Archive for the Indie Rock Category
The Promise Ring “30 Degrees Everywhere” (Jade Tree)
One of the most beloved underground rock acts of the ’90s, it’s nearly impossible to oversell the profound influence The Promise Ring had on their genre’s past, present and future. Formed in 1995 in Milwaukee by guitarist Jason Gnewikow, drummer Dan Didier and bassist Scott Beschta, the band was eventually […]
Of Montreal “White relic/Irrealis Mood” (Polyvinyl)
Two important events occurred during the making of White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood. I became “Simulated Reality” paranoid and I fell in LOVE. Well a lot more happened during the process of writing and recording, but those are the two big ones. I also reached a healthy point of self-forgiveness for […]
Marah “If You Didn’t Laugh You’d Cry” (Valley Farm)
Over the past decade we wrote and recorded two records on broken gear, played hundreds of shows touring in a van, made another self-produced record, one big-name-producer record, and had so many rotating band members we get dizzy just thinking about it. So, going into album number five, we decided […]
Mark Kozelek and Sean Yeaton “Yellow Kitchen” (Caldo Verde)
Mark Kozelek’s new thing is collaborative albums. He’s released two Sun Kil Moon/Jesu records since the beginning of last year, and his latest team-up is Yellow Kitchen, a collaboration with noted Slipknot fan/Parquet Courts bassist Sean Yeaton. We’ve already heard the heartfelt love song “The Reasons I Love You,” and […]
Eric Chenaux “Slowly Paradise” (Constellation)
Eric Chenaux makes conceptual music that’s not meant to sound conceptual. He operates among various ‘traditions’ but perhaps most broadly, Chenaux’s records grapple with the relationship between improvisation and structure in very particular, unique, idiosyncratic ways – and quite without irony or cynicism, through love. “Slowly Paradise” is Eric Chenaux’s […]
Oneida “Romance” (Joyful Noise)
Oneida has been a cornerstone of the Brooklyn underground for nearly two decades. Always evolving, the group has been a beacon of musical exploration and enthralling unpredictability, gaining legendary status among heads that know and expanding the limits of what it means to be a rock band. With a discography […]
Nap Eyes “I’m Bad Now” (Paradise of Bachelors)
The acclaimed Canadians’ ambitious, allusive third album achieves a new sonic clarity, depth, and range to match the effortless melodies and extraordinary writing. It’s the band’s most transparent and personal set of songs to date, in which singer Nigel Chapman interrogates social, psychological, and spiritual milieus for clues about the […]
Guided By Voices “Ogre’s Trumpet” (GBV)
Limited edition (1000 copies of each format) double album from a magical night in Asbury Park, New Jersey in August 2017. The incendiary new GBV line-up of Robert Pollard, Doug Gillard, Kevin March, Mark Shue and Bobby Bare Jr. plays songs from the 2017 albums How Do You Spell Heaven […]
Breeders “All Nerve” (4AD)
The Breeders return to 4AD for their first release in 10 years with the infectious new album All Nerve. It re-unites Breeders Mk 2 – Kim, Kelley, Josephine and Jim – and harks back to a sound more in line with Pod and Last Splash. All Nerve is a classic […]
Various Artists “Typical Girls Vol 3” (Emotional Response)
Emotional Response continue their quest to highlight the finest in current female fronted punk, post-punk, hardcore and indie. Following on from the two previous vibrant volumes of Typical Girls, Emotional Response was quickly presented with a wealth of staggeringly high quality material. Rather than sit on tracks, or exclude material […]
Various Artists “Typical Girls Vol 4” (Emotional Response)
Emotional Response continue their quest to highlight the finest in current female fronted punk, post-punk, hardcore and indie. Following on from the two previous vibrant volumes of Typical Girls, Emotional Response was quickly presented with a wealth of staggeringly high quality material. Rather than sit on tracks, or exclude material […]
Great Plains “Mark, Don and Mel” (Rerun)
Rerun Records is proud to present new issues of the first two records by Columbus, OH’s GREAT PLAINS. Smartass garage pop, firmly rooted in a beer-soaked Midwestern basement. Catchy tunes with too smart for their own good lyrics from the off-kilter mind of RON HOUSE. The first release is a […]
