. The vocals become more of an instrument of their own this way.
I am happy to have found this four-way split mini-album. I
am not sure that I will be looking for any of the other three artists found
here but I do like what I have heard from Joanna Gruesome. As I said on the
single review above, I am very excited to hear what is on the up coming album
from them.
Came Back Haunted is the first single from the new album
Hesitation Marks. It was released early in June of 2013. It is though that the
track is an acknowledgement of Reznor’s absence. The song has classic synth
sounds along with an electronic bassline and some really cool guitar sounds
during the breakdown. Some would say that this is typical NIN style. Although
this is true for the most part, it still is a progression and is different from
past music. I like the track, but then I like most music from NIN.
Copy Of A was the second single released. It was released in
the early part of August, 2013. It was given away on Amazon.com for free as an
MP3 and if you ordered the album from the NIN.com store you could get it free
that way too. The Amazon MP3 was at 254 kbps where as the NIN version was MP3
at 320 or a better format such as FLAC.
The track itself is very different from Came Back Haunted.
The song features the use of the Swarmatron, an analogue synthesizer, which was
most notably used by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for the soundtrack of the
film, The Social Network.
Lyricly the song can be interpreted as trying to find ones identity in a sea of
similarity. It could also be interpreted as nothing can stand out in a world
where exact duplicates can exist without thought or understanding of where it
came from in the first place.
Everything was just released this week on NPR and as a free
download if you preordered the new album from NIN.com. This track is very
different from anything that NIN has put out in the past. It is more rock than
industrial and really fits in with the current indie/DIY music that has been
put out in the underground music over the past year. This track makes me want
to hear the new album even more than the first two singles that have been put
out!
All songs are very good for NIN and I am looking forward to
the new album because of all of these teasers.
This is the first single from The Ar-kaics. It was released
reciently through a small record company that I like a lot called SpeakertreeRecords. They have been a starting point for me on quite a few bands. This group
has a few more singles and a full length album as well coming out soon on
another record company called Windian Records.
The record company had this posted about the group and the
two songs from this single, “Patty, Kevin, and Johnny make troglodyte, teenbeat
garage-punk with enough primitive grit to rival your favorite pebbles, nuggets,
and back-from-the-gravers. Their debut single unleashes two essential
scorchers into the wild.
"She Does Those Things to Me" delivers a catchy 4-chord foundation before pummeling you with buzzsawing guitars, pounding drums, and a full-on throaty wail. B-sider "Don't Need Your Love" is just as catchy, coated in lo-fi snarl with enough sentimentality and twang to really mean it.”
"She Does Those Things to Me" delivers a catchy 4-chord foundation before pummeling you with buzzsawing guitars, pounding drums, and a full-on throaty wail. B-sider "Don't Need Your Love" is just as catchy, coated in lo-fi snarl with enough sentimentality and twang to really mean it.”
Both songs have a super cool 60s vibe that seems to have not
been duplicated in quite a while. Both songs are great. You can tell just by
the titles of the songs that they are from completely opposite sides of the
spectrum with regards to love but musically are similar in sound.
That is all I have for now...
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