This Kind Of Punishment “Beard of Bees” (Superior Viaduct)
In the fertile terrain of New Zealand’s 1980s post-punk scene, few figures loom as large as the Jefferies brothers. Graeme Jefferies and Peter Jefferies—the primary forces behind This Kind Of Punishment—wrote some of the best music to come out on Flying Nun, Xpressway or elsewhere. A dizzying mix of pastoral […]
Titus Andronicus “A Productive Cough” (Merge)
Since debuting in 2008, TITUS ANDRONICUS (hereafter +@) has been conditioning faithful listeners to expect only the unexpected. With A Productive Cough, +@ has executed the most shocking departure yet—but only if, as ever mercurial singer-songwriter PATRICK STICKLES insists, “you haven’t been paying attention.” In a move that may infuriate […]
The Men “Drift” (Sacred Bones)
Drift is the seventh full-length by NYC rock polymaths The Men, and it marks their 10th anniversary as a band. The Men’s last album, the self-released Devil Music, was the sound of a band who had been through hell hitting reset and looking to their roots to rediscover themselves. On […]
Cindy Lee “Act Of Tenderness” (W.25TH)
Initially released on the diva’s own CCQSK E N T E R P R I S E S, Act Of Tenderness is a mouth watering piece of art, an ephemera of beauty and ache that singer, guitarist, drag queen Patrick Flegel had been collecting and weaving into his own personal […]
Great Plains “Born in a Barn” (Rerun)
Rerun Records is proud to present new issues of the first two records by Columbus, OH’s GREAT PLAINS. Smartass garage pop, firmly rooted in a beer-soaked Midwestern basement. Catchy tunes with too smart for their own good lyrics from the off-kilter mind of RON HOUSE. The first release is a […]
Shannon and the Clams “Onion” (Easy Eye Sound)
The Oakland-based, indie garage punk quartet Shannon & the Clams, known for a diverse sound that incorporates elements of doo-wop, early rock & roll, classic R&B, garage psych, and surf rock as influences, released its fifth album, Onion, this time working with producer Dan Auerbach and Easy Eye Sound.
The Dears “No Cities Left” (Paper Bag)
The Dears have always survived and thrived by breaking apart and rebuilding. And it’s with that spirit you should approach The Dears’ No Cities Left, the greatest and grandest work from a band for whom “epic” seems too a cheap descriptor, the ultimate culmination of the band’s unhinged onstage catharsis […]
Ought “Room Inside the World” (Merge)
Ought’s third album and their first for Merge—growing up doesn’t mean mellowing out so much as it means learning to pay attention, listening carefully and openly, staying somewhere long enough to really understand where you are. Recorded at Rare Book Room in Brooklyn with producer Nicolas Vernhes (Deerhunter, Animal Collective, […]
S Carey “Hundred Acres” (Jagjaguwar)
At its heart, Hundred Acres – the third full-length album from Wisconsin singer / songwriter S Carey – finds him grounded comfortably in his skin, but still with one foot in the stream. More direct than ever, there is a wellspring of confidence in this new batch of songs that […]
Felt “Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty” (Cherry Red)
Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty is their first LP, and feels like it–the rippling guitars are pretty, and it sounds marvellously fresh, though a little unfocussed–but its utter fragility makes it an acquired taste. There has never been another band quite like Felt. Their perversity was a consequence of their classicism: […]
Songs: Ohia “Travels In Constants” (Temporary Residence)
Available on Vinyl for the first time ever. Sometime in 2001 -sandwiched between the release of Ghost Tropic and its follow-up, the cryptic classic, Didn’t It Rain – Songs: Ohia recorded an EP for Temporary Residence’s distance-themed subscription series, Travels In Constants. The untitled EP consisted of a single 18-minute […]
Felt “The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories” (Cherry Red)
The third Felt studio album from 1984 was a strong pop album with great guitar hooks and a simultaneously sad and happy feel to it. Before the Stone Roses and after Be-Bop Deluxe and Plastic Ono Band, John Leckie worked with Felt. Booked into a metal / reggae studio in […]